I am very hard on myself. I think thoughts about myself that I would rarely think about others. I hold myself to an unattainable standard. Somewhere in my childhood, I developed a deep sense of inadequacy. I suspect feeling like you are not enough is common among child sexual abuse survivors.
The feelings of inadequacy, which lead to perfectionism, stem from shame, which is something that wrapped around me like a cloak from childhood. In January 2019, I heard a song that touched me. The song is Ain’t No Grave by Bethel Music and while the whole song touched me, the first verse impacted me: “Oh, shame is a prison as cruel as a grave/Shame is a robber and he's come to take my name. Oh, love is my redeemer/Lifting me up from the ground/Love is the power when my freedom song is found.”
Shame truly is a prison that tells me I am not enough and will never be enough no matter how hard I try. Still, I always tried to be good enough with perfectionism driving me in the past. I have heard that perfectionism is the worst form of self-abuse. There is some truth to that notion for perfectionism keeps me trapped in shame.
Perfectionism is like walking along a road and never reaching your destination. The unattainable goals I used to set for myself did not help my sense of self-worth. They kept my self-esteem low which prevented me from realizing that my self-identity is built on one fact: I am a child of God. The deep truth is that God loves us. He loves us so much that He came down in the form of a 1st-century Jewish man and died on a cross to take away our sins and provide us with a way to have intimacy with Him.
The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell us that after Jesus died the veil separating the holy of holies in the temple in Jerusalem was torn from top to bottom. The holy of holies was where God’s manifest presence dwelled. The high priest went into the holy of holies once a year. But when Jesus died, all could enter into God’s manifest presence. Every believer carries the holy of holies inside of their soul.
Perhaps you are wondering how that truth applies to perfectionism. If God deemed us all worthy to sacrifice Himself, then perfectionism can go to the dung heap where it belongs. Striving for an elusive perfect version of ourselves is no longer needed. We can just accept what God did for us and let our status as His children be the source of our identities.
Letting go of perfectionism means that we can grow and develop. We can create a community of loving people around us. As Brene Brown says in her book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t), “When we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, when we find self-worth despite our imperfections, when we build connection networks that affirm and value us as imperfect beings, we are much more capable of things.”
Do you struggle with perfectionism?
Image by Angela Huang from Pixabay
The Trap of Perfectionism
You're too hard on yourself we all feel shame now and then I deal with it by talking about it to the very wise women in my life