“When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe i’s true, then everyone else will follow. ”
See that picture up there? That's for you! And me!
I was in my favorite local on my 40th birthday and happened to be in this stall when I made my way to the ladies' room. Some kind soul had written this for every women who goes in there. Women who worry that they're (ahem) getting a bit more gray every day. Women who are on bad dates or drank too much or wore the shirt that shows their tummy rolls or who miss someone they lost or made the mistake of getting drinks with the friend who is hot and will never love them back. Ladies' rooms are powerful spaces and I am always, always in awe of how women have each other's backs in stalls. I've seen so many messages like this over the years. Cheers to us for being the wind in each other's sails. Challenge: buy a Sharpie and leave some messages of your own. Or say a bit of lovingkindness for every woman who will go in there after you.
One thing these messages do is they tell our Perfectionists to take a knee. A perfect stranger is telling us we matter, we are enough, we are beautiful so, please, Perfectionist, for the love, STFU.
The thing is, our Perfectionists are parts of us. So when we hate on them, we're just piling more of that rejection and annoyance and frustration on ourselves. This can happen a lot around this time in the New Year, when you have so many goals and expectations and you start to see all the old habits rear up. Let's break the vicious cycle, shall we?
Because you and your Perfectionist are:
Your Perfectionist and Internal Family Systems
Today's missive came out of a great conversation with one of my writers who is doingmy FLOURISH creative season.Part of what I love about coaching is that we stumble into these gems of deep work, where I'm invited to create a whole structure around a single conversation that can serve future writers I work with. I always have lots to say about the Perfectionist, but this writer challenged me to see the Perfectionist and Inner Critic as separate (for many of you, they are not, and that's perfectly fine). Below is the fruit of that discussion.
So the big thing we're looking at is your Perfectionist and how this part of you is - even though it's hard to believe - trying to protect you by showing up and slowing you down or causing you to self-doubt.
What follows is a very simplified riff onInternal Family Systemsdialogue. This is something you would do in therapy or with a trained helping professional, like myself. But I wanted to show you what it looks like when you are able to learn how to befriend a part of you that you might not be very fond of.
The basic foundation of Internal Family Systems is that we are all composed of many parts and each of these parts has given itself a job, though some parts, called Exiles, are hiding away (hello, shadow work).In this modality, we operate from a place of understanding that ALL of our parts are trying to help us.They might have a funny way of showing it, but they legit think they're protecting you. So that part of you that tells you that you look fat - it doesn't hate you. It's trying to protect you from being unloved and rejected and it's convinced that making you feel bad will inspire you to conform to society's beauty standards so you will be successful and accepted.
So, let's just work with the idea, for a moment, that your Perfectionist is trying to help you. It's protecting you. It wants the best for you and is terrified that if you aren't perfect, you will be miserable.
The reason the following work is best done with a therapist or certified helping professional trained in this modality from a reputable institution is because it can bring up a lot of intense emotions and trauma. I don't recommend doing this on your own if you suspect your Perfectionist is connected to something that could seriously dysregulate you. If 1:1 work is not available to you, I recommend first familiarizing yourself with Internal Family Systems -this book is a great start.Glennon even talked about iton a recent podcast. Parts work (IFS) can bring up a lot of unexpected things, so it's important not to fly solo when you go deep with this stuff. Phone a friend if you have to.
Our goal here is to get in conversation with our Perfectionist, to allow them to be heard, and to get under the hood of why they do what they do.
Example Dialogue with Your Perfectionist
You:What are you trying to protect me from?
Perfectionist:Failing. If you fail, then you'll never publish again and all our dreams will die. That's why I have to keep telling you you're not good enough. If you think you're good enough, you'll share your work with the world too soon and it will be rejected and, remember, all our dreams will die.
(( Notice the language: "our." Your Perfectionist is a part of you, not separate. ))
You: First, thank you so much for trying to protect me. I don't want to look like a dumbass to the rest of the world. We are on the same page about that. (( Notice affirming the part for what it's trying to do for you. )) The thing is, it's rough for me when you put me down. It makes it harder to write. And I know we both want me to be a successful writer. (( Let them know how you feel. )) What would you rather be doing than reminding me I'm a terrible writer who will never succeed?
(( Note that in a 1:1 dialogue guided by a helping pro, this would take much more time. You'd have an internal room to explore this with your Perfectionist, visualize them, really have a conversation. You'd find out where the roots of all this came from. This is a very amended version).
Perfectionist:I guess I'd like to be a cheerleader. That sounds more fun.
You: Would you be willing to cheer me on while I'm writing?
Perfectionist:I don't know if I can. What if it's bad? Like, you're no Margaret Atwood.
You:Well, if you can't cheer, would you be willing to sit quietly while I'm writing? It's hard for me to work and be good at what I do when you're yelling at me. And I can only get better if I can concentrate.
Perfectionist:I'll try.
Your dialogue might be very different, but this is the basic approach. When you befriend your parts, you begin to work together, as a team, rather than sniping at each other like a dysfunctional family unit.
So it's really about partnership.
You could enter into this dialogue when your Perfectionist shows up, or you can also do this on your own, after meditation. I highly recommend listening to this talk / guided meditation by one of my teachers, Ralph de la Rosa, a meditation teacher, therapist, and expert in IFS. (A kid randomly asks him a question - this is a recording of a lecture - but this isn't for kids. There's the explanation, then he walks you through a meditation. He's the go-to parts person that I send people to).
Other Ways of Working with Your Perfectionist
- Pay attention to when your Perfectionist is silent - this is an area where writers feel a natural sense of refuge and confidence. What is happening in the writer's seat or on the page to make them go silent? Can you replicate that more often?
