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Whether our parents or important others in our lives modelled it, or if we came out of the womb with our personalities already shaped, most of us have perfectionistic tendencies, at least in some areas. While it’s great to do whatever we’re doing well, the stress that develops in us if we always push ourselves towards higher achievement in each and every area of our lives, can reach unbelievable heights. This takes an enormous toll on us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
In Saturday’s Vancouver Sun, Jennifer Newman puts a different spin on an old exercise, one I’ve described before from the Martha Beck POV. Newman suggests that when beginning a project, we make a list of the most important tasks, going downward to the least important, then categorize them according to the standard they require: E for excellent, S for Satisfactory and G for Good Enough. Then we can allocate tasks not in the excellent category others. We’re now not micromanaging, in that exhausting way that burns us out and that others find extremely annoying and erodes their confidence in themselves.
Striving for “good work” rather than “perfect work” in every little aspect of our lives allows us to relax, to let down a little, something that many of us find difficult nowadays. Developed to help mothers involved in the child welfare system, to enhance their parenting skills without demoralizing them, thus reducing their effectiveness, the “Good Enough” concept can be applied to any subject or activity. I wrote a short blurb about it on my facebook caregiver support group, Surviving & Thriving – a Caregiver Group just the other day in fact.
Glendon Wiebe writes thoughtfully about our society’s drive for excellence in December’s Insights into Clinical Counselling, published by the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors, the organization I belong to. Widespred media coverage of everything imaginable has given many of us, especially the most impressionable children, like his own, the idea that if we’re not the best at a sport or some other action activity, we just don’t count.
I believe most of us, us “big kids” too, have absorbed this idea and that it contributes to our perfectionist pushing, the sense of never being quite good enough, or having accomplished quite enough. We compare ourselves and quantify our performances, and more often than not, feel that we come up lacking, whether it’s in our business, our social life, the coolness of the place we live in, our wardrobe, whatever – and the big one of course – our income.
We’re probably never going to go back to a pre-media, pre-social networking society, but we can choose how much exposure we want to give ourselves and our families and how we react to what we see there. Perhaps the best way to appreciate ourselves and our contributions more and to pressure ourselves less, is to remember the old concept of comparing ourselves and our progress to what we did previously, not to others’ accomplishments.
It’s not always easy to live from our heart centre. It takes more time, in some ways it feels like more work. We have to stop and check in with ourselves more often to see if what we’re thinking and saying is congruent with our spiritual beliefs and our ethics – with the way we want to live in the world and how we want to see the world around us.
Our ethics and values, our beliefs about what’s right and what’s wrong reside within us. We all have a philosophy about how we want our world to be like. It may be well-formed or just a few vague ideas.
Many of us see spirituality as ephemeral, separate from our daily life in the physical world. An invisible chasm separates our spiritual concepts and our daily lives and we don’t always connect the dots between our bodies, minds and spirits. We all have ways to reconnect though, to get back to our heart centre – through walks in nature, through our pets, our close relationships, through meditation, prayer.
Whether we call it a spiritual philosophy, or an ethical way of living, many of us now believe that we are all connected, that what each one of us does in our community affects the whole. If we hold strong to this and take our body, our mind and our spirit out into the world each day we can all pull together for the good of the communities we live in.
As women, particularly caregivers, we have many conversations about our roles. We talk about them when we’re out for coffee with each other, on our facebook caregiver group, on this blog, in my coaching room; we discuss how to live expansive lives as women rather than becoming engulfed by our many roles. In fact, we could probably say all our self growth work is about separating ourselves, the individual woman, from the roles we’ve been designed, both by nature and nurture, to play.
I’ve been reading A Joseph Campbell Companion recently, an edited book of essays. Campbell, a follower of Jung, speaks of individuation, or become a released individual, saying that the aim of individuation is to find and learn to live out of one’s own centre. He goes on to say that this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any “masquerade of fixed roles”.
As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, I believe we also grow closer to the essence of who we truly are, that centre that Campbell speaks of. We’re often able to simplify our lives, as the things that feel unimportant fall away and we prioritize what really counts.
From my early years, when I was taught good emotional and psychological self-care, to my coaching trainings with Martha Beck and her focus on taking turtle steps, Buddhist teachings here at home and those of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India and the transformative quality of our time there, I’ve been evolving, slowly, slowly, as the Indians say.
