"Perfectionism's function is to keep people busy and cut off from their authentic emotional experience. When the mind is occupied and moving at a frenetic pace, there leaves little room to feel. Perfectionism keeps us externally referenced, perennially attempting to achieve what our culture deems as ideal, perennially walled off from the mysterious churnings of our internal lives. We live in a culture where we are trying to out-run the mystery of life. Because Westerners feel tremendous anxiety when they simply sit still, we will go to great lengths to organize our lives so that all available time slots are occupied by meetings and activities. We believe that if we consume ourselves with acts of doing, we can avoid sitting with the contents of our being."
"Perfectionism is, primarily, a need to control. And control is a mask, or protection, against feeling difficult feelings. Any time we find ourselves trying to control a situation it is because we are unconsciously trying to defend against feeling our grief, fear, helplessness, loneliness. "
- excerpted from "The Conscious Bride"
[ via www.consciousweddings.com]
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2 comments:
So very true.
Its a constant struggle not to get sucked into that culture. Ask people if they've had a good weekend and its typically measured by the number of activities or the number of chores they got done. "Hey, I had a fantastic weekend. We hung out at the park, enjoyed each other, had a casual meal and a quiet Sunday morning reading the NYT. Great time!"
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