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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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I’m trying to silence inner critic who says I ought to be perfect

By David McElroy · August 18, 2019

For years, I wasn’t even conscious of the voice, but it was always there.

“You should have seen that!”

Every time I made an error — of any kind — the voice told me what I “should have” seen or done or not done. The voice knew everything I should have done. Its standard was perfection.

If I missed a question on a test in high school, the voice was outraged. If it was a complicated algebra problem and I overlooked a tiny key detail in the setup — causing me to get the answer wrong — the voice was angry. It wasn’t a chance to learn where pitfalls were. It was a reason to criticize myself, even if I outscored everyone else on the test, because I hadn’t been perfect.

When I played a game — whether it was racquetball or a word game — every mistake was a reason for outrage.

“Why didn’t you see that? What’s wrong with you?!”

When I used to play racquetball, I ruined several rackets in frustration with myself. I was never angry with an opponent. Always with myself. And without realizing it, I slowly taught myself that my very human mistakes meant I was irredeemably broken.

The voice always tells me that others are aware of my mistakes and my failures. They’re laughing at me and losing respect for me because I haven’t been perfect. The voice is sure of that.

I feel like a performer and I’m terribly sensitive to what I feel from the audience. The inner voice is always there to tell me what they must be thinking and feeling about me. But I’m not really a stage performer. It’s as though life is one long performance and I’m always on stage, silently begging the audience for applause and constantly improving my performance to gain their approval.

I’ve talked with you before about my slow path to understanding that I have been a perfectionist. What I haven’t realized is that there are layers of “programming” built into me that relate to this. Not only am I constantly striving to be perfect and to please those whose love I desperately need, I also have this inner part of me which makes that almost impossible.

Nobody expects me to be perfect. It’s hard for me to fully grasp that emotionally, but I can understand it as an abstract concept. When the voice is there to criticize me and belittle me even when I’m being all that I can consciously be, this sets me up to be evaluated by the standards of things which I can’t consciously control.

I’m trying to stop holding myself responsible for what I see after I’ve done or said something. I still try to learn from my mistakes — and ask what I might be able to change in the future — but I’m trying not to tell myself that I’m responsible for seeing and doing everything perfectly in the moment when I consciously make a decision.

I’m also trying to stop holding my present self responsible for what my past self “should have” done or seen or understood. I have a long history of constantly re-evaluating everything I’ve done and spending time in agony over what I realize — in retrospect — might have given me a better outcome.

I’m trying to learn that all I can do is be accountable for what I consciously see and understand. If a past decision was a mistake, I can’t do anything about that now. All I’m responsible for is cleaning the slate and making the best decision I can make at this point.

I’ve never really had trouble treating other people this way. If a person is willing to deal with his or her mistake, I can get past almost anything.

“Hey, I shouldn’t have handled this the way I did,” someone might say. “Here’s why I did it. I understand now that it was wrong, so I apologize. Can we still fix things between us?”

In almost every case, I can accept that and start over. I can forgive and move on, because I know the people I love are very imperfect.

But I’ve never granted myself the same grace. That’s what I’m working on now. It’s not that I want to accept mistakes. It’s not that I want to give myself an excuse when I’m wrong. I simply want to allow myself to be human — and I want to be able to allow myself a fresh start when I need one.

Earlier today, I was talking with a young woman who has tried to kill herself a couple of times already. I asked her if she has any idea why.

“I hate myself,” she said. “I know I don’t act like it, but I really do. I treat everybody else with love and kindness, but I treat myself like dirt.”

I’ve never tried to kill myself. And I don’t hate myself. But I do have a long history of treating other people better than I treat myself. I’m more willing to forgive them. I’m more willing to show empathy. I’m more willing to understand mistakes.

In the Christian book of Mark, Jesus told us the most important command is to love God before anything else. The second most important command, he said, is to love others as we love ourselves. I do understand his point — and it’s one which we all need to learn — but after we start learning to love others, some of us need to love ourselves just as we love others.

Every single day, I need to accept my faults and forgive myself for my failures. And then I need to move forward in confidence — not in shame — to live the bountiful life I was put here to live.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: critic, fear, grace, inner critic, psychology

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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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.

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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?”

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