Father Anthony McSweeney, SSS

1 Father Anthony McSweeney, SSS

2 Father Anthony McSweeney, SSS St Francis Church 326 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Vic. 3000

A degree of perfectionism can be a positive thing. Without it few great achievers would have succeeded in their endeavours. On the other hand, pushed to an extreme, perfectionism can be the cause of great suffering, unhappiness and under-achievement. That is the kind of perfectionism I will be addressing in this booklet. But how will I know, the reader who suspects he may have perfectionistic traits may ask, in which category I belong? Is this booklet for me? If you recognize some or many of the characteristics set out below, you are probably a perfectionist whose perfectionism is destructive of your happiness and fulfilment. In that case, the writer of this booklet has you in mind. So let us begin with a profile of this type of personality, set out in terms of beliefs and attitudes, characteristic feelingresponses to life situations and common behavioural patterns. A. He has a number of unhealthy beliefs and attitudes: 3 a. Believes that whatever he does work, output that is anything less than perfect is un-acceptable; it is either perfect or it is useless b. Thinks in all-or-nothing terms, looks at the world in moral terms good/bad c. Tends to have low self-esteem

B. His characteristic feeling-responses: a. Worries about shortcomings, frets over mistakes, and so is exceptionally sensitive to criticism. b. Can suffer anxiety, and is fearful of making mistakes, can be paralysed by fear c. Is prone to guilt and easily reads disapproval in others words or behaviour d. Is unable to feel satisfaction because in his own eyes he never seems to do anything well enough to warrant that feeling of satisfaction e. His underlying tendency is anger at imperfection, first in himself, and then in the world around him C. He displays certain behavioural patterns: a. A tendency to procrastinate and have difficulty finishing things, because every detail has to be perfect before going on to the next step b. Hence, he tends towards low productivity, to being an underachiever, losing time putting things off and getting every detail right c. Needs to maintain control at all times d. Tries extremely hard, is a workaholic and so is often tired e. Is constantly vigilant so as to avoid disappointing the expectations of others and to be beyond reproach f. Reproaches himself for days over the smallest error; practises constant self-criticism, self-denigration g. Is demanding of others, having high expectations of them, and is judgmental, critical of their failures 4

Did you find that the above provides a fairly accurate picture of the way you are (not necessarily, of course, in every detail)? If so, then you should be able to profit from the practices I am proposing here. First, a few words about the approach I am presenting. Getting our bearings My proposal aims at healing, not just the management of symptoms. That means it works on the causes rather than trying simply to suppress, contain or limit the symptoms. In the second place, it is a program of life. By that I mean a set of strategies, that have proven themselves over the years, to be put into practice on a daily basis. Not really difficult in themselves, the practices proposed only require perseverance. Motivation is obviously a crucial condition for any program to succeed. Having suffered a long time from my perfectionism, I may be inclined to feel sceptical about any proposal that offers me liberation. Many perfectionists, in fact, have a fatalistic attitude that this is just the way they are; they believe that they are condemned to live their condition for the rest of their lives. Often enough, it is only when our perfectionism has got completely out of hand that we are willing to try something anything! If a person has suffered enough from the plague of perfectionism, and caused others to suffer, he may be ready and willing to give it a try and even, hopefully, to persevere provided he has some reasonable hope of succeeding. The best guarantee that the author of this booklet can offer is his personal experience. The approach presented here has worked for me, and it has worked for many people I have helped. For this reason I am bold enough to hope that it can work for you. 5

Fourth, you may well feel the need for some support, especially in the early stages. If you do, do not hesitate to make contact with the author. I am, within the limits imposed by my commitments, willing to help you along for as long as we feel it is necessary for you. Eventually, you will be able to continue the work on your own. The aim of this booklet My aim here will be threefold: 1) To help you to understand how perfectionism works what, practically and not just theoretically, is really going on. It helps enormously when we come to understand what is driving our attitudes and behaviour. Understanding, of course, doesn t necessarily change things; but allied with appropriate strategies, it is a great help. 2) To assist you to recognize the factors in your experience that you can change. 3) To provide you with a set of specific, practical ways of bringing such change about. Five levels on which we can work I have learnt over the years that it is both possible and fruitful to work on five distinct levels, namely the mental, the emotional, the bodily, the linguistic and the spiritual. Work on any one of them will surely prove fruitful, but ideally it is best if we can work on all of them together. One important warning: no quick fixes! Any program of this nature takes time. The reason is simple: it took time (in childhood) to develop our perfectionistic traits and so we are not going to change them overnight. 6