- When we're approaching the work with an honest sense of play, our Perfectionists tend to zip their lips: they're having fun, and they see that you are and there are no stakes here for them to harass you about - you're just playing, right? It's not like you're going to show this to anyone. Trick your Perfectionist if you have to! Do whatever elicits honest play. The key here is to not trick yourself, but to actually orient towards playfulness in the writer's seat as often as possible. There is something really rich here about ways you can bring more playful curiosity and challenge to the writer's seat. Maybe you like to play games with yourself - get to a certain word count before a buzzer goes off, or have something wild happen on the page just to see how characters react. Maybe pomodoros get you going. I once worked with a guy at a theater company who hit an honest-to-god bell every time someone had a great idea or said something hilarious. You do you!
- Create a mission statement for your book that reminds yourself of your reader, who you are writing this for, and what you hope this book will achieve as medicine for yourself and the world. Having this visibly posted and reading it when your Perfectionist says there is no point to your writing can sometimes help with the Perfectionist
- Self-compassion. How can you soothe, be tender and compassionate toward this part of yourself? I think the parts work with Ralph de la Rosa (link way above) will be so helpful and is in alignment with other self-compassion work.
- Feel the feelings. Right there in the writer's seat,do some RAIN on-the-spot. It really helps and can take as little as a single moment. (Note: I now have the “A” as Allow and the "N" as Nurture - this is considered new best practices for RAIN, rather than non-identification, but you do you!)
Understanding Your Internal / External Benchmarks
Internal and external benchmarks are the standards you've set for yourself regarding your writing or your WIP. An internal benchmark might be "To prove to my family and friends that I'm a real writer." An external benchmark might be "To get an agent."
Notice that, with these and many other benchmarks, none of these things are in your control. In fact,control is a huge part of working with your Perfectionist.They are the ultimate control freak. Our perfectionists love control and the hard thing is that we don't control anything about our books once they're out of our hands, so external benchmarks need to be handled very carefully. And we also recognize that, at times, we can't even control our books - there are low flow days because you're sick, or the book asserts its own will.
So when you understand your benchmarks and begin to work kindly and compassionately with them, eventually reframing and transforming them into something that is in your control (such as your reactions or your commitment to your writing practice), the Perfectionist can no longer run you around with these benchmarks, standards you can't possibly live up to.
This is huge! So, you now have an assignment to begin listing what your internal and external benchmarks are for your WIP.
Answer the following questions to wrap your head around what these benchmarks might be (or set up a Breakthrough call with me and we'll sort you out):
1. When does your Perfectionist show up?Is it when you skip a writing day, or when you've just written a scene you're proud of? Maybe it's when you read other people's books or go on social (Don't! It's the thief of your joy!).
2. How is your Perfectionist trying to protect you?You might note the time they come up to get a sense of what's triggering their presence. For example, are they trying to keep you from being too exposed, too vulnerable? Are they hoping you won't be publicly humiliated, or that your family won't be furious with you for writing that memoir? Maybe they don't want you to "go there." Mind-mapping this can really help.
3. Tease out your answers to get at the heart of your benchmarks. What's really driving them?Now, you're going to look over those answers and begin teasing out specific things. For example, if you said you wanted to write the very best work you can, then this next question would be, "What's the very best work? What does that mean?" If you said, "to get an agent," then tease that out. With both, you're going deeper than the surface benchmark. Way down there, you might end up with realizing that both your internal and external benchmarks are related to trying to prove to yourself and the world that you're a good writer. Then tease that out, "What's a 'good writer'". Now you're getting closer to something you can actually have some agency with. Maybe a good writer digs deep emotionally, writes several times a week, and is in deep flow. You can do that.
The answers you arrive at are your next steps for working with your Perfectionist.You'll be able to bring support, tools, and modalities that work for you so that you have benchmarks that are nourishing and allow you to tap into your personal power.
Maybe you work with affirmations. Maybe you finally writethat Writer's Artist Statement I keep nagging you about. Maybe it's time to create a real Reader Avatar that you want to heal or comfort or excite with your book.
The next step of this work is to do the work of aligning with your purpose, your vocation, with an orientation of service.It takes the pressure and focus off of you. It's no longer about your benchmarks, but about putting the medicine of your book out into the world. It makes it very hard for the perfectionist or inner critic to derail you, because it's tough to argue against "I want my book to heal women who have been traumatized by their bosses." Or whatever.
One thing that will be helpful is if you can articulate where you feel your Perfectionist in your body. Once you find that area, you can spend some time there in your meditation session. Just being there. Being curious. No storylines or judgment. Just breathing into that space and holding space for this part of you that wants to be seen. It's about dropping the story and just sitting with the physical manifestation of your Perfectionist in your body. Somatic modalities are great with this, including the RAIN meditation I linked to earlier.Lovingkindess mediation is also rally helpful,because the Perfectionist needs to know you are enough, just as you are.
Your Perfectionist Protocol
Write a list of all the ways that you can work skillfully with your protagonist. A few ways to begin:
- What helps you feel playful?
- When is your Perfectionist quiet?
- Meditations for support that work for you?
- Create a writer's grimoire for instant inspiration. Keep it on your desk!
- Try some tarot for writers to go deeper into your Perfectionist and how you might best respond to it. On-demand or 1:1.
- Get into a routine that works for you and shows your Perfectionist you have this HANDLED.
- Take a walk.
- Avoid bashing your Perfectionist. Kill them with kindness.
You are enough. And, by the way, your outfit is ON-POINT. 💜
Yours in doing right by the miracle,
