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Do you know anyone who feels they must "be perfect" in their appearan-ce, behavior, relationships, and activities? Such adults and kids are harsh self-critics, and often assume other people (like parents) will judge them bad-ly for being imperfect. Trying to do your best is usually good, within rea-son. Expecting yourself to excel at everything all the time is self-abusive. It breeds win/lose relationships, relentless frustration and guilts, anxieties, self-scorn, and trouble accepting merited praise. To survive traumatic (low-nurturance) early years, typical kids automatical-ly develop this protective Guardian subself. Its sole function is to prevent more shame, guilt, and rejection by "being perfect." This subself insists that perfection is to be expected, and deserves no praise. The Perfectionist, Inner Critic, and Pleaser subselves scathingly label anything less than perfec-tion (according to them) as being shameful, awful, and despicable - no matter what anyone else says. People controlled by a well-meaning Perfectionist of-ten say "I can't help it!" This is a sure symptom of a disabled true Self. People who seek to recover from false-self wounds learn to accept that ex-pecting perfection in themselves and others is unrealistic and often damages self-esteem and relationships. Recoverers evolve ways of having their true Self (capital "S"), Nurturer, and Adult subselves effectively guard their Inner Child-ren from excessive shame and guilt. This allows enjoying personal achieve-ments, and growing self-trust and respect. As the tireless Perfectionist learns to trust this, s/he becomes willing to accept a more productive role in the host-person's personality. Family Project 1 provides a practical framework for harmonizing your personality subselves and guarding physical kids from de-veloping false-self wounds - and Perfectionist subselves! |
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