Leonard Cohen wrote:
“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
For far too many years, my rigidity about how, when, and where things should happen as I planned for a beautiful life (my definition of perfectionism) overwhelmed my days and my ability to produce anything beautiful or meaningful.
Frankly, joy was a distant memory from childhood and a sharp knife in the gut when I noticed how “not joyful” I was at times.
I, too, was occasionally jealous of people who’d manage to string a few things together so they had enough resources to rest on weekends and even take a vacation or two.
Yet the jealousy abated quickly because I could also see they paid a high price for their lifestyle, with stressful, unfulfilling careers that created a hectic hustle for them and unhealthy relationships at home.
However, to be with truly calm, happy, brilliant, funny, joyful, virtuous people was unbearable for me.
To me, they had everything and made it look effortless.
I did not know this was a clue:)
“Effortless people”
It’s incredibly difficult to pin down what effortlessness is and means when defined as a way of being.
After many years of finding inspiration in these people, here’s what I’ve learned.
“Effortlessness” is not a personality trait so much as a sense of profound ease in the way things are from moment to moment.
If you surmise from that statement that these people had extra money so they could feel safe and at ease, that was not usually the case.
Some of them had resources. Most did not.
Yet none of them were preoccupied with money or things.
They had what money can’t buy—beautiful lives with meaningful work, peaceful communities of support, and the wisdom to know that that was the only thing that really mattered.
They talked about their work, interesting ideas, interesting projects, and their relationships.
But these were not people who spoke as much as most of us do. These people were the listeners in life.
They didn’t need so much from those around them or take up all the oxygen in the room like so many of us, yet their presence was breathtaking.
They were comfortable in their bodies, out in the world, and at home.
These people appeared throughout my life, arriving from all “flavors” of religion and ideology, rarely spoken aloud.
They never spoke of feeling “lucky” or “blessed.” They had tragedy and unexpected death befall them as well.
They just handled everything fully and completely, with an acceptance that is hard to understand.
They knew how to live each day unafraid and undeterred by what life served them.
Learning to be effortless is the spiritual practice
When I began a spiritual practice, I quickly became aware of my need for not just things to look a certain way, but for things to be done in specific ways—often, the way I thought was best;)
I had a constant, underlying sense of how I wanted things to go down, and there was little room for anyone else’s opinion.
When I was aware of my body, it was usually very tense—definitely not calm or effortless.
I also needed to plan my days because I didn’t want to miss any details–think military operations:)
I spent far too much time co-opting everyone into the plan I made for them; otherwise, I would suffer so much that I would inevitably make them suffer too.
I occasionally had the capacity to see the stress I was creating for myself and others, but no capacity to stop needing to control the tiny details, or stop my neurotic behavior.
It was as off-putting as it sounds.
Perfectionism, according to the experts
Perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by a relentless drive for flawlessness, accompanied by critical self-evaluation and rigid performance standards.
Yes, we’re a real joy to be around:)
AI forgot to mention how exhausting it is or the despair that comes from never being able to accomplish the objectively perfect day, perfect life, or perfect goal.
Many of us want things “just right” or “our way” because we have a vision that will make us happy.
But beneath the perfectionistic behavior lies a compulsive, dark drive that feels uncontrollable.
This “dark force” becomes apparent when we don’t get our way.
We spiral into moods that are painful to all involved.
The exquisite paradox of perfectionism is that we will literally destroy our lives and relationships to cultivate “our vision of a perfect life.”
And yes, your house may look like a high-end boutique for a minute or two before the inherent messiness of life kicks you in the teeth, but no one can enjoy being in your home with you, nor does anyone dare to sit on your 9,000-dollar Herman Miller Eames chair.
Perhaps worst of all, few return once they’ve left.
The problem with perfectionism is that the behavior is toxic to the process of learning about life itself.
Life is messy, unfinished, and unpolished. It smells and bleeds. Projects take time and sometimes don’t get finished on time —or ever. People get old and die before they’re ready.
The “perfectionistic vision” never includes the everyday messes or things left undone for another day.