The big plus is that, whatever we do, once we are on the right track, growth and change are certain. There are usually certain break-through moments, but much of the work goes on subterraneously, as it were, below the level on which we can monitor how things are going. There will, nonetheless, be sufficient pointers to reassure us. It is good to keep in mind that having someone help us, in the early stages especially, can be most valuable so that they can support us in our inevitable moments of discouragement or doubt. 1) Mental level: wrong beliefs A. I begin to recognize my wrong beliefs, specifically about God and about myself. a) God and God s relations with me. I may have grown up with an unquestioned belief in a demanding, judgmental and punitive God. Even if part of me may know, or at least suspect, that this image must be a false one, I probably tend to cling to it, if not in theory certainly in practice, with irrational stubbornness. b) Myself: I may have a belief, usually unspoken, that there is something wrong with me. I feel I will not be acceptable, loved, or approved unless unless I am perfect, unless I am good, unless I strive, or unless I achieve my goals, and the like. B. I learn to replace my wrong beliefs. It is a proven fact, based on neurological research on the brain, that false beliefs can be erased and replaced by beliefs that are true because soundly based. For the believer, the solid foundation for these true beliefs is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Such true beliefs include the following: a) True belief about God: Christian faith assures me that I don t have to be afraid of God s displeasure. God, for 7

8 example, does not even wait for me to say I am sorry. The amazing truth is rather that God loves me constantly and offers his forgiveness even before I tell him I am sorry. In fact, it is only because God has already offered me the gift of forgiveness that I am even able to say I am sorry! Saying sorry will never change God s attitude to me for the simple reason that it doesn t need to. It is I who need to change; God s forgiveness enables me, rather, to accept God s already-profferred forgiveness. b) True beliefs about myself. The foundational truth is that I am, right now, infinitely loved simply because I exist, quite independently of what I do, of whether I am good or bad. Furthermore, God has given me all that I need to be the person he wants. So I don t have to build up my selfesteem by making comparisons with others or drawing up lists of my qualities and the like. What I have to do is accept that I am loved just as I am, not tomorrow or yesterday but today, now and that I already possess in myself all that I need to become the person I was created to be! How do I go about changing my beliefs? How can I go about erasing the beliefs that are wrong and harmful and replacing them by beliefs that are true and healthy? Two fundamental elements come into play here: letting-go imagining and accepting receiving the contrary to what I have been living. Due to my childhood experience, I learnt to imagine myself as inferior, unacceptable, needing to prove myself. Such an image became so habitual as to fix itself in my mind. It is reawakened every time demands are made on me, or a new situation of failure or fault presents itself, or I am criticized in some way.

The good news is that I can reverse this process. The first step in the program I am proposing consists of learning to identify and recognize my wrong beliefs for what they are and consciously and deliberately letting them go. The next step is to formulate and accept a correct belief in place of the false one. God loves me with an eternal love (Jer 31,3). He is not happy with me one day because I do something good and angry with me the next when I do something bad. God just loves me. He cannot help loving me for that is his nature. Saint Catherine of Siena said something amazing about this. God, he said, is drunk with love for our good. And in one of her prayers, thinking about the mystery of our creation, she exclaims: O unutterable love, even though you saw all the evils that all your creatures would commit against your infinite goodness, you acted as if you did not see and set your eye only on the beauty of your creature with whom you fell in love, like one drunk and crazy with love. And in love you drew us out of yourself giving us being. Importance of the imagination To make the true belief my own I can learn to make good use of my imagination. That means imagining, as vividly as I can, that I am now acting in a new and different way let us say, sure of God s utterly unconditional love for me, confident that he delights in me. How would I feel? What difference would it make to me? Similarly, I can practise imagining that I am acting in a new way with others too relaxed, free of conditioning by the other person s approval or disapproval. I can enjoy in my imagination how good it feels to be free, to act in accordance with how I really am, sure that I have been given all that is needed for me to be the person God wanted, and not as my negative self-image has made me believe. 9

