Perfectly Mistakable

Perfectionism in the Holidays

I dream of writing a book – multiple books – ranging across loads of different genres. One I want is to have my experience explored in the context of my present awareness.

As I speak, the Gaza strip is being bombed. Israel are killing civillians and it is all in the name of freedom from a terrorist group. Watching children kiss their dead brothers, sister, parents, and friends makes me feel so so small. I sit here warring with myself over whether I want to have a relationship with my parents and find myself feeling guilt over wanting to never see them again. I feel guilt because there is such suffering in the world and I am only subject to a tiny part of it that, some people, may not even see as an issue. This very predicament has kept me in a loop from a very young age and I question my own validity in feeling these things because who am I?

I am not a man.

I have no money.

I am very lightly educated compared to the people in my life.

Yet what do these barriers hold over me? What power do they hold to keep me in my doubt and fear? The power I give them.

Which in and of itself is a paradox that I have not quite wrapped my head around. The amount of subliminal messages given to kids growing up in this country by not just the government and education system, but from the attitudes of the general populous seep into not just our thoughts but the very foundation of our identity. What is identity? Is it soley the individual who can claim their identity, or do we each belong to the collective conscious, bound eternally to our environment... How can I search for who I am without considering the others around me?

Purhaps that is in and of itself the crux of my dilemma. Thinking that others views hold determination over who I identify as. It is true that we each exist as enigmas that are often labelled understood by others but in truth, the enigma is lost unto itself because they view themselves as subject to their community.

How often do we perpetuate our own misery?

Like a self-fullfilling prophecy that propels us towards the outcome we held back in fear.

The Dunning Kruger Effect

Now I am not an experience researcher or practicing therapist so I only speak from my experiential understanding on this effect. I may even be wrong in some of my writings and I am sorry if it misleads you but I am a big advocate of mistakes. I was raised the be a perfectionist. Nothing was good enough unless it was the best, and not just the best but better than anyone who had tried before. I was meant to be incredible, smart, sporty, beautiful, obedient and caring. I could easily claim that I am all these things as it everyone else in the world but it would not feel authentic to say these traits about myself, not becaseu I do not believe them but because I am still lost as to who I am. I am still meeting myself after 25 years of rejecting, belittling and hiding that small me who never really got to walk side-by-side with their siblings. The little me who had to wait 19 years before her father said he was proud of her. The little me who would take my Mothers pain as my own so she did not feel her guilt anymore. The little me who did not understand but still knew that if I did not protect my baby brother he would have more scars than me.

I think it is important to state here that I am not blaming my family. They are products of their upbringing, the same as me. They too are lost in their teachings, unable to hear the quite of their own bodies peace, instead pushed to becoming the fractures of others desires. Above all else I mourn for them, which is what drives me to go back, time and time again even though nothing for them has changed. But I digress...

This phenomenon, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, is a proposed scale of ones confidence in their knowledge on a subject v.s. their actual knowledge on the subject. And this phenomenon perfectly depicts my own Ego. My Ego here is my protector of Self, the collective representation of my conscious mind and external experiences. My Self is my collective internal and external experiences, my total personality. Now a lot of my application of this theory comes from Jugian psychology though I am in no way an expert on the subject, infact I cannot even say I have dipped more than the tip of my hairy toes into the plundering depths of that philosophy. So as with everything I bring forth, this is heavily laden with my bias of understanding and experience with the concepts explored. If you know of these concepts and view them differently this is not to say I know anything, only to share here what I understand of them at this time. I welcome discourse, even though I am a people-pleasing-jet-setter who would love nothing more than to curl up in a cupboard and cry rather than displease someone – the cupboard joke will be funny when you read about it later. So please, if you do not already know about it maybe check it out but I'll do my best to explain more scientifically at the end of the chapter.

So, my Ego, my protector, I do not know how to describe the relationship I have with them, although if pressed I would say it is a lot of blame. Just like my parents relationship. To which is ironic viewing how I do want to run from my parents yet at the same time all I do is blame them as a reason for leaving them. All they said to me about each other growing up was complaints and misery. They were (and sadly still are) very unhappy, and that is putting it lightly, though I will say no more on that subject. When I speak of my parents, I do it not to garner pity or more blame for them or me, I do it to try and explain to myself the way I perceive the world. Through studying Art Therapy and writing a journal my whole like I highly appreciate and attune with the method of stream-writing, a spitting stream of the conscious mind, a blimp normally forgotten in words but remembered in idea. Meaning that I am writing now in a manner that does not allow for second guessing, (though my intrusive thoughts do try!) and as such I am able to convey to my Ego a somewhat-clear description of my Self and what it feels about our actions and thoughts. Exploring where these things come from helps me to understand why I feel I need to perpetuate these actions and from there I can evaluate if I need to continue on that path or choose another option. The lessons I was taught growing up from those around me contributed almost entirely to my behaviour as a kid and still do to this very day. I do not think that every lesson I learned was bad but a lot of them I have come to realise are not in-line with who I feel my Self to be. Unfortunately for Mum and Dad, they did make a lot of mistakes and this is my effort to come to terms with the humanity of my upbringing to work towards a relationship I can have with them that is not structured around blame.

I do not remember much about my childhood, only a handful of memories from before the age of 8 and very scattered memories afterwards. When I am around 16 there are more that are clearer but I also have a lot of dreams that I thought were memories and I am slowly sifting through them. As such this means that I have a lot of unknown triggers that I do not recognise or understand. I am caught in a tug-o-war with my Ego telling me to get over myself because we can't remember anything, and by Self becoming alarmed and panicked over the continual mistreatment of my feelings. But I am getting better.

I am also getting frustrated that I am not already perfect at it but hey, that is just another panic barrier I want to meet. This innate desire to be perfect and perfect right away because if you are not perfect now you never will be. But these perfectionistic tendencies serve to do nothing but project an unattainable expectation I continuously push myself to hold to. This pressure only serves to emphasise the loneliness that perfectionism holds because who is to say what perfect is? Just as questioning who I am could lead me into others projections of who they believe me to be, holding to others perceived views of perfection only serve to hold me back from breaking past the 'perfect barrier'.