Perfectionism is the relentless drive to make things look perfect —now, all the time.
In a perfectionist’s home, there’s no homework left on the counter waiting to be finished later.
There are no children’s fingerprints on the lower half of the sliding glass door, where someone didn’t see them and didn’t clean the door properly.
There are no hairs from furry family members on the sofa, no muddy hiking boots on the back porch, and no crumbs from the “wrong kinds of snacks” on the counter, not because all these things aren’t perfectly okay–but because a person with perfectionistic tendencies can’t handle a normal “everyday” happening in life.
Perfectionistic tendencies tend to suffocate life and the people in it.
The tension and need for control found in perfectionistic behavior are symptoms of unconscious and unarticulated fear
Truthfully, until I began spiritual practice, it had never occurred to me that I was a perfectionist because I was an epic failure at it.
I could never complete a “perfect offering.”
I had a lot of unfinished “perfect projects” and deep frustration, which fed the cycle for a while.
I suffered so much with this and was so bad at it that I eventually had a breakthrough: what I was doing wasn’t working, and that something else was going on with me underneath the behavior.
I became aware I was anxious.
I could feel the real fear and dread underneath the habits of perfectionism.
I entered the “I’m an anxious failure making everyone miserable what is wrong with me?” phase.
Yes, that was a super fun phase.
Yet it helped me be more real. It made me seek help and learn a practice of caring for myself in new ways. I was moving closer to effortless, although I did not know it at the time.
Over time, with help and practice, I began to see the true nature of my perfectionistic behavior–and it was not what I thought.
My perfectionistic tendencies were not about control or needing things “to be perfect” or “beautiful.”
This behavior was mostly about fear of not doing things a certain way—the way I was taught, or in many cases, not taught, long ago.
The behavior was about keeping myself safe long ago, and I continued it as an adult.
The need to plan and have things a certain way is an unconscious behavior rooted in fear of reliving something from long ago or of avoiding trouble based on past experiences.
Here’s what I mean.
Situations in everyday life where perfectionism rears its head stem from unconscious fear rooted in a misunderstanding of a previous experience.
Simply, we’re afraid something terrible will happen if we don’t do things a certain way.
Our body remembers this fear benevolently to keep us safe, but we don’t remember why or when we learned to be afraid.
Because we can’t access the memory, we sneakily give our unconscious fear a job and a highly aspirational plan to disguise it. This plan may also be something we’re afraid of not doing because something “bad” will happen.
Our “beautiful plans” make it hard for people to argue with us. Even a good “get-rich-quick scheme” will suffice to get most people on board.
We stay in the driver’s seat of life, controlling and manipulating others, getting things “our way” and avoiding the real work of looking into our fears that live below the planning mind.
We tend to behave poorly because of the extreme fear and tension beneath the surface of our conscious mind, and then justify our poor behavior by thinking, “We’re the ones who see things so clearly.”
We also easily tell ourselves, “Others don’t get it.” Mainly, we cannot see our poor behavior because our minds are distracted by the task of getting things done.
Perfectionistic tendencies rooted in unconscious childhood fears are often cloaked by elitism, high intellect, high achievement, and sometimes even true genius.
Avoiding the past in our everyday actions–some examples from my life
One of my dad’s infamous phrases when we started “getting rowdy” or made a B instead of an A was “Get back with the program.”
Yet there was rarely a spoken program by him–in fact, no program I can actually remember ever discussing.
To be fair, how do you discuss the need for a good education with a 4-year-old?
My parents were raised in an era and culture where discussions with children were limited, and they continued to parent as they were parented.
My parents would “announce things” to us once or twice, and then rule with threats and the occasional physical violence for non-compliance.
It was terrifying to live that way as a child learning about the world.
Yet this has been normalized in most cultures to keep children safe from harm they can’t understand.
For many parents, spanking a child who keeps running into the street keeps them safe to live another day—out of the street.
Fear and intimidation work, and they can never produce beautiful lives of understanding and compassionate behavior—another exquisite paradox.
