Recovering from perfectionism & people pleasing

Self-care and self-love is essential to get beyond perfectionism & people pleasing.

Perfectionism leads to self-judgement, self-criticism, obsessive thinking, seeking reassurance and eventually anxiety and numerous other health concerns.

People pleasing is the single most detrimental act to loving yourself as it will lead to losing and betraying yourself. I honestly didn’t know who I was because my life revolved around making sure everyone else was happy and taken care of.

I was lost. I needed to get back to who I truly was.

I always took care of myself or at least I thought I did – I guess I just did what I knew at the time to be taking care of myself. I went to the gym, I knew how to eat right. But was I really taking care of me? What I really knew how to do was create the “perfect picture” I was really good at creating “perfect balance” between all my addictions. For example binge-eating was balanced by binge-exercising. Hindsight…This was not taking very good care of myself – but I convinced myself at the time that I was and maybe I honestly didn’t know any better.

When my body broke down though or my digestive system got angry or my back went completely out on me or I had to shut myself into a dark room because my migraines got so bad… these were the times I could actual rest. But I wasn’t resting because I knew I needed it or I thought I deserved the rest. In fact I most likely felt guilty the whole time my body forced me to rest. My perfectionist mind constantly yammering “I have so much to do I don’t have time for this”

Thank goodness my body put a stop to my constant doing and a temporary pause on my insane way of thinking by forcing me to rest. However, once I felt a little bit better – back to the grind I went again. Back to the to-do list, taking care of the outside world. After all, isn’t that what all women do – take care of their tribe?

In this mindset though I was;

• ignoring my body and it’s needs
• feeding my emotions the wrong foods
• taking everything personally
• hiding from my fears & insecurities
• shaming myself
• shoulding myself
• ignoring my intuition
• teaching everyone around me that I had no boundaries – so they could treat me any way they wanted to based on how their day was going.
• not making myself a priority (click here to read is my blog about nurturing the relationship with yourself)

My self-care journey has been a long yet rewarding one and I will continue on this journey for the rest of my life.

I have many ways now in which I make myself a top priority but there are 4 really quick references I check in with when I feel the old familiar habits and patterns of perfectionism and people-pleasing resurface;

1. Attention – I ground into my body and I pay attention to it. What does my body need? What do I need?
2. Acceptance – I accept absolutely everything about myself. Radical acceptance for my body, my emotions, my mental state and any old personality traits showing up.
3. Appreciation – I appreciate every message my body, my emotions, my mental state and the Universe gives to me in any given moment.
4. Affection – I nurture myself. I give my body, mind and Soul what it needs. How do I know what it needs? I discover this based on the other 3 A’s above.

To learn more about these 4A’s  click here to access a blog post I wrote on the 4A’s

These 4A’s have not only been a powerful road map to my own self-care but they have also changed every relationship in my life.

Happy reading my friends! Lots of good reads in this weeks post!

Leslie