It is very helpful to imagine situations in which I act with freedom and easy dignity. I picture such situations to myself, concretely, vividly. I imagine every detail, and enjoy the feeling of freedom. It just feels so good! The more I practise this the more it will help me to want such freedom. Letting-go As I delight in the true belief I can practise letting-go of my former beliefs that I now see to be so false. Without realizing it, I have been secretly clinging to these beliefs since they gave me a sense of who I was, however horrible. It is scary to let them go because I then fear I will no longer know who I am. These false beliefs have also been feeding a sort of sick satisfaction, an emotionally unhealthy kind of self-consolation, frequently self-pity or the feeling of being a helpless victim. That is why I now have to make a conscious and deliberate decision to let the false beliefs go, to release my hold on them, and at the same time renounce the unwholesome satisfaction that it has been feeding. Let us now go on to the next level, the emotional. 2) Emotional I can profit much from a correct understanding of the function of negative emotions, especially fear, guilt, anger, and inferiority. The first three are meant to protect life, not crush it. a) Rational fear warns me of realistic and imminent danger. b) Healthy guilt alerts me to times when I have acted falsely, wrongly, in contradiction to my deepest convictions. c) Appropriate anger is the reaction of the organism or the personality to threats to its integrity or well-being, or to 10

wrong and injustice, especially done to the weak and the defenceless. d) Inferiority, on the other hand, has no positive function; it is destructive, a product not of humility but of self-hatred. Childhood experience may have deeply conditioned the way I experience emotions of guilt, inferiority, sadness, anger and the like. Often these ways may be inappropriate for me today and at times very harmful (e.g. unduly persisting guilt, endemic or ongoing inferiority these are especially pernicious when they become habitual). It will help me to remember that my familiar ways of feeling are not really part of me, but are something I learnt from my early years. Deriving from childhood experience, they are not from my real nature. Not all of them are healthy. Negative emotions sadness, particularly usually accompany my negative image of myself. The trouble is that I tend to believe what my feelings tell me. You may give me many reasons to prove to me that I am alright, but if I feel I am not good enough that seems more real to me. The trap is in believing that my feelings reflect who I really am. The education of feelings I need to remember, on the contrary, that, feelings have to be educated. Just because I experience certain feelings does not mean that they are telling me the truth of who and what I am. An important distinction has to be made here; it is this: though I have certain emotions, I am not my emotions; I might indeed have some feeling or other, but I am not my feelings. The important and liberating truth to learn is that I can reeducate my emotions. I can learn to let go of emotions that are no longer appropriate or helpful to my growth. The practice of letting-go is important because, strange as it may seem, I have in truth been holding on to these unhealthy ways 11

that have been making me unhappy. They began with a decision in childhood that, most likely, I do not even remember. That decision will still be operative in my life until I revoke it. So I must reverse that decision and choose to take a new stance. The negative emotions that go with my negative self-image are not the truth about me at all. They are learned responses the false truth learned in childhood, product of parental blame, criticism, excessive punishment or unwarranted demands made on me, or of episodes of non-affirmation or rejection. They certainly seem to be telling me who I really am. But what they are telling me is a lie; and I can choose not to believe it, I can reject it. The great and liberating truth, then, is that I can choose to be free of these negative emotional habits. Here the practice of conscious letting-go is of vital importance. Once I have relaxed my hold on them, the negative emotions can be transformed into something a great deal more healthy. We will have more to say about this when discussing the fifth level. 3) Bodily My bodily posture and gestures usually reflect my self-image too. The way I hold myself mirrors or enacts what I feel within myself. My stance may proclaim rigidity and a blaming attitude; it may depict a judgemental and censorious mindset; or it may be self-demeaning, an apologetic air that asks others to forgive me for even being there! We may not be fully aware of this, but others are; they read our body-language spontaneously. People pick up our self-image even if they never reflect on the fact. Perhaps they do not dare to say anything about it to us because they care for us and do not wish to hurt our feelings. We can work on our self-image directly (as we have said above), but we can do it indirectly too, by changing our bodily 12

