Was it something I said?

A passing thought for many from time to time, but possibly one of the consuming thoughts I have on a daily, maybe even hourly basis. It's either something I said, did or didn't do or something I am likely to do or say, because, well I always mess it up.

It's not just a thought or two from time to time though. It's everything and more often or not I just can't let it go. I think I must have annoyed someone about something. I don't stop there though, I then go into overdrive thinking about how I can make up for it, or apologise for myself. 

I don't remember not thinking like this though, like I have 'messed up' or done something wrong, worried that it's likely to have annoyed or inconvenienced other people. These are old school thoughts. Of course they've evolved over time. From worrying about friends, family or colleagues, the basis is the same. It's my fault. 

What I do know and feel still is how anorexia will try and try to convince me this is just the way I am. A woman full of mistakes, a woman likely to make mistakes and make other people think as badly of me as she does.

It's the same fault I feel my body is, the same mistakes I worry about when it comes to eating or just being or running. The same way I look for ways to ease the mistakes or fix them. Undo the wrong I have done. The way I look, dress or act in any given situation or environment. That it's not up to standard. Was I too loud? Did I react quickly enough at work, should I have invited other people or could I have done more to help. 

One of my favourite quotes cut out of The Sunday Times for me by my former therapist is an Eleanor Roosevelt one "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realised how seldom they do..." Which I can logically get to. Sometimes people's behaviour, moods, actions, conversations, looks or emails are less about ME and more about them, scrap that. They are mostly always about them, not me. But try telling my brain that. Nah-na. 

It's hard to explain the impact this has one me. I know I can't expect perfection, to never say anything or do anything wrong. I can't be firing on all cylinders, keeping everyone happy all the time. It's not even a people pleasing things, like for some. It's like I just don't want people to hate me or have reason to (what my teenage self would say) "slag me off.." or moan about me. 

But the biggest slagger-offer is mysef. And that is painful, because it actually IS something I said, to myself. 

POEM: What Did I Do To Deserve This?

I don't know what's brought this overwhelming feeling of not being 'enough' on tonight. My head is full of negativity, frustration, anger, sadness and regret. 

I don't know if its forgetting about how much my life has rewound itself over the last 12 months in moments of happiness shopping earlier, then suddenly remembering what was going on in my life. Whether walking around Selfridges put me in 'dreamer mode', then stepping through the front door of my parent's house brought me right back down to earth with a thud, or what? Anyway, I can't get it out in 'journal words' so I got it out in a poem..

What Did I Do?

What did I do to deserve this?

To have to feel this pain?

Why did I have to mess up this life?

And have to start again.

This illness has broken what I was.

Stolen my brain and bruised my soul

It’s eaten me away, while I starved,

And made me much less than whole.

I thought I was braver than this,

Could cope and prove them wrong,

However I felt and whatever I showed

Wasn’t I meant to be strong?

I’ve proved that I’m weaker than most,

Too many worries, shouts and screams,

When life should have been more real,

Sarah was too busy lost in dreams.

I wanted to shut her up,

My aim was to be the best,

I wanted to stop comparing

And soar above the rest.

I thought I could fix it all,

But I ended up making it worse,

I aimed too high, fell from the sky,

And put my life in reverse.

Now why does it have to be so hard?

Require me to be so tough?

When at times like this I feel

When nothing’s ever enough?

Enough of feeling so empty,

And enough of feeling so low

Fed up of feeling useless

Not Enough, with so far to go.

I feel like an intruder,

In a home that’s no longer mine,

I try so hard to keep the peace

And pretend that everything’s fine.

It’s hard to look in the mirror

And accept life for what it’s become,

So empty, starved, so hollow and thin,

No prospects and feeling so numb.

No end date, finish line or plan,

Nothing lined up and nowhere to go,

Just living to live with life standing still,

Not even knowing what I know.

Not knowing how I feel,

Not knowing how to cope,

Not knowing where I am going,

Just trying to keep some hope.

Its times like now I remember,

That the imperfection crushes me,

It eats away at my body

I just wish that they could see.

I just want to be okay,

To be fixed, back on track,

To be out of here, have a fuller life,

I just want Sarah back. 

Body Checks: The New Calorie Counting

Body image, BDD, weight restoration, hatred of 'hippo pictures'......there seems to be a new theme of posts appearing that are moving away from the eating, from the calories and from the food.

This is another layer of my eating disorder being stripped bare and laid out for me to try and get my head round. Hang in there with me, I'm warning you, this one could take a while.........

So, I was sat in my therapist's office on Friday, holding my favourite pink cushion to my stomach, legs twisted and crossed up a blanket (it was EVEN cold on the ward, yes!) and sitting with my arm crossed across my chest, holding on to my cold, hard shoulder bone, you know checking it was still there.

