Follow the trail

Have you ever wondered why you do and say certain things. The seed could have started with your grandmother or mother.

My second therapy session touched on my need to be perfect. I have a Facebook friend who believes it is caused by an attachment to outcome, which is ego based. He believes it is a need to be validated. That very well could be as I have always felt like an invisible person to some extent. That tendency has actually improved since I began writing.

I can see where this would produce a controlling, critical, judgemental person who needs to be perfect. My next question to myself is, "Where did that come from?"

First it came from my overly critical mother whose mother was also critical of her.

Oddly, my grandmother was not critical of me. The only thing she ever criticized me for was my bad penmanship. I'm sorry to say that never improved over the years. It's probably why I use a computer to write. In her own way she helped teach me to be a perfectionist though. I can remember dusting her Hummel collection as a child. "A place for everything and everything in its place" was a watchword. She may not have always had the cleanest house on the block, but there was never any clutter. To this day my house is the same way and I know I am critical of people who live in a messy house.There are other traits I am critical of but I won't go into them here. I can certainly see where they originated from though.

Unfortunately my mother was critical of everything I did and I never felt I was able to please her no matter how hard I tried. I know this also led to my need to be a perfectionist. It also led to self esteem issues that caused me to feel invisible most of my life. There is a commercial out there for some kind of skin problem that has different people simply saying "see me". I can relate because I have tried all my life to find someone who really sees me.

I  followed the trail set up for me by at least two generations of women. As a result, I have been critical of my children, especially my youngest, who happens to be a daughter. See where I am going with this? Yup we just keep following the same trail until we finally see where we are going. At that point we can change our direction.

I would like to close with a suggestion from my Facebook friend, "When you eliminate your attachment to outcome the need to be a perfectionist will take care of itself". I'm going to try that. Thanks Kevin!