postures: e.g. standing upright, not with rigidity or pride but with modest dignity. The daily practice of relaxation exercises is often very helpful also, especially for high-energy, tense perfectionists. The same principle applies to dress as well: what self-image does my way of dressing make visible to myself and to others? Here also, I have a choice. I can change this aspect of my life too, consciously altering the image I have been spontaneously projecting to others. 4) Linguistic One very fruitful area of work concerns the language I habitually use whether in my own mental talking to myself or when speaking to others. Deep attitudes can be modified by changing my linguistic habits that are usually reinforcing certain mistaken attitudes. This is especially true of the habitual use of words like should, ought, have to, must perfectionists favourites! It can be very helpful to banish these completely from my vocabulary, for at least six months. The best approach is to develop the habit of re-formulating what I spontaneously tend to say. In the place of the terms just mentioned, I begin to substitute: I choose to... or: I freely decide to or: It would be good for me to So we can say, for example, I choose to do the dishes, rather than I have to do the dishes. When I choose, I am affirming my freedom, whereas when I say I have to I am simply reinforcing a slave-mentality. I am casting myself in the role of a victim, obliged to submit to the pitiless dictates of a tyrant in my head. This practice can make an amazing difference over time. It is truly astonishing. You may also discover to your amazement just how often you tend to use these expressions, spontaneously, 13

habitually, mostly without even noticing it. The same applies to self-demeaning and self-deprecating language and statements, whether said to self or to others. In the long run, to work at changing our use of language can bring some considerable relief, as we are de-throning that interior tyrant, who is constantly oppressing us, issuing peremptory commands and barking orders and making us cower in a supine way like a slave. 5) Spiritual Prayer The daily practice of prayer in which I consciously and deliberately let go of negative emotions and receive God s good gifts is fundamental. A. I consciously, calmly, deliberately recognize and make present to my mind whatever negative emotion or idea or image has been troubling me and determining my attitudes and reactions. I then deliberately let go of this or these negative, inappropriate or exaggerated ideas or emotions, whether of guilt or fear, inferiority, shame or anger. It is good to take time on this, doing it deliberately. Imagine as vividly as you can that you are opening your hands, relaxing your grip, surrendering, truly letting go of whatever has been negative, handing it all over to Christ. B. I replace the negative ideas or feelings by consciously receiving the opposite qualities from God. I call to mind that which God desires to pour into my spirit, and is doing so right now! qualities such as forgiveness, acceptance, peace, joy and the like. Indeed, I already possess these gifts, given without measure or limitation in Baptism-Confirmation. If I have not been able to experience their presence that is because my habits of negative thinking and feeling have created a barrier or filter. 14

I desire these gifts, I really want them. I ask him to allow me to experience them. Once I let go of the obstacle that I have interposed by way of my negative thinking and feeling I open the way for God s gifts to become in time truly active in my life and experience. C. Next, I welcome and affirm these gifts as I consciously accept and receive them. I thank and praise God for them even though I may not feel anything at all. In fact, as just noted, they have been given to me already really and truly given, whether I feel this or not. Here it is good to be creative. You may use your imagination, picturing God s gift coming into you like a river a river of peace, a river of joy; or you can use any other image that appeals to you, for example, light flooding through you or warmth enfolding you as in an embrace or music delighting you... D. The more I pray this way the more surely I will come, in fact, to actually experience these good gifts. I must never forget, however, that God truly gives them. He does so prior to my feeling their presence and their beneficent influence. Once I truly believe that, I will then begin, in due time, to experience the results. The greatest and most liberating gift that a perfectionist can receive is the gift of unmerited and unconditional acceptance. It contains all the others. It allows us to accept ourselves. It starts usually by letting God love us (but it may also happen when we truly let another love us); for too often we refuse to let love in. We believe we are unworthy, we are afraid we will be incapable of responding. We need to learn, instead, to believe that God loves us now, with all our faults and failings, with all our sins and imperfections; that God loves us deeply, un-changeably, un- 15

conditionally. In no way does his love for us depend on anything we do. When I begin to believe this, then I get the good new feeling that it is alright to be me. It is OK to be imperfect. The truth is that God has already given me all I need to be the person he wants me to be. Then, at last, I can accept my faults and failures because I know I am loved. Once I have ceased to judge and condemn myself I will find that I have lost the desire and the compulsion to criticize, judge, and condemn others. The fruit, of course, is peace a peace my neurotic striving has robbed me of all these years. It is all the more wonderful because now I really know what it means. When the perfectionist can begin to laugh at himself, healing is really in sight.... On Dis-identifying with the Perfectionistic Persona Here is a little reflection that might prove helpful. It is important to keep in mind the following: 1. Next time and thereafter when you feel the old feelings of frustration with yourself, anger, disappointment, inferiority 16

