Recently I added “It’s All So Incredibly Loud” by the Glass Animals to my current musical rotation. While it is a song about a couple breaking up, the reason it resonates so deeply in me is the language of grief found in the chorus:
“Ooh, I'm breaking down
Whispers would deafen me now
You don't make a sound
Heartbreak was never so loud”
Heartbreak and grief come in many forms. The most obvious is when we lose someone through death, breaking up, or the demise of a friendship. Sometimes we are cut completely out, sometimes it’s a slow fade. And this is when we acknowledge grieving the loss. The less obvious ways we grieve are when we lose a job or an opportunity we really wanted; we have a big change in our lives like moving to another state; when we feel our hopes die; and we even feel grief for not being known or seen as our true selves.
There are seasons of life that may feel like a master class in grief, and if you don’t know what it is then you may battle the symptoms, but not the root cause! You may be familiar with the 5 stages of grief identified by Kubler-Ross, they are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. These are not sequential stages, but identifiable collections of symptoms that we may experience and express during our grieving. These can derail the progress we are making towards our goals, and if we don’t fully process the grief then our progress often is slowed until it is complete.
The reality of grief is that the only way is through, and the best way through is with people around you who can encourage you and help you to move through the grief. It can be easy to overlook and downplay grief when it is not associated with the loss of a person. One of the ways it shows up is as fear. When we grieve the loss of a dream, opportunity, or hope, it is easy to begin to fear that we won’t achieve anything. Or worse, that we don’t deserve our goals because of what we lose along the way.
Think back to a time that you lost something you greatly valued. What did you feel about that loss? Which stages of grief did you walk through? Who in your life helps you to recognize that you are grieving? And gives you the space to grieve?
I hope as you pondered these questions you realized who in your life supports you in the tough times and encourages your healing. When you find yourself getting stuck I hope you are able to move again with the help of these folks because the only way is through, and the way through is together. If you don’t have anyone, or if you are realizing that there are a lot of things in your life that you haven’t grieved and need help with that, reach out! Helping people break through these challenges is what I do as a coach. You can get a free 30min session by clicking here.
I have found that the only thing that shame does is shut us down. It petrifies us. In modern language petrify typically means fear, and shame does bring fear and anxiety, but it comes from a root word that means rock. Therefore shame makes us like rocks, frozen, unable to move, unable to think, unable to function.
We often correlate the experience of shame with being judged because we don’t know that we have done something shameful until we are told that it is. I am reminded of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Every night they would take a walk with God, then one night God comes looking for them, they weren’t right there ready to walk, and when God finds them hiding, He asks why they hid. Adam tells him “I heard you in the garden and I hid because I am naked.” God replied “who told you that you are naked?” God acknowledges Adam's shame, and that God wasn’t the one shaming him. God knows what shame does to us! That it petrifies us, which means we are stuck in a place of shame, and being stuck is as bad for us as shame!
The way to get past the stuckness of shame is to first identify the shame. Without identifying why you feel ashamed you cannot face the issue and be set free from it. And that is the second step, to face it. If someone has made you feel shame, then there is something in their words that resonates in you. In the example I gave above, Adam and Eve felt shame for being naked. This was a new experience for them and they didn’t understand what was going on. They needed God’s perspective on the situation, and once they had it they understood why they felt ashamed. If you don’t understand why you feel the shame, then you need to look at it from a different perspectives:
What is true about this shame?
What is a lie?
What can I change about these things?
Why do I believe this?
Change and growth require movement. Shame stops us every time. It trips us up and holds us back. Which is why the third step is to get moving again. You’ve done the work around the shame, now it’s time to show yourself that this shame holds no power over you and move forward to being your true self, worthy of all you work for.
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Perfectionists are difficult to be around, as are those who must have 110% control in all situations. As a life coach I find these folks more difficult to work with because they cannot allow themselves to grow. This seems oxymoronic I know, but the truth is to grow one must allow for failure, thus perfection is not an option. To grow one must admit they don’t know it all, they don’t behave perfectly in all situations, and they don’t always have self control, much less total control over the entire situation.
As I am thinking about being a perfectionist I think of the term “failure to thrive.” It is applied to children who do not gain enough weight, learn enough words, or to walk, and/or other milestones by certain ages. As adults we may also fail to thrive by inhibiting our own growth, substituting the excuse of perfectionism, or the need for total control, for personal growth.
“It’s just how I am, take me or leave me.”
“If Frank Sinatra can do it his way why can’t I?”
The reality of being a perfectionist, and/or a control freak, is that one must live in accordance with lies, most often a tossed salad of them ranging from: “I’m just not good enough.” to “If I don’t do this then it won’t be done right so I might as well just do it.” These lies started a long time ago, in a galaxy not too far away, and for those struggling here, it happened yesterday. What ever that moment was that unleashed these lies into your mind, self, and life, that moment, circumstance, relationship, toxic environment, whatever it is, happens again every day. And most often, out of your own creation.
I will call out this truth again: As long as you feed the monster of perfectionism and control, you will only eat lies. Every day exhausted, stressed, anxious, desperate, and wanting a different life, but losing your imagined power/control/image is too scary to admit you are less than you want people to think that you are.
The good news is you can change if you choose to.
Step 1: Acknowledge that you do not know it all. Cannot do it all. Cannot be it all. Socrates said “To know is to know you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.” In short, as long as you know it all, can do it all, and can be it all, then you need nothing, no one, and are blind to your own folly.
Step 2: Choose to be teachable. Admitting you don’t know it all can easily be followed by the willingness to learn!
Step 3: Pause to identify the root cause of your perfectionism and need for control. Until you address the root cause you will always be pulling these lies out of your life.
Step 4: Make the changes you need to in your lifestyle, work, and inner circle to create safe places to fail. If you work a job that appears to not allow room for failure I recommend that you look again, how can you fail safely at what you do? What happens if you acknowledge that you need a break and take it, even if that means pushing the next meeting, appointment, patient, client, or whatever, back 5 minutes so that you can set you up for success and not risk a major failure?
Step 5: Learn to accept grace. Grace is unmerited favor. We live in a society that doesn’t have room for grace, or failure, or anything other than perfectly marching in line with the current narrative. But we all fail. We all try to earn that which we cannot. And we battle this lie that if we don’t have it together we need to fake it until we make it.
What if the only way to make it is to fail?
