Perfectionism – Seeing & Responding With Emotional Sobriety Video By Allen Berger

Below is an excellent 30 minute video that explores how perfectionism amplifies self hatred. The video also explores how we can learn to respond differently to the ‘should monster’ of our idealized false self we’ve created to be loved, accepted and have a sense of belonging. And, in this new response, we learn how to more wisely accommodate to life as it is … and thus learn from our experience as we grow in maturity.

The video begins with a reflection of a portion of Bill W’s classic Grapevine article ‘Emotional Sobriety – The Next Frontier:

My basic flaw had always been dependence — almost absolute dependence — on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them . And when defeat came , so did my depression. 

There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St . Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.

You may also find this definition of perfectionism from this article extracted from Dr. Berger’s outstanding book ‘12 Essential Insights For Emotional Sobriety’ helpful:

Perfectionism is not doing things perfectly; it is expecting ourselves to do things perfectly. It is the relentless drive toward an unrealistic, inhuman, and unattainable goal. Perfectionism is an expectation of rigid precision: We should do things perfectly, others should do things perfectly, life should be perfect—which means life has to conform to our expectations.

Dr. Berger describes the false self that we unconsciously often create very early in our lives this way in an article entitled “What Anxiety And Rigorous Honesty Have To Teach Us”

We imagined  an idealized self, better than who we were, that would always feel  secure, always be liked, always feel loved, and always feel welcomed.  The process of adopting this idealized self resulted in us rejecting  our true self, our real self. We actualized a concept of who we should be.

So, often the inner critic we hear constantly evaluating us is trying to make real our false self by holding us hostage to the demands of these ‘shoulds’ that are completely unrealistic and grandiose. I hope you’ll enjoy the video and perhaps explore the Emotional Sobriety section of the gugogs.org website. – Bruce M.