Awhile ago I stumbled into a conversation regarding perfectionism being a ‘shield’ or trait of anxiety and it rang true for my life experience. This write up includes other ways anxiety can present itself (or hide behind…control, people pleasing, defensiveness, etc). I found it a helpful read and wanted to share here…
(You do have to click thru a bit, but the entire piece is available to read)
“It is not the thing itself which upsets us, it is how we are thinking about the thing that upsets us. When we expect the universe to give us exactly what we want, exactly as we want it, we are going to live in constant disappointment and despair, but if you can practice accepting and facing what the universe gives you, the chasm where your frustration and anger lives—in between what you want vs what is—will close.”
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Thank you for this. I am always called a perfectionist, but don’t believe that word exists. I reply that I just want to do my very best at everything. Lol. Exposed!!! These are the quotes that stood out to me:
*You feel your feelings so strongly, you confuse them for facts
*To be anxious is to be hypervigilantly attuned to tonal shifts and signals.
*Because perfectionists equate performance with acceptability, they also believe that being wrong means they are unlovable. <because that’s what we’ve known>
*Anxious people are typically hypercritical and defensive or are profoundly self-critical. These behaviors (especially self-criticism) are strong indicators of anxiety. People who defend against criticism are defending against being perceived as wrong, terrified, as I said earlier, to be seen for what they fear they truly are: defective.
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