I was brought out of my, "is there more fat on this, do my thighs look chubby today, I can feel my stomach fat, my leggings are digging in" thoughts by Mrs W announcing that she was going to start some work on 'BODY IMAGE' with me to work on my BDD and resistance to weight restoration.

Starting with telling me about the new 'Body Check' journal I have to keep.

Me? Body Check? I automatically wondered why I was having to do that "I don't do that, I don't body check" Unless of course, she's talking about taking pictures of my body or obsessing about old pictures or poking my fat stomach? Oh, those body checks. Right, here goes...

I suppose it was easier to ignore or not notice the checking and my body in general as much when my preoccupation was fully on food and calories. But recently, as my MPs are settling in, and food is out of my control, as I am gaining weight,  these body thoughts are creeping in more and more...they warned me. 

It just shows my inability to think about anything else to do with my ED when I was still restricting, when my whole life was consumed with the eating side of anorexia, the calories, the portions, the scales, the weighing of food, the starving. When I thought I wasn’t REALLY AN, it ‘was just about the food’ that I am just being a fussy eater.  I am realising now, it might not be that, I might be AN! It also reminds me how deep rooted these thoughts are. This plus the general confidence and body image side of things has taken priority over every other single aspect of my life. 

Realistically, the body checking started a LONG time BEFORE the starvation, it's these checks that led me to 'give in' and listen to my ED thoughts and change what I was checking. Am I just vain? Do vain people do this? Why do I do this? (I'd like to add here that I think this is where people think AN sufffers are just self obbsessed and vain and that is all it is - I don't think they consider that we use this as ammunition to HATE ourselves and drive me to starve)  I have always poked, prodded, taken photos to beat myself up about, spent hours, days even, in front of the mirror, hating every inch of my fat, ugly, disguising body. Hours of my life spent in the gym, in the swimming pool, distracted all the time by my fat. Self hate is so deep rooted in me that I don't even know what I look like any more. I have called myself a barrel, podgeo and a hippo for as long as I remember - and ALWAYS CHECKED for the bits of my body that confirm these nicknames. I still do. 

Now in recovery, after destroying my body to stop these daily, hourly, minute by minute checks I am worried about how much is going to come out from this body checking diary thing because today I haven’t recorded it all but it's constant. 

Every time I go to the toilet I hold my stomach and hope it goes down when I pee. I poke my belly and look at my fat belly button and when I pull my leggings or jeans back up I look at how my stomach looks In what I am wearing. I check my hip bones, front and back, I spin around to check how my butt is growing. When I am talking to friends or in sessions I cover my stomach with cushions and clothes and play with my shoulders and collar bone more than I realised I do. I notice when I was sat in Costa that I often sit up straight and feel my spine and hip bones from the back and although I said to Mrs. W that I didn’t think my legs bothered me I noticed how much I touch my knees and feel the tendons and ligaments behind the knee a lot and obsess with out my thighs look all squished and fat when I'm sitting down.

I also need to be HONEST with myself here, because I feel guilty because I know I take more picture’s of my body than I let on to Mrs. W too. It might not be a lot compared to how many I used to take when I was losing weight, but I know I take more pictures that other people probably do. To ‘check’ what I look like. But I suppose more than that I spend a long time looking back at old photographs, ones I took of myself specifically because of my ED, for my own thinspro for my ED and weight loss and also looking at pictures of days out before and during losing weight to try and figure out what I think about my body.

To put it in perspective, I don’t actually have enough space in my journal or time to write them all down. To write how often I look at my stomach, or glance in the mirror and tell myself I look awful and ugly or think about how thin my hair looks, the condition of my skin all my fat and everything. Every time I look in the mirror I give myself some sort of grief about how I look or I worry about how I look. Too fat but too ill as well and you know, not perfect. NBD right?

It's these new NBD moments of checking my body, always, always the bits I hate the most, which keep the spiral of self-hate alive. They are the NBD moments that make gaining weight scary, they are the checks that my ED drives my to do. They are the check, the preoccupation and the obbsession which should tell me I'm still battling AN, despite eating. The Body Check NBDs are the biggest NBDs now and this is where the real hard work starts. 

Anyway, I need to remember that every time I go looking for the bits I hate I figure out the same thing, I hate it. Not really a productive way to spend my life is it? I know the answer. 

What is THIS feeling?

"Good days don’t cancel out the illness or make me a fraud and bad days don’t mean I am stuck with it forever."

I need to remind myself of this whenever I am confused about why I have 'good' and 'bad' days in recovery. I need to remember that recovery is not linear, it's not simple and its really not fake. I am guilty of trying to analyse EVERY mood, thought, choice and feeling, it's something I've been told I need to let go of to enable me to keep going forward....

A journal entry I'd like to share...

