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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I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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