When Healing Becomes Perfectionism (and How to Get Back On Track)
Earlier this spring, the Wall Street Journal released an article proclaiming that millennials are the therapy generation. With the rising acceptability of therapy, the proliferation of coaching, and the growing popularity of meditation, reiki, and radical self-care, it seems we millennials have more opportunities than ever to customize our pathways to healing.
I’m a proud member of the therapy generation. I like deconstructing my patterns and healing my wounds. I’m a dedicated therapy attendee, make my living as a Codependency Recovery Coach, and spend a lot of my brain-power unpacking past experiences, establishing new routines and habits, and monitoring myself for unprocessed triggers.
The work of healing soothes me. It gives me a direction, a plan, something to do. I was surprised, then, when I realized that the final phase of my healing journey wasn’t work at all, but the opposite. Only when I stopped doing, and trusted in all I’d done so far, could I be truly free.
On a humid day in early August, my first serious adult relationship came to a screeching halt. After two grueling months of “trying to make it work,” complete with couples therapy and weekly relationship check-ins, my then-partner packed his bags and drove away under a stunning magenta sunset, which seemed a cosmic cruelty.
I won’t depress you with the details, but suffice it to say that our relationship had been far from perfect. Actually, it had been a playground for our unprocessed baggage, marked by tortured arguments and longstanding resentments.
Despite this, I was shattered when he left for good. I was still deeply in love with him and couldn’t believe that he’d chosen to leave me after all we’d shared.
The three months that followed were hell. Hourly, my emotions ricocheted from anger to self-loathing. I spent many evenings Googling “How to heal from a breakup” (therapy generation, remember?) and eventually stumbled across an account of a relationship that bore an uncanny resemblance to my own. Intense, fast-paced, and loving, but ripe with epic arguments, instability, and unhappiness.
The author reflected on her own characteristics during her relationship, and they mirrored mine: Unhealthy dependence on relationship. Fear of being abandoned. Difficulty being alone. Feeling never good enough. Trouble setting healthy boundaries. Shrinking of social network to focus on relationship. The author was a self-described codependent, which meant, simply, someone who had excessive emotional or psychological reliance on her partner.
I breathed a sigh of relief upon reading this definition, for it expertly described my own tendencies. I found additional validation in the knowledge that, for the codependent person, breakups are “excruciatingly painful and… experienced physically, emotionally, existentially, and spiritually.”
It was immediately obvious to me that codependency had been a major contributing factor to my relationship’s toxicity. I felt as if I’d caught a culprit red-handed. I’d finally found a framework, a label, something to explain my pain.
With the help of many a self-help book (The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Lerner and The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg were two of my favorites), a new therapist, and rigorous self-reflection, I began processing the origins of my codependency and how it negatively impacted my relationships. I made it my mission to never be that person — or experience that depth of pain — ever again.
And so, healing commenced.
I journaled daily. I wrote a list of ten affirmations that I read each morning, including “I maintain a vibrant sense of self in my relationships” and “I prioritize my self-care above all else.” I spent time with my girlfriends instead of going on dates. I pursued a new career path that ignited my heart. I moved across the country to build a life in a city that felt like home. I unpacked old hurts with my parents to unravel my codependency at its source.
Self-care became routine. I visited the doctor and bought healthy food. I rented a one-bedroom apartment so I had ample space to work from home. I went to therapy. I meditated. I exercised. I developed a circle of close friends with whom I shared my heart on a regular basis. I stayed sober and found a thriving support system of sober women.
Tian Dayton writes in Emotional Sobriety,
As months turned into years, I logged hundreds of healing hours. My life became more vibrant than ever, and my codependent self — isolated, resentful, self-loathing, and afraid — began to fade.
Months later, deeply entrenched in the ebb and flow of what felt like my new life, I would still occasionally remember — with searing vividness — the potency of that heartbreak. Every ghost pain served as a warning to avoid codependency in future relationships at all costs. After all, codependency was the character defect that caused my most painful trauma. My codependency made me unlovable. My codependency made me unworthy. Or so my inner gremlins told me.
As a result, I caught myself analyzing every romantic endeavor: “Am I doing this because I like him? Or is this my codependency?” I interpreted lonely evenings alone as “signs” of my codependency. I watched like a hawk for signs of narcissism in prospective partners. I worried about getting too attached.
In the early days of healing, my attentiveness had helped me rewrite old habits and develop new ways of relating to others. But over time, “healing” my codependency became perfectionism: a hyper-vigilance that exhausted my mind and body. In many ways, I believed that if I healed “enough,” I could avoid the black pain of heartbreak forever. But as I wrote in “Stop Romanticizing Unconditional Love”: “For better or worse, loss of love is a natural, necessary part of human life. It is a rite of passage for anyone brave enough to share her heart fully with another.”
In avoiding “mistakes,” I also avoided intimacy, the roller coaster of limerence, and new love. My perfectionism left no room for trial by error, which left no room for growth or learning. I was too fearful that my own brokenness would inevitably lead to pain.
Healing is a lifelong journey. Every day gives us the opportunity to scribe new memories over old wounds. Every act of self-care is an investment in the person we hope to become.
But at what point can we stop investing our energy in healing and start investing our energy in trusting? At what point do we acknowledge that we can’t micromanage our way to a pain-free life?
When can we liberate ourselves and say: I don’t need to protect myself from myself anymore?
Eventually, I realized it no longer served me to identify with my codependent wound. When codependency was the lens through which I saw my life, I felt disempowered and broken. (And what better way to punish myself for “ruining” that early relationship than to view myself as permanently broken? To confine myself in a cage built of old behaviors? I realized I’d been doing this subconsciously, and became ready to let that self-blame go.)
The final stage in my journey was to trust that my many hours of healing had made an impact. I thought back to the hundreds of incremental steps I’d taken — the boundaries I’d set, the self-love I’d shown, the healthy relationships I’d built, and the revelations I’d had — and the subsequent results I’d seen. Every reminder of my progress sparked a wave of relief. Every reminder was a taste of freedom from my cage of brokenness. I was rediscovering self-love by way of self-trust.
My days changed, after that.
I stopped collecting self-help books and started collecting board games.
I quit journaling about my flaws and began journaling about my dreams.
I stopped dissecting every romantic interaction and let my head rest on my lovers’ shoulders.
I stopped trying to be perfect, and chose instead to be alive.
In the space that opened, I stepped freely into a self that felt whole.
A self that was healing, always healing, but never broken.
A self who could make mistakes as a necessary step on the journey to growth and self-discovery.
For all my healing, it was trust that enabled me to stop running away from my past and start racing toward my future.
When Healing Becomes Perfectionism (and How to Get Back On Track)
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