|
Hey y'all,
Perfectionism calls to us like a drug. It tantalizes us with fantasies of satisfaction and achievement. It celebrates our futile attempts at attaining the impossible. It threatens us with shame and unworthiness. And it demands our obedience...or else.
The real function of perfectionism is to maintain control and power. It dictates what we get to avoid, what we get to feel, what we get to believe. It allows us to comply and uphold the limiting stories and lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And it operates like an addiction.
Nikki Myers, yoga therapist and addictions recovery specialist, says that “addiction is the disease of the lost self” and that anything used to escape a perceived intolerable reality (like failure) is something that could possibly turn into an addiction. Addiction is a constant and pervasive reminder that something is demanding our attention and until we address it, we will remain stuck in suffering. But the suffering becomes familiar, even preferable to its alternative...until we end up engaging in our own oppression and the oppression of others — giving in to a paradigm that says we are not enough and then profits from our not-enoughness.
|