We’re now living in a time when massive changes are taking place in our society, in our world. Everything from the economy to the environment, to our own internal sensibilities is shifting and we’re having to adjust to a new level accordingly. We don’t know yet exactly how things will play out when the dust settles. For some of us this seemingly constant adjustment to change is scary, for others the not-knowing is exciting.
For some strange reason, for many years I told myself a story about having control over my life, despite the many serious events that had taken place. I suppose it was my emotional/psychological protection to believe this. Somewhere along the way I gave up the idea that I had power over the major events in my life, beyond the obvious choices available to me with respect to family, career, geographic location, etcetera.
Our first few years on the West Coast were relatively serene, as we explored our new community and put down our roots here. Then things began to speed up somehow, and it was one change after another – perimenopause was a big one for me, then my partner went away to work in California and our dear dog became terminally ill immediately after he left, I returned to school and completed my counselling certification and internship and we moved to Vancouver for a while to work, then eventually back to our coastal paradise.
Through all this I became used to change as a constant state, rather than occasional life changes. This learning is a big help now as I make continual, small adjustments to the changes that come at me. As the world seems to be speeding up, my sense is that we are being pressed to let go, let go, more and more. Not to hang onto the things or relationships that no longer feel right to us…the jobs, the material stuff, the friendships, even the intimate relationships that no longer serve us.
When I try to analyze what’s taking place in my life and my world, I limits myself, sometimes I even grind to a halt. Taking time to simply breathe and sit or walk quietly is becoming more crucial. Call it what you like…meditation, being in nature, prayer, time alone, it doesn’t really matter…simply taking some time to breathe and to be each day brings us closer to ourselves, to our centre. Some refer to it as “the place where the whole universe dwells within you”. When I do this, that place of quiet calm feels very secure to me, and the noisy judgements stop!
The last act I performed as a caregiver was sitting with my mother during her final days, helping her along on her journey, surrounding her with love and music. Mom passed away in mid April, after a fifteen year period of slow mental and physical deterioration. My duties as a caregiver have ended, now I’m on another journey, to process her death, revisiting her in my dreams and thinking about her at times during my waking hours; in time I’ll fully let go of the responsibility of being a caregiver.
Slowly, over a period of a couple of years, Mom began to ask for assistance, to say she needed help. It was a downward spiral as she struggled to keep some control over her life, over the small, everyday things involved in caring for herself. That was the hardest time for family and paid caregivers; as she struggled to make sense of what was happening her anxiety was high and she was argumentative. She finally agreed that she needed to make a change, and said she would try out a carehome that I would find for her. Gradually Mom loosened control as she adjusted and become comfortable in her first carehome. She enjoyed the attention of the kindly staff, and finally reallized that she would no longer be alone, as she had since age 53 when she was widowed.
Being a caregiver is a labour of love. But it’s a tough job, and sometimes it feels relentless. For women especially, it can be hard not to give and give until there’s nothing left for you. That’s why self-care is the most crucial element for caregivers. Part of that self-care is feeling assured that our parent or other family member is well-cared for, then we can let go a bit. After we put the practical things in place, it’s time to step back.
When we’re having trouble letting go, it may be a signal that it’s time to look inside ourselves, to figure out what’s going on, to do the internal work necessary for us to live rich, full lives. Many of us are in our role of caregiver for a long time, so it’s important to pace ourselves so we won’t burn out, to balance our caregiving with our other passions.
It took a while, but over time I became more and more comfortable with my mother’s care and with the stage she was at in her life, comfortable enough to travel and volunteer abroad several times, one of my particular passions.
The women I work with have dreams and interests that they integrate into their lives when they are also caregivers. Some are investigating returning to school, many do their own artforms…painting, folk art or writing. They move forward in their lives, with the usual bumps and hurdles along the way, with the help of their friends and support network.
We’re interested in hearing your stories as caregivers, how your life is, the unique ways you are able to care for yourself.
To support you on your path as a Caregiver & MidLife Woman we provide:
- Weekly Blog Articles: To receive them fill in the box at the upper right of the Home Page that says: “Subscribe to posts via e-mail”
- Surviving & Thriving – a Caregiver Group on Facebook -Articles, Tips, Interaction with other group members, Tuesday Chat
- Coaching In Person or by Telephone: Mentoring for Caregivers and other MidLife concerns (see above)
- Caregiver Support Groups - In person and future teleseminars
Read my article about the unspoken, hidden emotions that add to our burden as caregivers on my facebook group, Surviving & Thriving as a Caregiver:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/143593152384407/doc/?id=155166401227082