17 and so on coming over you, try to become the observer of yourself. 2. Take note of what is happening to you: how the familiar negative feeling or set of feelings comes over you, how it takes hold of you. Then identify its elements, its components feelings, maybe of failure, or dread, of frustration, sadness, or perhaps of fear and worthlessness. Whatever character it has, simply take note of it. 3. Be attentive to the components that make up this experience. It consists of: a) first, a feeling, perhaps an overwhelming feeling, and with it, b) a set of thoughts (negative evaluations of self I ll never be any good, There I go again; it s hopeless, or the like), and c) certain bodily reactions usually a sinking feeling in the stomach, a constriction, a hunching over, or a cringing, maybe a weight on the shoulders, shortness of breath... 4. Next, remind yourself that every time this negative experience comes over you this is a real opportunity for you! It gives you the chance, the occasion to develop and master the skills of detachment, of letting-go, so important for bringing about change. Instead of succumbing, you can now begin to take up the observer position in regard to yourself and your reactions. You are becoming an apprentice in the art of detachment. You are learning to dis-identify with these automatic reactions rather than being swamped by them. You can have them without being overwhelmed by them. 5. This practice of creating a distance, an inner space between you and your reactions is a very important step towards freedom. The conscious self dis-identifies with his habitual, and hitherto automatic reactions. He learns to create within himself a new

18 space in which the core of his consciousness is no longer engulfed by what he is feeling and thinking. He has these reactions; but they are not him! They are simply something that is taking place in him, that is happening to him. 6. As you develop the habit of this practice, you will begin to realize that you are now acquiring a quite new kind of freedom. You are finding that you can, in time, learn quite efficiently not just to notice these unpleasant symptoms, but also truly to let them go. No longer helpful to you, you do not have to cling to or be controlled by them. So you release their hold on you in reality, your hold on them! 7. Up till now, you have been simply identified with such feelings. When you experienced them in the past, they were you at least that is what it felt like. However, that sensation was deceptive. The feelings, the negative thoughts, etc. that you have are not you; they are simply items that have arisen in your consciousness that is all! But you have, in the past, let them control you. You did not know any better. Now, you have begun to realize that, even if they are happening to you, you do not have to identify them as you. 8. You may eventually discover the strangest thing of all that it is actually you yourself who have created and have been hanging on to these unhealthy reactions all the time, all these years! You felt that they took you over. The weird truth is that you have been doing it to yourself. Once you really see that, then deep change takes place! But that is going too far ahead for now; it will come in time. The crucial first step is to begin to create this inner space, this observation post for yourself. From it you notice, recognize what is going on, as events within you before which you can take a stance.

9. For a time, you will possibly not be able to do a lot to change the onset of the feeling-complex, but that will come in time. You will learn to say to yourself: I do not have to be perfect. I am just me, and that is alright. I am just me with my faults as well as my gifts. Lord, you love me now, as I am, at this very moment. For you to love me I don t have to be good or perfect or anything else. I don t have to deserve your love or prove anything to you. It is enough to believe in your love for me and truly to accept it. Thank you, Lord, for accepting me. Teach me to accept myself as I am. 10. What counts here is the practice, not the success. Results will come in time, but not if you keep anxiously looking for them. 11. Just try to enjoy the feeling that the Lord Jesus loves you NOW. You are not your reactions of anger, disappointment with yourself or whatever. They go on within you, but they are not who you are. You do not have to believe that they are the truth about you. Your feelings and your thinking simply need to be educated. 12. The one you are disappointed and angry with is not really you, anyway. Not at all! It is rather the image of the perfect you that you thought, as a little boy, that you had to be. That little boy got the message that he would have to be perfect in order to be loved. But the real you is much deeper than that, and he is loved so much that God s own glory is reflected in him, even though he cannot see or experience any of this as yet. But you are beginning, that is what is important... 13. You will find in time that to begin to experience this space within yourself, namely, that you are not the you that feels unhappy, hurt, angry, and so on, is really the beginning of freedom. 19

There, in that inner space, you know that you are loved and you can simply observe the reactions that you are experiencing, knowing full well that they are nothing more than a product of your past. What matters is that you are beginning to get a taste of freedom from all the forces that have been for so long conditioning your moods and shaping your reactions, your attitudes and behaviour. It is true that you cannot simply banish these thoughts and feelings at will, at least not yet. But you have begun the practice that will, first, diminish them and neutralise their potential for making you (and others) unhappy. Eventually, you will even eliminate them altogether. 20