For many of us, our boundaries, limitations, and expectations were loosely defined in our parents’ minds and scarcely spoken—they were transmitted to us through tension, threats, and physical violence.
We only knew we were doing what they wanted when they weren’t speaking to us harshly.
We learned to do things simply so we didn’t have to endure a threat or physical abuse.
We learned to do things from an underlying fear of not doing them.
We learned to “read our parents” and adjusted our behavior to their moods and desires for us and repressed how we really felt from fear of non-compliance.
“Our program” was inferred through their moods, words, and admonishments–and by their example within our everyday experiences of life.
To me, “Get back in the program” meant: don’t disappoint me again, don’t make me remind you again, and, mainly, pay attention to how I want things all the time.
And we learned to remember what would happen to us, even if we were at school, at a friend’s house, or out in the world.
The conditioning stuck and continues today.
We walked through childhood in fight, flight, freeze, and fawn modes. Our amygdalas were in constant overload, our bodies frozen in fear of non-compliance.
Now it’s hard for our bodies not to do exactly what we need to do to keep ourselves safe because of the repressed conditioning.
Ironically, most people expect us to be and act as powerful adults, and we are still trapped in “childhood safety mode.”
My childhood is an example of how unconscious fear is perpetuated in families that disallow a more conscious, nuanced, emotionally intelligent, and compassionate response to the joys and suffering of everyday life experiences.
Children raised like me grow to be adults who self-isolate and cope with extreme loneliness and frustration, moving from one task to another with a “normalized terror” below the surface.
Over many years of living this way, our behavior of “staying safe” with our parents convinces us that the world is harsh and terrible, too.
We grow tense, rigid, and dogmatic, never seeing the obvious connection to our childhood and eventually becoming the very people who do to others what was done to us if we don’t do our work to compassionately understand and heal our past.
For emotionally repressed people, the rare emotional highs are way too high, full of self-importance and hubris because you think you’ve accomplished something amazing on your own despite the odds and all the people who got in your way in this “really terrible world.”
For emotionally repressed people, the rare emotional lows are existential, dark, and twisty. You handle them alone, telling yourself something is deeply wrong with you as you “get right back with the program” craving even more safety, acceptance, and love from anyone who will give it to you for a minute in this “really terrible world.”
Mainly, we live as victims of life with extreme physical tension (hypertension) as we unconsciously cope with our past to stay safe as adults.
The unconscious patterns continue
Perfectionistic behavior is a learned response to an unconscious fear that began long ago–maybe generations ago.
Our parents suffered greatly and passed much of their unconscious fear to us, as was passed to them—to “keep them safe.”
Perfectionistic behavior and the “control features” we employ in our personalities are reactions to our immediate circumstances, shaped by patterns we learned long ago, which is why we now need things “just so.”
We’re fussy, edgy, particular, and tense because we learned well.
We don’t know exactly what we’re afraid of, but we can unconsciously remember that certain actions and ways of doing things kept us safe.
We can also remember praise for certain actions and become rigid in our practice of these behaviors.
Mainly, we just do what we learned to do, cultivate relationships where we get our way, and avoid people who don’t agree with our choices.
Because of our parents, teachers, and community long ago, we understood our reality through their responses to our experiences.
The underlying fear of crossing some unconscious line defines our days now–every moment.
To actually grow up and have meaningful lives, we will have to learn how to navigate the unconscious yet innate fear of doing things differently as we awaken past fears and transcend them to understand the misunderstandings of our yesterdays taught to us by our parents and community.
We have to stop doing things that no longer serve us, to deal with the fear of stopping the very thing that connects us to our parents and community.
We have to go beyond our parent-inferred, child-deduced narratives and fears and generate some compassion for all involved.
When we begin to look, things become very clear and beautiful again.
We become very clear and calm again.
Working with fear is the path itself
Spiritual practice is learning to look more deeply into the moments of today and the feelings (or lack thereof) they evoke, transforming our perspective on our past and future alike.
Our past and future are tangled in habitual reactions to today’s happenings and in how we perceive them.
We usually begin this work when we feel the tension and fear of moving forward.
