Perfectionism and Guilt

Hola Everybody,
A friend took me to go see Fences yesterday. I have to say that, in a film that is chock full of powerful turns, Viola Davis acting was one of the most powerful performances I have ever seen. Full stop. 

The film, which explores manhood, fathers and sons, intergenerational trauma, motherhood, relationships, among other themes, is a tour de force of direction by Denzel Washington. He managed to wring out stunning performances from all involved -- parts big and small. Hollywood will very likely ignore it, but fuck them. we don’t need their validation. Strongly recommended.

Here’s hoping that whatever you do this year, you do it joyously. Felicidades.

The Perfection of Guilt

I quit high school and was hanging out, being a table pimp¹ and shit, until my mother put a damper on all that one cold February morning. She came into my room and requested I wake up. When I didn’t listen, she came back and poured icy cold water all over me.

“Here’s carfare money, get out of my house, and don’t come back until after 5pm, like people who work do,” she informed me.

For the first couple of days, I hung out at friends’ homes until their mothers (who were just as sick of their slacker sons) let me know I couldn’t be hanging out in their homes doing nothing.

It was winter and it was cold, so it was hard to find a place to hang out. I really thought my mother was being an unreasonable bitch at the time.

Well, I came home one early day, and she gave me two options: I would either finish school and enroll in college, in which case, she’d be willing to sell her ass if need be to support me (my mother has a colorful way with language), or I went to work with my stepfather as a construction laborer. Just to show you where my head was at the time, I chose the latter.

My stepfather did not want me working with his crew. He fought, yelled, and stomped, but in the end, he had to take me to work or suffer my mother’s wrath. I knew jack shit about construction -- he even had to tell me to take my hands out of my pockets at the site. LOL!

At first, my stepfather would find menial things for me to do just so I would be out of the way. I hated the work. It was hard and it was fuckin cold outside. My stepfather was a patient man, and one day he took me to the side one day and told me that he was going to teach me some skills that I will always have some use for later in life.

He wasn’t lying.

I learned how to put up sheetrock and then how to set tiles. I was a fast learner, so my stepfather’s confidence in me grew. One day, he left me alone to do a bathroom from scratch. Now, setting tile is not as simple as it looks. But if you follow the basic rules, you can get the knack of it pretty quick. I mean, set your level, draw the line, add the gook, and start tiling, right? Well, the thing here was that at the time I loved smoking weed. Smoking weed and doing anything that takes some measure of precision is not a good mix -- not very smart. But that’s what I did and when I tiled my first bathroom, I got the leveling wrong and the tiles didn’t match when I made my way around the bathroom -- it was off by a lot, like an inch or so.

My stepfather was pissed off, but he was a patient man, and we were able to fix it up a little. The next day, he looked at me and asked if I could do the deed, and I did. This time the level was fine. The tiles looked quite good in fact, except for two tiles that were at wrong angles. Those two tiles were pissing me off and I thought I had done a miserable job. When my stepfather came to inspect my work, he pronounced it a good job. I looked at him and asked if he was high. I showed him the two errant tiles and he turned to me and said something that I never forgot, “I see the two bad tiles, but I see the other 99% percent of the tiles that are well done.”

In this way, my stepfather taught me good craftsmanship, but he taught me a more valuable lesson. The lesson being that perhaps striving for success is better than going for perfection.

Perfection and guilt go hand in hand. When I looked at the wall, all I saw were the two bad tiles. My inner critic immediately went to work and it filtered my perception of reality. My stepfather me taught to build on my successes rather than to focus on my failures. Eventually, I developed into a good tile-setter and I learned other basic carpentry skills that have stayed with me all these years. Skills that helped me get a job wherever I went.

In my work with people, I see this perfection/ guilt trap all the time. People end relationships because all they can see in their partner are the “two bad tiles.” Many become depressed because all we can see in ourselves are “two bad tiles.” The reality is that there is more that is good about us than we care to admit, we just can’t see those qualities. We focus too much on our mistakes. The mistakes are all we see, they’re all we think are there and so we go into an internal war to destroy all that. And sometimes, unfortunately, we destroy a good piece of work.

I hope that whatever you resolve to do this coming year that you focus on what’s good rather than the negative. I hope you drop the internal war and the guilt trips. Those are all traps -- prisons that keep you locked up. I actually hope that you develop a mission rather than a resolution. A mission is about being about something, standing up for something. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall for anything.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Notes:

1. Table pimp was slang used to describe men who still lived with their parents but bragged their prowess. The table in the phrase was perhaps in reference to the dinner table, as in pimpin’ your mother’s dinner table.

Monday Myth Busters (Change Myths)

Hola mi Gente,

I have a couple of interviews lined up for this week so wish me luck. Looking for work has been very challenging, to say the least.

It’s January and by the third week of this month about 75-80% of the people who made resolutions will have either failed or stopped trying. It isn’t because we’re defected. More likely, we need to better understand change… 

* * *

The Beyond Help Series: Change Myths

One way of learning to change is to study people who have been successful at change. Do people who successfully effect change share common qualities or do they follow a set of patterns? The answer to that is yes. Maybe later this month I will post about change, but before I get into that I want to address what I feel are common misconceptions about change.

Myth #1: It just takes willpower

When I looked at a study that tracked over 30,000 successful self-changers, I found it interesting that their universal answer when asked what was the most important factor was “Willpower.” And this seems to verify what we all seem to know intuitively. However, when the studies examined what participants meant by willpower, there were two different definitions. The first is technical: a belief in our abilities to change behavior, and the decision to act on that belief.

The second, more common definition is that willpower represents every single technique, every effort under the sun, one can use to change. There is a logical fallacy in this kind of thinking that postulates it takes only willpower to change. This is a classic case of circular reasoning (Google it).

