06-29-2013, 05:47 PM
(06-29-2013, 02:57 PM)Sean Wrote: Perfectionism and depression are two parts of a bad positive feedback cycle. They increase each other's energy, increasing the bad effects of each.
A key factor to overcoming these in myself has been forgiveness, which became easier for me under AM5. Forgiving my own faults, the faults of others, and lowering my standards from "perfection" to "achievable" were critical.
I hope this helps you find your way.
Thanks Sean. It was definitely brought up because I'm running through AM5. I think I'm moving towards the changes instead of general awareness now. I think I need to practice A LOT more forgiveness. But also I'm working on breaking this bad habit. Just constant reminders that I don't need to be perfect or get everything perfect. I guess my fear is if I don't strive for perfection then I'll never be good enough. But I'm starting to see how I can have high achievement without that endless anxiety from needing to have it perfect. Part of me doesn't like the idea of forgiveness because in a way I feel like I don't deserve it. Most of my life was based around fear and I ran from it most of the time. I should have stood up and fought. After all I created all that fear in my head and it was all my doing. But I can see now how holding onto that attitude has done nothing but make things worse.
I think this has effected my social anxiety a lot too. I've improved a lot, but where I came from was a very rough place for me. When I was younger I think I might have set that bar way too high and I wanted to move as far away as possible from what I dealt with. The problem was setting that bar so high made me feel like any faults made me a complete failure, like less of a person than others. Then that developed into avoidant behavior because it was easier to run away from that threat of not being perfect.
Maybe I'm just not as healed as much as I thought and I've still got old wounds. Maybe I'm just trying to prove something so I can finally look at myself and not be upset with the problems I face. I feel like I've lived most of my life saying "one day when it all comes together". I was waiting for perfection, perfection that could never come.
