One of the people I admire most is my husband. He has this wonderful way of not absorbing unnecessary stress. Last week when I was freaking out about something trivial, triggered by my own unmet needs, he said “don’t sweat the small stuff”. For whatever reason in the world, this was the time I finally heard the message. In times past, this would have made me instantly defensive, but this time I just took the words at face value. I’ve decided to take them as my mantra for the week.

As you may know, I like to call myself a ‘recovering perfectionist’. For me, this means I have to be very intentional about my behavior and self-talk. I can very easily fall into a spiral of fear of failure that knocks me down into ‘50 reasons why I’m inadequate’ town. Depending on how well I’ve met my needs and a few other variables, leaving an unrinsed dish in the sink longer than 30 seconds can lead to mental word vomit about what a slacker I am.

If I hold the Grace I am today against the Grace I was when I walked into my therapist’s office 2.5 years ago, the change is astounding. I’ve grown leaps and bounds and I’m so proud of myself. Even a year ago, I wouldn’t have dared say I was proud of myself—much less on the internet! I’m putting the work in to identify when I have what I’ve termed a ‘perfection attack’. I define a ‘perfection attack’ as an anxiety attack triggered by all or a combination of fear of failure, self-neglect, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy. I’ve had these attacks for years but couldn’t really put my finger on the source of my temporary paralysis until recently.

The first ‘perfection attack’ that comes to mind is related to styling my hair for my senior picture in high school. The anxiety surrounding these attacks is often correlated to resentment caused by difficulty setting boundaries which leads to my own needs going unmet. I chose to style my friend’s hair before mine because that was the ‘nice’ thing to do and when it came down to it, I barely had time to style my own. This left me feeling resentful and so upset by my perceived hair failure that up until writing this paragraph, I felt complete disdain for that photograph.

I’d like to unpack the hair styling event for a minute. I inadvertently chose to put myself last and this led to resentment. I was feeling resentful towards myself without realizing it because I chose self-neglect over self-care. Due to the insufficient amount of time I set aside for my own hair, I then failed to meet my expectations which left me feeling like a failure. Until now that I’m writing this, I didn’t realize all the tension I felt that day was caused by my own self-neglect.

These days, I’m slowly—and I mean snail’s pace—learning how to stop sweating the small stuff. It is currently something that can only happen when I’m in control. What I mean by that is that it cannot happen on autopilot. When I’m running on autopilot, I still resort to feeling like a failure when things don’t go according to plan. The beauty of this phase of my life is that I am actively seeking to embrace imperfection and I have enough life experience under my belt that I have a mental log of proof that it really is a waste of my energy to stress about the small stuff.

I still have perfection attacks, it’s not like they have miraculously disappeared from my life now that I have identified them. My current work is identifying them when they are happening or if I am extra in tune with myself, identifying that they are about to happen and using another activity to expend the energy. Deep breaths, walking, jogging in place, washing dishes, folding clothes, listening to music, yoga, and writing are different activities I can use to channel the pent up energy. Channeling my energy into these activities allows me to burn it off and use it in a way that benefits me instead of maintaining my nervous system in a state of hyperarousal.

When I don’t meet my self-care needs, my harsh inner perfectionist professional critiquer comes out in full force. Like a double edge sword, when I don’t meet my self-care needs I also have a much harder time remembering to be kind to myself and not sweat the small stuff. Now that I’m not 18 anymore and have been actively putting in the mental work, I have the tools and fully developed prefrontal cortex to process my experiences. I am currently learning to identify my emotions and lean into them instead of running away from them. I now know that I will never outrun them. Running away only leaves me with pent up stress and a host of unprocessed emotions. I invite you to practice along with me by incorporating this week’s ‘fruits of inspiration & grace’ (FiGs) into your day.

I appreciate you and the opportunity to be part of your journey as you reflect on your own relationship with perfection and self-neglect. If you would like to receive a practice scenario that explains how you can apply this reflection’s 4 FiGs in your life, you are invited to subscribe to the ‘FiG 4-1-1’ newsletter here or follow along on Instagram. Remember, you are worthy just because. Who you are is who the world needs. Perfect people don’t exist.