I remember the first time my therapist called me a perfectionist.  I actually laughed.  It was such an absurd concept that someone with frizzy hair, a messy house, and a lack of socially lauded pastimes could be misconstrued as a perfectionist.  I said “well if I’m a perfectionist I’m a pretty crappy one!” She had clearly made a mistake.  This apparently is exactly what a perfectionist would say.

I’ve since learned that perfectionism does not look like any one thing.  Perfectionists are as varied as the rest of humanity.  While our outstanding traits may differ, our motivating forces are the same.  All who suffer with perfectionism are fending off

 disconnection and rejection.

Maloney et al, 2014 found that while various schema exist to explain the etiology of perfectionism, disconnection and rejection were heavily implicated.

I can think of many events from my past that probably led to me becoming a perfectionist, but most of them tied together when I had to take a semester off of college in 2007 after a psychological break down.  I worked really really hard the next several months and years to be stable and high functioning and to make up for my perceived loss of time.  While my friends were pursuing study abroad and internships and volunteer opportunities, I was starting back a square one, practicing basic self-care and emotional regulation strategies.  It was like taking first steps while everyone around me was doing cartwheels.

Once I was functional again, I found that I wanted to catch up to my peers.   Once I started nursing school, I found that if I worked really hard that I could stand out in clinicals, make good grades, and get validating feedback.  I found that  I really responded to the absolute cause and effect model of work really hard :: do really well.  I took it and ran with it.

That model has served me well, I have been striving for nursing excellence my entire career.  I interviewed four times in one year to get to the unit I work on now.  I was validated by my unit, given amazing opportunities to be a charge nurse, a preceptor, advance on the clinical ladder, get numerous awards and honors.  I think I’m generally regarded as a good nurse.  I thrived…I thought.

In the background, I had a life outside of nursing, full of friendships and family dynamics, dieting, competitive hobbying, and dating.  Most of all was nursing.  Coupled with nursing though, was my Judaism, quietly carving a path alongside my life.

Judaism seems to really support my worldview of work harder :: do really well.   I found this incredible sermon by a Rabbi Daniel Greyber which speaks deeply to this concept.

He explains,

We are Yisrael – a name that means – “God wrestlers.” The contentious debates of the Talmud created a culture that valued sharp, quick-witted thinking. Some would say that, when the walls came down and Jews were allowed to participate in the wonders of the university and the Western World, it is the Talmudic culture that enabled Jews to achieve our incredible success in the sciences and the arts and medicine.

I am not concerned that we – in this room – are raising a generation of kids who will be scared to doubt and challenge God and the tradition. I am concerned that we are God wrestlers ONLY.What is the content of our faith? By which I mean, what are those things that we are willing, in the end, to accept? When people get hurt, they find it harder and harder to make themselves vulnerable again. They close up inside. Jews have known what it means to suffer, in Egypt, in the Crusades, in Spain, and only two generations ago in the Shoah. But have we been hurt so many times that we cannot trust again?

In other words, Judaism feels built on the idea that we are colleagues with God, collaborating with and steadying one another.  It seems like at some point, at least for me, this got conflated with feeling the equal weight of responsibility and power of God.  If I work hard enough, I will be good and powerful enough to be everything to everyone and nobody will ever have a reason to criticize me.

This is obviously a tragic mistake.  And it’s one that’s catching up to me now.  The wack ass scale that has me and God on even footing is not me being generous to myself, it’s me being brutal to myself.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do a lot of quoting of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Brene Brown.

Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection was a paradigm-shifting book in my life circa 2014.  I am one of millions of people who find Dr. Brown’s research hauntingly accurate to my own experience.  On perfectionism she states

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it.

and

Perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life-paralysis.

and

Perfectionism never happens in a vacuum. It touches everyone around us. We pass it down to our children, we infect our workplace with impossible expectations, and it’s suffocating for our friends and families. Thankfully, compassion also spreads quickly. When we’re kind to ourselves, we create a reservoir of compassion that we can extend to others.

