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David McElroy

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My need to make others perfect reflects my fear I’m not in control

By David McElroy · March 29, 2019

It was about 12 years ago and I was getting to know a woman who I would soon start dating. I don’t tell you this story with pride, but with shame. It really embarrasses me.

This woman had a brilliant mind. She was talented enough to do anything she wanted. Her competence, talent and intelligence were stunning. She could have done something really impressive if she had wanted, but what she really wanted was to be a teacher. She had received her degree and was about to start teaching.

That seemed like a waste to me. I thought she could do something so much more “impressive.” I don’t remember what I said, but I was trying to nudge her into thinking about something bigger. I was probably a bit condescending about it. You see, if she was going to be in my life, I wanted her to do something more impressive. I wanted to make her into what I thought she ought to be. I wasn’t honest enough with myself about it at the time to know this, but I made her career choice all about me.

I’m not a control freak, but I’m happier if you do things “the right way.” My way.

One of my core problems is my compulsion to reform everything around me, including other people. It’s not that I don’t also want to fix myself. I do. I want to fix the entire world around me — and that includes other people. This is really a problem of me needing control.

My world felt completely out of control when I was a child, so I learned to obsess about performing correctly — trying to be perfect to avoid criticism — and that led me to believe everyone needed to perform exactly in accordance with my standards. If I focused obsessively on trying to get myself and other people to meet those standards, it distracted me from realizing how little control I actually had.

It’s been a great defense mechanism. It has allowed me, at times, to believe I had more control in a chaotic world than I actually had. But there are ugly downsides to this defensive behavior.

For one thing, I obsessively beat up on myself for not being good enough — for not being perfect. Most people seem to be in denial about their faults, but I’m hyper-aware of mine. I’m hyper-aware of all the things I need to change about myself, and that frequently makes me far too hard on myself.

Second, I have sometimes allowed myself to become far too judgmental of the people I love most, especially in romantic relationships. Without realizing what I was doing, I’ve often decided what those people ought be at their best — and I have tried to mold them into that.

I’ve been aware of this tendency for a long time and I’ve worked hard to change it. It’s only been recently that I have finally understood, though, that my desperate efforts to perfect other people were mostly about my own fears of imperfection.

Trying to make other people more perfect — while I did the same to myself — made me feel as though I had more control over the world and over reality than I really do. Why do I fret so much about needing control?

It’s because I’m terrified of the chaos of the world around me.

It’s because I’m terrified of the physical dangers that are everywhere.

It’s because I’m terrified of the randomness with which we can be struck by disease or death or failure. It’s because I’ve been successful in starting to climb great mountains — and then I’ve fallen to failure — so I know how easy it is to lose everything.

Most of all, it’s because I’m terrified about my inability to control whether the people I need love me.

Writer and therapist Ian Morgan Cron says the personalities we build are essentially our reactions to the trauma of not getting the things we need, as children and as adults. I heard him say today that we’re all addicted to something — and the thing to which we’re addicted changes depending on our personality defense mechanisms.

When we think of addictions, we typically think of alcohol and other drugs, but those are just some of the behaviors of an addict. The thing we do in our addiction — whether it’s alcohol, cocaine, sugar or sex — is just what we do to numb the pain of the underlying problem. The underlying problem — whether we realize it or not — is a craving for love and understanding and acceptance. We chase other things as substitutes, because we don’t know how to get what we need.

“We all want love, but we settle for something else,” Cron said.

I settle for perfection — or striving for perfection — and that leads me to attempt to be in control. Another personality type might settle for admiration — for her achievements — when she doesn’t know how to get love. Another personality type will settle for something entirely different, in order to numb himself to the pain of not having the love he needs.

You have an addiction, too, whether you know it or not. Your addiction might not manifest itself in ways that are obvious to others. It might even manifest itself in ways that appear positive to others. But you are compensating — as all of us are — for whatever needs in our lives are still unmet. Those needs are often hidden from us.

Once you know that and accept it, some healing can begin — if you’re self-aware enough to stumble through the process and be vulnerable enough to allow someone to help you find your form of “sobriety.”

The only good thing about this for me is that I’m aware of my tendency and I’ve learned to be very open about my flaws. I have to be careful not to be too hard on myself, but making myself vulnerable to you — and hopefully with someone who will love me one day — can stop me from being controlling in the wrong ways. By confessing my sins, so to speak, I can allow others I trust to hold me accountable.

There’s nothing that anyone can confess to me which is going to shock me. I think this is why so many people over the years have found themselves sharing their deepest fears and darkest confessions with me. I am so aware of my own dark places that other people’s dark places don’t scare me so much.

I don’t want to control others. I don’t want to try to force others to be whatever my idea of perfection is. I don’t even want to poke myself constantly about my continuing imperfection.

I’d rather just be honest and vulnerable with you — both of us — and for us to both lovingly hold the other accountable for living an emotionally healthy life. It’s the only way I know to get past the addictions which often threaten to destroy us.

By the way, the woman who I condescendingly wanted to be something more “impressive” than a teacher turned out to be very, very impressive.

She did become a teacher. She’s a great teacher. She loves her students and she changes the lives of the eighth graders whose minds she’s shaping.

I’m proud of her — and I’m glad she had the wisdom to ignore my arrogance about what she ought to be.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: control, growth, personality, psychology

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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