We begin to feel overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings, and our perfectionistic tendencies no longer work.
We begin to see that we’re not capable of bringing “the perfect plan” to fruition, and we begin to flounder and panic a bit.
We know this condition as anxiety.
Like all drugs that kill pain at first, they quit working after a while—we feel the pain break through the drug.
And this is true for coping behaviors as well.
Beautiful lives come from beautiful actions—not fear-based actions.
Beautiful actions are those steeped in universal and effortless action.
Over time, we become aware that our perfectionistic behavior has led to great suffering for ourselves and others, as our actions are driven by scarcity, survival, and a dualistic sense of isolation.
Our actions feel far from being beautiful win-wins for everyone.
This moment where our coping skills fail and is the opportunity to see the delusion in your “perfect plans” for today.
As Cohen alluded to, this moment is the “crack” in your “perfect offering,’ for which the light gets in:)
However awful this moment feels, it is the only time you can access the wisdom you’ve been blocking with your behavior—we are not designed to live in extreme tension, fear, and isolation.
We are designed to transcend suffering when we’re ready to live differently:)
This is the moment to see the effortless perfection you remember and to realize that the life you seek is always available to you.
This is the moment to free yourself from profound fear, tension, illness, and the symptoms of repressed fear.
We trust the wisdom and clarity found within this moment of mind-body freedom, and we begin to trust ourselves and life again.
Many call this Nirvana. Some just call it home.
Staying anxious and “wobbly”
For a while, we will stay anxious and “wobbly,” wanting desperately to return to something safe as we learn to navigate the old impulsive behavior that feels like safety and acceptance to the small child within us.
For the spiritual practitioner, this is the frontier, and we work not to return to the seductive safety and security of yesterday’s habits, but to use the anxiety to help us transcend the fear of life.
We can learn to see our parents’ fears and behavior with the eyes of compassion.
We can see that their fears of us not getting an education meant we might be homeless or married to someone we didn’t love because we couldn’t care for ourselves.
We can see their parents’ fears for them and how they tried to do better than what was done to them.
We can see that, for some of us, our fear actually led to a good education despite the cruelty and suffering at times.
But it did not set us free to live a joyful life, nor did it teach us kindness toward people who are afraid. And without this, there is no hope for the planet, or for doing what we know we must do to save it from the misguided, fearful actions of our ancestors.
Living a life of fear-based action is not living at all.
We must transform our version of reality with practice, and the anxiety that feels thrust upon you today is the opportunity.
Anxiety is much like grief, but instead of the death of someone dear and all the interactions of the relationship that define who you are, it is a death of the delusion that you need to be afraid you’re not worthy of a beautiful life, and things aren’t already profoundly beautiful.
Like grief, transcending anxiety involves a letting go that is physical, spiritual, and deep one that we never feel like we’re ready for and is happening anyway.
We need support from people who understand that getting back to your plans of yesterday isn’t that important. We also need a dedicated practice to not abandon ourselves in these moments as we learn to navigate strong emotions.
Conditions for transformation
Anxiety is the sign that the conditions of transformation are at hand.
Many people in this lifetime will not feel anxiety–they don’t have the level of consciousness to be aware that they feel afraid.
Anxiety is the opportunity—a perfect crossroads of past and future to see something clearly and let it go.
Lean in; this is a special condition.
We have the opportunity to transform our relationship with reality itself.
We transcend our past to arrive in the beautiful life we thought we needed to plan for and manage neurotically.
Transcendence is the death of fear and the discovery of our true nature.
As we begin to look into these moments with the compassion and tenderness we usually save for rescue animals and small children, we can free ourselves from fear, delusion, and the need to control our environment.
We come home to ourselves, our effortless nature, free to live and enjoy this day.
We learn there is nowhere better to be and nothing to really do except free ourselves from fear itself.
We arrive in a life that is a wonder to behold— and we’ve simply been holding on too tightly—blind to its profound beauty.
If you are struggling, I understand—I call it Tuesday at my house:)
Seriously, please don’t hesitate to reach out for support at @danadrake497@gmail.com.
