One of the first books I read after I started counseling was Learning to Tell Myself the Truth by William Backus. It’s about how our thoughts affect our emotions, decisions, and actions and has sections on Depression, Anxiety, Perfectionism, and Anger.  It’s been a long time since I read it, but there are still ideas from the book that stick with me.  One of the biggest is that the word “should” is to be avoided as much as possible.

The directions of “should”

• Toward self – Perfectionism
• Toward others – Anger
• Toward the past – Depression
• Toward the future – Anxiety

Right now, I want to concentrate on the first of these – “I should be able to do everything without mistakes.”  There are different types of perfectionistic thinking and starting here can lead to a slippery slope…

→If I make a mistake in front of others I won’t survive the humiliation. (Catastrophic thinking)

→No matter how hard I work at this, it won’t be good enough. (Probability overestimation)

→Anything less than perfect is a failure. (Black and white thinking)

→If I make a mistake, I’m a failure. (Buying into a thought)

We talked through this a couple times at TK. A lot of us there struggled with this. There were two sections in the literature they gave us – 1. Learning to Recognize Perfectionism and 2. Tools to Overcome Perfectionism.  The first section started with a list of questions to see if this is a problem for us.

• Do I have trouble meeting my own standards?
• Do I often feel frustrated, depressed, anxious, or angry while trying to meet my standards?
• Have I been told that my standards are too high?
• Do my standards get in the way, such as meeting deadlines, doing things spontaneously, or trusting others?

The kinds of thinking and example statements were listed next, followed by examples of behavior that may result from those thoughts – procrastination for fear the work won’t be good enough, constantly trying to improve things, agonizing over small details, avoiding trying new things.  The last section was then the tools to overcome perfectionism.

1. Realistic thinking – replacing negative with positive: Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has a bad day sometime. All I can do is my best.
2. Perspective taking – asking how someone else might look at the situation.
3. Looking at the big picture – asking if this will make a difference tomorrow or next year.
4. Compromising – figuring out what level of imperfection is acceptable and increasing that gradually.
5. Overcoming procrastination – create realistic schedules and set priorities.

It’s pretty easy to write about this. Much harder to actually change my thought patterns!

For me, the biggest difference is to look at life as being a work in progress, therefore it doesn’t need to be perfect. I’m a work in progress, so to expect perfection now would only set me up for unmet expectations.  Unmet expectations lead to frustration, depression, and anger.

Progress instead of Perfection!

There were several posters on the office door at PHP, and I posted one of them on the List Page – 10 Things You Must Tell Yourself Everyday.  Check out this positive self-talk.  Are there any of these you particularly like? Or any you think don’t belong on this list?  I’d love to hear what you think of it.

What would be on your top ten things you must tell yourself today?

Last week I wrote about three ways to separate self from thought and in including Defusion and Expansion from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) ended with “Committing to move forward and act in line with the values we hold.”  Therefore in ACT , the goal becomes being able to accept the past, pain, stray thoughts, etc. and moving forward according to your values. This begs the question, do you know what your values are? In one of our groups where we explored this, we were given a list of over 100 values and asked to underline the thirty we thought are important to us.  Here’s the list; go for it.

The second step, was to circle half of those that are the more important than the others…  Some of these seem to overlap like spirituality and faith or learning and education, so that shouldn’t be too bad.

Of those fifteen, cross out five. Wow, how to decide?!

Last of all, take your top ten values and narrow it down to three to five values that are the most important to you. When you come to the place of accepting the past, pain, stray thoughts, etc., you now have a direction to go that brings peace. When we live according to our values, our minds can rest. We feel whole. When we don’t live according to our values, we experience guilt and shame. We start to feel bad about ourselves. We think we can’t do anything right. We seem to keep making mistakes. But turn that around, embody the values you feel are important, and wholeness returns.

Now, admittedly, my values are going to include God, so I’m of the opinion that when we’re living God’s will there will be peace. God is the one that makes us whole.