So often I feel like a total failure. A failure of a sister, a failure of a daughter, a failure of a friend and girlfriend. If I can't do it perfectly then I fail. I don't know when this sense of failure started. I know I can't have been born with it, so where did it come from? As a child I don't remember this feeling or the fear that I was not good enough.
I don't know when it started and I don't know why. I wish that I did so I could work on getting over this but nothing worthwhile in life comes easy so I will have to try to find another way to deal with these feelings. It makes sense the the pitfalls of perfectionism play a role in my feelings of failure. Closely tied to the feeling of failing is another well known emotion for me, guilt.
Failure, perfectionism and guilt are so interwoven that I do not always know where one starts and the other begins. I know that guilt can be good but too much is bad. Everything in moderation the saying goes. Yet I have to ask is there ever a moderate amount of perfectionism? -- But I am getting side tracked. Guilt permeates my life. I feel guilty for everything. Everything is my fault, or so I feel but that I one of the most self-centered beliefs I hold, another part of myself chimes in. Who am I to think that the whole world revolves around in such a way that everything bad that happens is caused by me? And so the cycle of guilt continues. I need to stop this cycle but I just don't know where to begin.
I look at my life and my feelings and everything and just feel so overwhelmed. Where do I start fixing myself? Where do I begin? How do I recognize what emotion I am feeling? SO many questions. I just get scared and don't want to deal with it. I run away and turn to ED because I know he will make things easier. With ED I can succeed. My success and failure is measured by the scale. It is tangible, clear cut. There is a solid answer to a solid question: did I lose weight, am I reaching that goal weight, am I working out? I run to ED because he is easy, he is known. There is certainty with ED that I have not found elsewhere. But I need to face facts and see ED for what he is. And I need not to be looking at life in terms of failure and success but look at it as something else. Failure is falling and staying down. I guess it's back to the basics, back to being a child because the little child learning to walk doesn't get discouraged when she falls but has her cry and then pushes herself right back up and tries again.
I don't know when it started and I don't know why. I wish that I did so I could work on getting over this but nothing worthwhile in life comes easy so I will have to try to find another way to deal with these feelings. It makes sense the the pitfalls of perfectionism play a role in my feelings of failure. Closely tied to the feeling of failing is another well known emotion for me, guilt.
Failure, perfectionism and guilt are so interwoven that I do not always know where one starts and the other begins. I know that guilt can be good but too much is bad. Everything in moderation the saying goes. Yet I have to ask is there ever a moderate amount of perfectionism? -- But I am getting side tracked. Guilt permeates my life. I feel guilty for everything. Everything is my fault, or so I feel but that I one of the most self-centered beliefs I hold, another part of myself chimes in. Who am I to think that the whole world revolves around in such a way that everything bad that happens is caused by me? And so the cycle of guilt continues. I need to stop this cycle but I just don't know where to begin.
I look at my life and my feelings and everything and just feel so overwhelmed. Where do I start fixing myself? Where do I begin? How do I recognize what emotion I am feeling? SO many questions. I just get scared and don't want to deal with it. I run away and turn to ED because I know he will make things easier. With ED I can succeed. My success and failure is measured by the scale. It is tangible, clear cut. There is a solid answer to a solid question: did I lose weight, am I reaching that goal weight, am I working out? I run to ED because he is easy, he is known. There is certainty with ED that I have not found elsewhere. But I need to face facts and see ED for what he is. And I need not to be looking at life in terms of failure and success but look at it as something else. Failure is falling and staying down. I guess it's back to the basics, back to being a child because the little child learning to walk doesn't get discouraged when she falls but has her cry and then pushes herself right back up and tries again.
Going back to being a child is the right way to go. Children do not focus on what they eat, they just do it. And sometimes their parents have to step in and make them eat things that they don't want to but it is for their own good because the parents love the child and want her to grow up to be big and strong. Children don't have to strive for perfection in the same way adults try to strive for it. No one can reach perfection. And those who strive for it the most are the ones who are unhappy.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to truly succeed at something strive for being healthy. Strive for eating three well-balanced meals a day. Strive for accepting that we do not live in a perfect world and that nothing can be perfect. Strive for self-acceptance. Strive for seeing yourself as beautiful in every light at every angle. Strive to be the best you can be, because one day when you're old it won't matter what size you were, how much you weighed, or if you succeeded at everything. What will matter is that you are alive and healthy, that you fought for yourself, and that you had (and will have) people who truly love and care for you.
You, my dear, are a success. Because you are a living, breathing woman. Because you are an amazing friend, who never fails to lift my spirits. Because you are a fighter, and you will get through this. Never stop talking back to that voice that makes you feel like you aren't good enough because nothing could be further from the truth.
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