[passionatemom]

Originally Posted by Sierdsmama

When I find myself thinking in this all or nothing way I definitely get more on edge, and I find it helpful to say out loud something less condemning and more helpful. How would I speak to a friend who was saying those things about herself? Then I say those kind words to myself.

"I feel like a horrible wife/mother/person because of XYZ, but XYZ doesn't define me as a wife/mother/person. I'm God's loved child who makes mistakes." Or something like that. It sounds so corny but it really does help. That is, when I remember to do it!

I think this kind of thing virtually every day! Thank you for the simple script.

It doesn't help that I live in a basement apartment at my MIL's house, and she keeps things spotless and fancy. I think much of what she does is fussy and unnecessary, but I still often measure myself by what I think she thinks. My mom kept a rather cluttered house, but I always knew that "normal" people didn't live that way. Hello, my mom is a real person, who valued relationships over a clean house! I want to be that person. (Not that MIL doesn't value relationships, she just goes about it a different way . . . )

And my husband is very tolerant and doesn't mention my housekeeping habits often. But I know that having grown up in a perfectionist cleaner's house he would prefer things to be tidy. I don't need him to complain about it, I can use my imagination to voice his expectations. Isn't that silly? I'm making it up.

I'm a perfectionist as well, but a different kind. I'm reading some of Dr. Kevin Lehman's stuff right now about parenting. He says that for a perfectionist child to be criticized often (I was) can lead to their just giving up trying.

So I have these high expectations, that I'm imagining others have of me, then I have the fact that I don't feel capable of living up to them, and sometimes I get so discouraged and overwhelmed that I can't do anything. Why bother, when it won't be good enough?

I also have recently realized I have fear of success, even at little things. If I have things planned so that I will be able to do an adequate job and succeed at it, my perfectionist voice comes in and says, "ooh, why don't you add this, or change that, to make it better!" and then it becomes more than I can reasonably achieve, and the task I should have succeeded at becomes a perceived failure. I did this the other night over cooking boxed mac'n'cheese and hot dogs for dinner! Had to change something in the middle of cooking, then it wasn't done on time, and poof, I felt terrible.

Oh, and re-reading this, I thought, this is just the kind of thing we're trying to avoid in our kids when we refrain from praising them saying things like "good girl, you did XYZ" because they will think they are only a good girl when they do XYZ, and therefore, a bad girl when they don't.

Wow, as usual, I had a lot to say .

PS. I love this thread!!!