My very best to you,
DanaLeonard Cohen wrote:
“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
For far too many years, my rigidity about how, when, and where things should happen as I planned for a beautiful life (my definition of perfectionism) overwhelmed my days and my ability to produce anything beautiful or meaningful.
Frankly, joy was a distant memory from childhood and a sharp knife in the gut when I noticed how “not joyful” I was at times.
I, too, was occasionally jealous of people who’d manage to string a few things together so they had enough resources to rest on weekends and even take a vacation or two.
Yet the jealousy abated quickly because I could also see they paid a high price for their lifestyle, with stressful, unfulfilling careers that created a hectic hustle for them and unhealthy relationships at home.
However, to be with truly calm, happy, brilliant, funny, joyful, virtuous people was unbearable for me.
To me, they had everything and made it look effortless.
I did not know this was a clue:)
“Effortless people”
It’s incredibly difficult to pin down what effortlessness is and means when defined as a way of being.
After many years of finding inspiration in these people, here’s what I’ve learned.
“Effortlessness” is not a personality trait so much as a sense of profound ease in the way things are from moment to moment.
If you surmise from that statement that these people had extra money so they could feel safe and at ease, that was not usually the case.
Some of them had resources. Most did not.
Yet none of them were preoccupied with money or things.
They had what money can’t buy—beautiful lives with meaningful work, peaceful communities of support, and the wisdom to know that that was the only thing that really mattered.
They talked about their work, interesting ideas, interesting projects, and their relationships.
But these were not people who spoke as much as most of us do. These people were the listeners in life.
They didn’t need so much from those around them or take up all the oxygen in the room like so many of us, yet their presence was breathtaking.
They were comfortable in their bodies, out in the world, and at home.
These people appeared throughout my life, arriving from all “flavors” of religion and ideology, rarely spoken aloud.
They never spoke of feeling “lucky” or “blessed.” They had tragedy and unexpected death befall them as well.
They just handled everything fully and completely, with an acceptance that is hard to understand.
They knew how to live each day unafraid and undeterred by what life served them.
Learning to be effortless is the spiritual practice
When I began a spiritual practice, I quickly became aware of my need for not just things to look a certain way, but for things to be done in specific ways—often, the way I thought was best;)
I had a constant, underlying sense of how I wanted things to go down, and there was little room for anyone else’s opinion.
When I was aware of my body, it was usually very tense—definitely not calm or effortless.
I also needed to plan my days because I didn’t want to miss any details–think military operations:)
I spent far too much time co-opting everyone into the plan I made for them; otherwise, I would suffer so much that I would inevitably make them suffer too.
I occasionally had the capacity to see the stress I was creating for myself and others, but no capacity to stop needing to control the tiny details, or stop my neurotic behavior.
It was as off-putting as it sounds.
Perfectionism, according to the experts
Perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by a relentless drive for flawlessness, accompanied by critical self-evaluation and rigid performance standards.
Yes, we’re a real joy to be around:)
AI forgot to mention how exhausting it is or the despair that comes from never being able to accomplish the objectively perfect day, perfect life, or perfect goal.
Many of us want things “just right” or “our way” because we have a vision that will make us happy.
But beneath the perfectionistic behavior lies a compulsive, dark drive that feels uncontrollable.
This “dark force” becomes apparent when we don’t get our way.
We spiral into moods that are painful to all involved.
The exquisite paradox of perfectionism is that we will literally destroy our lives and relationships to cultivate “our vision of a perfect life.”
And yes, your house may look like a high-end boutique for a minute or two before the inherent messiness of life kicks you in the teeth, but no one can enjoy being in your home with you, nor does anyone dare to sit on your 9,000-dollar Herman Miller Eames chair.
Perhaps worst of all, few return once they’ve left.
The problem with perfectionism is that the behavior is toxic to the process of learning about life itself.
Life is messy, unfinished, and unpolished. It smells and bleeds. Projects take time and sometimes don’t get finished on time —or ever. People get old and die before they’re ready.
The “perfectionistic vision” never includes the everyday messes or things left undone for another day.
