I’m a perfectionist but because of AA I’ve been getting better! It’s weird, I went to AA because I thought that being a person fully in recovery would make me more perfect or at least help me with some of the things I think are “holding me back” from being a really great girl. The funny thing is that I’m learning that I’m already a really great girl and I just need help learning how to cope with the fact that I’m not perfect, and that if I stay hung up on being perfect or getting as close to perfection as I can, I’ll end up in a major rut.

One of the small ways I’ve practiced this anti-perfectionism is through cleaning. I’ll go through and do a quick clean of everything, not getting in and doing it perfectly like I used to. I used to be so darn perfectionistic that even something like organizing my sock drawer was a pain in the ass, because I had a ‘special’ way of doing it and if I didn’t have the time to do it that way, I wouldn’t do it – because what was the point, why bother if it wasn’t perfect. WELL, my feet do not notice a difference and today I just paired up socks with their mates and left it at that, and it felt good to get that one thing done. It’s amazing how much cleaner my room, bathroom, and the rest of the house is when I just DO things and don’t worry about doing them perfectly.

I’m perfectionistic about my appearance, as well. I chronically pick my skin, it’s genetic (my mother, grandmother, and great-grandfather all had forms of it) and the reason that I pick is because I hate if I have any lumps or bumps and so I zero in on them and make them much worse than they are. I don’t really break out that often, but when I do, boy-howdy, I go to work on my face and make a real mess of things. I don’t know how to fix this, I suppose that’s my perfectionism rearing up again – I want to fix everything that’s wrong with me, immediately. But by learning good self-care habits, I’m doing my part today, and that’s what matters. When I don’t practice good self-care, my eating disorder, CSP, anxiety, anger, etc. all come to a head and I just turn into a walking, talking mess.

So this is my goal. I normally wouldn’t pick this as a goal because it doesn’t have a definable end-point, but I’ve added a lot of goals like this lately (e.g. “do first things first,” “do the next right thing,”) and I might as well add this one, too. I’m such a little perfectionist, and part of me is not wanting to let that go because I see it as a good thing, sometimes – but I must remember that this is a MALADAPTIVE problem and that it hasn’t helped me so far in what I want to do. In fact, it tends to depress me and make me less likely to do the things I want to do, and if I do them, I tend to not enjoy them.

Here’s to being a law student that isn’t a perfectionist, but that succeeds nonetheless!