While there is some truth that self-changers use willpower, it is only one of several factors for change. Willpower is important, but according to the same studies, people who rely solely on willpower set themselves up for failure. If you believe willpower is all it takes, then when you try to change and fail, it would seem reasonable to conclude that you don’t have enough willpower. This will lead to beating on yourself and possibly giving up. But failure to change when relying only on willpower just means that willpower alone is not enough.

Here’s a good example (from a case study) of willpower not being enough. A young lady was very determined to do something about her obesity and began a program of change. However, though her determination was genuine, she was that our bodies can adjust quickly to dieting by lowering its basal metabolism, which in turn leads to burning fewer calories. She became baffled and discouraged when her diet didn’t work and eventually quit in disgust. 

This is a classic case of using only willpower (commitment) without other change factors (in this case, consciousness-raising).

Here are nine other factors (processes) of change that successful self-changers use. I can’t get into it in full now, but I will in the near future for those who are interested:

Consciousness-raising -- Consciousness-raising involves increased awareness about the causes, consequences, and possible solutions for a particular problem behavior. As in the above example of the dieting person, this involves learning new facts, ideas, and tips that support the healthy change.

Social liberation -- Social liberation is about creating social support networks that help sustain change. It requires an increase in social opportunities or alternatives, especially for people who are relatively deprived or oppressed. For example, if you are tyring to stop smoking, perhaps staying away from people who smoke at the beginning can create the environmental support needed, especially in the beginning. 

Emotional arousal -- This about paying attention to your feelings. Become mindful about the negative emotions (fear, anxiety) that go along with the old behavior, and feel inspired by others who have made healthy changes.

Self-reevaluation -- Create a new self-image through a Self-reevaluation that combines both rational and emotional evaluations of one’s self-image with and without a particular unhealthy habit. For example, one’s image as a couch potato versus an active person.

Commitment (this is where willpower comes in) -- Commitment is really about self-liberation. It is both the belief that one can change and the commitment (and the recommitment) to act on that belief. Encouraging people to make New Year’s resolutions, public testimonies, or a contract are ways of enhancing willpower.

Countering -- Countering is a form of substitution or sublimation. Countering requires learning healthy behaviors as substitutes for problem behaviors. Examples of countering include harm reduction techniques such as the use of nicotine replacement as a safe substitute for smoking or walking as a healthier alternative than “comfort foods” as a way to cope with stress.

Environment control -- This is a reevaluation that combines both emotional and cognitive evaluations of how the presence or absence of a personal habit affects one’s social environment. For example, recognizing the effect of your smoking on others. It can also include the awareness that one can serve as a positive or negative role model for others.

Rewards -- Rewards, or Reinforcement management, provides consequences for taking steps in a positive direction. While reinforcement management can include the use of punishment, successful self-changers rely on reward much more than punishment.

Helping relationships -- Helping relationships combine caring, trust, openness, and acceptance, as well as support for healthy behavior change. Rapport building, a therapeutic alliance, supportive calls, and buddy systems can be sources of social support. This is what helps you create a lifestyle change that reinforces your attempts at positive change. 

As I stated before, there’s a lot more to all this, but the main take away is that change is difficult but not impossible. I operate from the assumption that we all have the potential to create powerful positive changes in our lives, we just heed a how in order to realize our inner potential.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Resources

Prochaska and DiClemente’s Stages of Change Model (click here)

DiClemente, C. (2006) Addiction and change: How addictions develop and addicted people recover. Guilford Press, NY. (click here)

Change Myths

¡Hola! Everybody...
I have to host an all-staff meeting, finish putting touches on a grant proposal, flesh out major portions of my unit’s five-year strategic plan, and... Well, you get the idea. Have a great day and remember to breathe.

* * *

-=[ The Beyond Help Series: Myths of Change ]=-

It wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t post at least something about change, so here goes…

One way of learning to change is to study people who have been successful at change. Do people who successfully effect change share common qualities or do they follow a set of patterns? The answer to that is yes. But before I get into that I want to address what I feel are common misconceptions about change.

Myth #1: It just takes willpower

When I looked at a study that tracked over 30,000 successful self-changers, I found it interesting that their universal answer was “Willpower.” And this seems to verify what we all seem to know intuitively. However, when the studies examined what these people meant by willpower, there are two different definitions. The first is technical: a belief in our abilities to change behavior, and the decision to act on that belief.

The second, more common definition is that willpower represents every single technique, every effort under the sun one can use to change. There is a logical fallacy in thinking that if this so, then it follows that it takes willpower to change. This is a classic case of circular reasoning (Google it).

While there is some truth that self-changers use willpower, it is only one of nine factors for change. Willpower is important, but according to the same studies, people who rely solely on willpower set themselves up for failure. If you believe willpower is all it takes, then when you try to change and fail, it would seem reasonable to conclude that you don’t have enough willpower. This will lead to beating on yourself and possibly giving up. But failure to change when relying only on willpower just means that willpower alone is not enough.

Here’s a good example (from a case study) of willpower not being enough. A young lady was very determined to do something about her obesity and began a program of change. However, though her determination was genuine, she was that our bodies can adjust quickly to dieting by lowering its basal metabolism, which in turn leads to burning fewer calories. She became baffled and discouraged when her diet didn’t work and eventually quit in disgust.

This is a classic case of using only willpower (commitment) without other change factors (in this case, consciousness-raising).

There are nine other factors (processes) of change that successful self-changers use. I can’t get into it in full now, but I will in the near future for those who are interested:

Consciousness-raising

Social liberation

Emotional arousal

Self-reevaluation

Commitment (this is where willpower comes in)

Countering

Environment control

Rewards

Helping relationships

Love,

Eddie