Perfectionism is the relentless drive to make things look perfect —now, all the time.
In a perfectionist’s home, there’s no homework left on the counter waiting to be finished later.
There are no children’s fingerprints on the lower half of the sliding glass door, where someone didn’t see them and didn’t clean the door properly.
There are no hairs from furry family members on the sofa, no muddy hiking boots on the back porch, and no crumbs from the “wrong kinds of snacks” on the counter, not because all these things aren’t perfectly okay–but because a person with perfectionistic tendencies can’t handle a normal “everyday” happening in life.
Perfectionistic tendencies tend to suffocate life and the people in it.
The tension and need for control found in perfectionistic behavior are symptoms of unconscious and unarticulated fear
Truthfully, until I began spiritual practice, it had never occurred to me that I was a perfectionist because I was an epic failure at it.
I could never complete a “perfect offering.”
I had a lot of unfinished “perfect projects” and deep frustration, which fed the cycle for a while.
I suffered so much with this and was so bad at it that I eventually had a breakthrough: what I was doing wasn’t working, and that something else was going on with me underneath the behavior.
I became aware I was anxious.
I could feel the real fear and dread underneath the habits of perfectionism.
I entered the “I’m an anxious failure making everyone miserable what is wrong with me?” phase.
Yes, that was a super fun phase.
Yet it helped me be more real. It made me seek help and learn a practice of caring for myself in new ways. I was moving closer to effortless, although I did not know it at the time.
Over time, with help and practice, I began to see the true nature of my perfectionistic behavior–and it was not what I thought.
My perfectionistic tendencies were not about control or needing things “to be perfect” or “beautiful.”
This behavior was mostly about fear of not doing things a certain way—the way I was taught, or in many cases, not taught, long ago.
The behavior was about keeping myself safe long ago, and I continued it as an adult.
The need to plan and have things a certain way is an unconscious behavior rooted in fear of reliving something from long ago or of avoiding trouble based on past experiences.
Here’s what I mean.
Situations in everyday life where perfectionism rears its head stem from unconscious fear rooted in a misunderstanding of a previous experience.
Simply, we’re afraid something terrible will happen if we don’t do things a certain way.
Our body remembers this fear benevolently to keep us safe, but we don’t remember why or when we learned to be afraid.
Because we can’t access the memory, we sneakily give our unconscious fear a job and a highly aspirational plan to disguise it. This plan may also be something we’re afraid of not doing because something “bad” will happen.
Our “beautiful plans” make it hard for people to argue with us. Even a good “get-rich-quick scheme” will suffice to get most people on board.
We stay in the driver’s seat of life, controlling and manipulating others, getting things “our way” and avoiding the real work of looking into our fears that live below the planning mind.
We tend to behave poorly because of the extreme fear and tension beneath the surface of our conscious mind, and then justify our poor behavior by thinking, “We’re the ones who see things so clearly.”
We also easily tell ourselves, “Others don’t get it.” Mainly, we cannot see our poor behavior because our minds are distracted by the task of getting things done.
Perfectionistic tendencies rooted in unconscious childhood fears are often cloaked by elitism, high intellect, high achievement, and sometimes even true genius.
Avoiding the past in our everyday actions–some examples from my life
One of my dad’s infamous phrases when we started “getting rowdy” or made a B instead of an A was “Get back with the program.”
Yet there was rarely a spoken program by him–in fact, no program I can actually remember ever discussing.
To be fair, how do you discuss the need for a good education with a 4-year-old?
My parents were raised in an era and culture where discussions with children were limited, and they continued to parent as they were parented.
My parents would “announce things” to us once or twice, and then rule with threats and the occasional physical violence for non-compliance.
It was terrifying to live that way as a child learning about the world.
Yet this has been normalized in most cultures to keep children safe from harm they can’t understand.
For many parents, spanking a child who keeps running into the street keeps them safe to live another day—out of the street.
Fear and intimidation work, and they can never produce beautiful lives of understanding and compassionate behavior—another exquisite paradox.