So, in Judaism, a culture that self identifies as a “God wrestlers,” that embraces and encourages striving, how do I find peace? How do I surrender? Should I surrender?

The language of surrendering is mostly absent from my life.  It’s not a word used often in Judaism.  It’s also not a word used often in my family.  We don’t surrender nothing… We’re a fighting people.

So when the people in my life started finding sobriety through AA (which in case you don’t know, addiction and perfectionism are BFFs), I started hearing about Step 3 which states that you make

“a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

I am so not about that life.  I really like my will. My will has gotten me pretty far in my life.  My will is informed by college and family and television and books. The idea behind step three, according to one article is that

the real recovery begins when the decision is made to “let go” and allow a greater power to take over.

It may be a difficult thing to do, especially in a culture where people are taught that they are the masters of their own destiny, but many find comfort and relief when they sincerely take to step three.

So, the idea is that our big ideas are what landed you in AA to begin with.

But I don’t suffer from alcoholism (though I have plenty of other isms to wrangle with), so what does this have to do with me?

The issue is that the data supports the thesis that relying solely on self-determination makes you miserable and sick and ineffective.  Believing and trusting only in yourself is sort of crazy because you’re not coming up with your ideas.  You’re relying on yourself alone to fulfill extrinsic demands.  Why do we believe we are meant to do it alone?

I am 32 years old.  I have a good job (my dream job, actually), a great dog, amazing friends and family.  I have enough money.  I have a perfect little house.  I have time (mostly), to do the things I want to do, and yet I struggle.

I am struggling with feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and loss of purpose. 

Not in an unmanageable way, but in a constantly-sizzling-beneath-my-feet kind of way.  In a short-fuse-at-work kind of way.  In an isolate-and-avoid-friends kind of way. In a playing-wack-a-mole-with-my-insecurities kind of way.

Talking with my therapist (an agnostic I believe) yesterday, she said the one thing I wasn’t expecting her to say, that she herself has been practicing surrendering and maybe I should do the same.  We were comparing notes on having highly self-structured jobs (she’s a self-employed therapist, I am a nurse educator in a 24/7 unit with no set hours).  She was talking about a moment she had when she absolutely needed to do paperwork, but really wanted to have a Saturday without work.  She decided to give it up to the universe.  Sure enough, she had a cancellation and was able to finish her paperwork even though she had taken the day off.

When things feel overwhelming, my instinct it to impose more structure, more blame, more emotion.  What if, for once, I surrendered?  What if I trusted the wise words of Paul Coelho and believe that

when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

But is this Christian? Is this me tap-dancing outside of my faith? I return again to Rabbi Greyber’s sermon.

Rabbinic tradition says that before the world was created, God was יחיד בעולמו – alone in God’s world; there was nothing but God. In order to create the world, God had to do צימצום – God had to contract God’s self so that there could be a place that was not God; in order to give human beings free will, God needed to surrender some of God’s power so human beings could make choices that were truly free. In order for us to truly exist – which comes from the latin ex stare, to stand outside, – God and God’s world could no longer be one and the same. Surrender is the beginning of God’s relationship with the world, the very basis of beginning.

I could (and probably will) spend an entire other post on the concept of צימצום tzimtzum.  But for now, I am content with the idea that if God takes the opportunity to contract God’s self, then maybe I should humble myself enough to do the same thing.

I’m not saying I’m going to stop striving for excellence or lose my integrity, but maybe it’s OK to let go of the reigns sometimes.

To end this post, I’ll submit a few quotes from various authors speaking to surrendering. I’d love to hear your experience with surrendering and if/how it changed your life.

“I am learning to live between effort and surrender. I do my best and hope for what I want but I do not resist the direction of the wind.” Anonymous

“Surrender means the surrender of your ego.” Radhanath Swami

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.” Ram Dass

“Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.” Jack Kornfield

Brown, C. B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. Center City, Minn.: Hazelden.

Maloney, G. K., Egan, S. J., Kane, R. T., & Rees, C. S. (2014). An etiological model of perfectionism. PloS one, 9(5), e94757. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0094757