For many of us, our boundaries, limitations, and expectations were loosely defined in our parents’ minds and scarcely spoken—they were transmitted to us through tension, threats, and physical violence.
We only knew we were doing what they wanted when they weren’t speaking to us harshly.
We learned to do things simply so we didn’t have to endure a threat or physical abuse.
We learned to do things from an underlying fear of not doing them.
We learned to “read our parents” and adjusted our behavior to their moods and desires for us and repressed how we really felt from fear of non-compliance.
“Our program” was inferred through their moods, words, and admonishments–and by their example within our everyday experiences of life.
To me, “Get back in the program” meant: don’t disappoint me again, don’t make me remind you again, and, mainly, pay attention to how I want things all the time.
And we learned to remember what would happen to us, even if we were at school, at a friend’s house, or out in the world.
The conditioning stuck and continues today.
We walked through childhood in fight, flight, freeze, and fawn modes. Our amygdalas were in constant overload, our bodies frozen in fear of non-compliance.
Now it’s hard for our bodies not to do exactly what we need to do to keep ourselves safe because of the repressed conditioning.
Ironically, most people expect us to be and act as powerful adults, and we are still trapped in “childhood safety mode.”
My childhood is an example of how unconscious fear is perpetuated in families that disallow a more conscious, nuanced, emotionally intelligent, and compassionate response to the joys and suffering of everyday life experiences.
Children raised like me grow to be adults who self-isolate and cope with extreme loneliness and frustration, moving from one task to another with a “normalized terror” below the surface.
Over many years of living this way, our behavior of “staying safe” with our parents convinces us that the world is harsh and terrible, too.
We grow tense, rigid, and dogmatic, never seeing the obvious connection to our childhood and eventually becoming the very people who do to others what was done to us if we don’t do our work to compassionately understand and heal our past.
For emotionally repressed people, the rare emotional highs are way too high, full of self-importance and hubris because you think you’ve accomplished something amazing on your own despite the odds and all the people who got in your way in this “really terrible world.”
For emotionally repressed people, the rare emotional lows are existential, dark, and twisty. You handle them alone, telling yourself something is deeply wrong with you as you “get right back with the program” craving even more safety, acceptance, and love from anyone who will give it to you for a minute in this “really terrible world.”
Mainly, we live as victims of life with extreme physical tension (hypertension) as we unconsciously cope with our past to stay safe as adults.
The unconscious patterns continue
Perfectionistic behavior is a learned response to an unconscious fear that began long ago–maybe generations ago.
Our parents suffered greatly and passed much of their unconscious fear to us, as was passed to them—to “keep them safe.”
Perfectionistic behavior and the “control features” we employ in our personalities are reactions to our immediate circumstances, shaped by patterns we learned long ago, which is why we now need things “just so.”
We’re fussy, edgy, particular, and tense because we learned well.
We don’t know exactly what we’re afraid of, but we can unconsciously remember that certain actions and ways of doing things kept us safe.
We can also remember praise for certain actions and become rigid in our practice of these behaviors.
Mainly, we just do what we learned to do, cultivate relationships where we get our way, and avoid people who don’t agree with our choices.
Because of our parents, teachers, and community long ago, we understood our reality through their responses to our experiences.
The underlying fear of crossing some unconscious line defines our days now–every moment.
To actually grow up and have meaningful lives, we will have to learn how to navigate the unconscious yet innate fear of doing things differently as we awaken past fears and transcend them to understand the misunderstandings of our yesterdays taught to us by our parents and community.
We have to stop doing things that no longer serve us, to deal with the fear of stopping the very thing that connects us to our parents and community.
We have to go beyond our parent-inferred, child-deduced narratives and fears and generate some compassion for all involved.
When we begin to look, things become very clear and beautiful again.
We become very clear and calm again.
Working with fear is the path itself
Spiritual practice is learning to look more deeply into the moments of today and the feelings (or lack thereof) they evoke, transforming our perspective on our past and future alike.
Our past and future are tangled in habitual reactions to today’s happenings and in how we perceive them.
We usually begin this work when we feel the tension and fear of moving forward.
We begin to feel overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings, and our perfectionistic tendencies no longer work.
We begin to see that we’re not capable of bringing “the perfect plan” to fruition, and we begin to flounder and panic a bit.
We know this condition as anxiety.
Like all drugs that kill pain at first, they quit working after a while—we feel the pain break through the drug.
And this is true for coping behaviors as well.
Beautiful lives come from beautiful actions—not fear-based actions.
Beautiful actions are those steeped in universal and effortless action.
Over time, we become aware that our perfectionistic behavior has led to great suffering for ourselves and others, as our actions are driven by scarcity, survival, and a dualistic sense of isolation.
Our actions feel far from being beautiful win-wins for everyone.
This moment where our coping skills fail and is the opportunity to see the delusion in your “perfect plans” for today.
As Cohen alluded to, this moment is the “crack” in your “perfect offering,’ for which the light gets in:)
However awful this moment feels, it is the only time you can access the wisdom you’ve been blocking with your behavior—we are not designed to live in extreme tension, fear, and isolation.
We are designed to transcend suffering when we’re ready to live differently:)
This is the moment to see the effortless perfection you remember and to realize that the life you seek is always available to you.
This is the moment to free yourself from profound fear, tension, illness, and the symptoms of repressed fear.
We trust the wisdom and clarity found within this moment of mind-body freedom, and we begin to trust ourselves and life again.
Many call this Nirvana. Some just call it home.
Staying anxious and “wobbly”
For a while, we will stay anxious and “wobbly,” wanting desperately to return to something safe as we learn to navigate the old impulsive behavior that feels like safety and acceptance to the small child within us.
For the spiritual practitioner, this is the frontier, and we work not to return to the seductive safety and security of yesterday’s habits, but to use the anxiety to help us transcend the fear of life.
We can learn to see our parents’ fears and behavior with the eyes of compassion.
We can see that their fears of us not getting an education meant we might be homeless or married to someone we didn’t love because we couldn’t care for ourselves.
We can see their parents’ fears for them and how they tried to do better than what was done to them.
We can see that, for some of us, our fear actually led to a good education despite the cruelty and suffering at times.
But it did not set us free to live a joyful life, nor did it teach us kindness toward people who are afraid. And without this, there is no hope for the planet, or for doing what we know we must do to save it from the misguided, fearful actions of our ancestors.
Living a life of fear-based action is not living at all.
We must transform our version of reality with practice, and the anxiety that feels thrust upon you today is the opportunity.
Anxiety is much like grief, but instead of the death of someone dear and all the interactions of the relationship that define who you are, it is a death of the delusion that you need to be afraid you’re not worthy of a beautiful life, and things aren’t already profoundly beautiful.
Like grief, transcending anxiety involves a letting go that is physical, spiritual, and deep one that we never feel like we’re ready for and is happening anyway.
We need support from people who understand that getting back to your plans of yesterday isn’t that important. We also need a dedicated practice to not abandon ourselves in these moments as we learn to navigate strong emotions.
Conditions for transformation
Anxiety is the sign that the conditions of transformation are at hand.
Many people in this lifetime will not feel anxiety–they don’t have the level of consciousness to be aware that they feel afraid.
Anxiety is the opportunity—a perfect crossroads of past and future to see something clearly and let it go.
Lean in; this is a special condition.
We have the opportunity to transform our relationship with reality itself.
We transcend our past to arrive in the beautiful life we thought we needed to plan for and manage neurotically.
Transcendence is the death of fear and the discovery of our true nature.
As we begin to look into these moments with the compassion and tenderness we usually save for rescue animals and small children, we can free ourselves from fear, delusion, and the need to control our environment.
We come home to ourselves, our effortless nature, free to live and enjoy this day.
We learn there is nowhere better to be and nothing to really do except free ourselves from fear itself.
We arrive in a life that is a wonder to behold— and we’ve simply been holding on too tightly—blind to its profound beauty.
If you are struggling, I understand—I call it Tuesday at my house:)
Seriously, please don’t hesitate to reach out for support at @danadrake497@gmail.com.
My very best to you,
Dana