"So it's 23.30pm  another day complete on my meal plan and another day in which I have tried new meals, today it was adding grated cheese to my potato.  I had an apple and an advent calendar chocolate on top of my MP and I even added more peanut butter to my supper...all of which are big deals for me!

But I now don’t know how I feel, it’s like I don’t understand WHY some days I can do the extra little things I do, I just don’t get it. How can it be so hard and have all these stresses one minute and then I feel normal another. This really makes me believe that I am holding myself here to PROVE that I am AN or something? I feel like I should be able to snap out of it. I feel like I SHOULD be finding EVERY moment hard, I feel like I should be struggling every day. I just don’t just don’t see how people think I am ‘positive’ or ‘inspirational’ and I feel sometimes like a fraud because I am not believing what I am doing is ‘real’ I suppose it’s because I don’t believe I am I just think I am able to do these challenges, not because I am a fighter but because I am faking my AN

Ana is trying her hardest to confuse me because I have been winning all day. That’s all.

But what I do NEED to do it keep pushing, keep fighting and really embrace the days when it does feel easier and know that EVERY day will feel like that. But I am going to get days when it is tough but in those times I need to aim for days like today and remember that they are positive days that reflect my strength and NOT negative ‘out of control’ days that make me weak, like Ana would lead me to believe. The only real WEAK days are those when I listen to Ana.  Days when I restrict, when I measure, when I cut corners and let NBDs slide. They are the days I am aiming to avoid.

However I need to keep the perfectionism at bay here too. I need to accept that bad/weak days, whatever I call them WILL happen. I don’t need every day to be PERFECT and to feel easy. It just doesn’t happen in recovery. In fact, I reckon I learn more about my ED, about me and about how to cope from the bad days. I can use them to define Ana’s role in my choices and to learn and move forward."

Eating Disorders, OCD & Anxiety

This week's video from one of my favourite Recovery Warriors, Arielle, is relevant to the way in which my anxiety, OCD and ED work together. How one (or two) can lead to, be a result of, and maintain the other(s).

WATCH IT HERE

I have suffered from OCD and Anxiety most of my life but only been diagnosed with anorexia in my twenties. My ANX and OCD have always surrounded body image, food, will-power and control. Through lots of therapy and support I manage to control my OCD and ANX, but find it hard to control my ED.

It's hard to separate the three and try and figure out if my anxieties and obbsessions with food, health, calories, weight and body were always an ED or whether these teamed with my perfectionism, self esteem and control issues lead to my anorexia.

Which ever way round it is, the three have a massive impact of my life and all three are hard to overcome.

Click the links above this or below to watch the video on Arielles website.

Arielle says;

"Actively Arielle: A Voice With A Commitment: Eating Disorders, OCD, and Anxiety: This week I discuss these 3 and how they are linked. I also discuss ways of dealing with anxiety, and disclose a bit of personal information..."

Why Don't You Just Eat?

I don’t know what I’ll do If I get asked again ‘Do you want to get better?’ ‘Do you want a new job?’ or the worst ‘Why can’t you just eat?’ These are the questions I keep getting asked by my family. They keep saying that EVERYONE is getting frustrated and annoyed with me because they say ‘You’re an intelligent girl; you know what you need to do.’ I know I have a degree, I know I haven’t always restricted my diet to the extent I did this year and I know I haven’t always been this underweight, but the sooner they realise I have felt like this for A LOT longer than they have known the better. The sooner they might be able to understand why I CANT JUST EAT.

The hardest thing at the moment is they can only understand the physical sides of anorexia, they keep going on and on about how ‘they don’t believe it’s this psychological.’ That my treatment is focusing too much on all that ‘psychological stuff’ and that I need to just eat. K asked if I ‘get told off’ for maintaining my weight and not gaining this week and she can’t understand why I don’t get ‘in trouble’ for not gaining a huge amount of weight.  

I keep getting asked if I want to get better. YES, of course I do, that’s why I am going to my appointments, it’s why I am going through this battle, it’s why I am sat at my parents, not in my own home. If I didn’t want to get better, I wouldn’t have said anything, I wouldn’t go to meetings and I wouldn’t be drinking Fortisip, eating food or listening to my apparently ‘intelligent self’. I don’t think they are trying to understand (and I don’t expect them to fully understand!) that recovery is an exhausting battle which is trying to restore my weight and health physically but trying to re-build my mental health by teaching me to accept my body, my weight and to build a better relationship with food. Basically, re-teaching the last 10 years of my life.

Dismissing and trivialising of the psychological aspects of anorexia hits me like a bullet, it completely makes me feel pathetic and it makes me feel like I am making it up, that it is trivial and easy to beat. It makes me feel thick and weak for not ‘just getting better’ and it makes me feel like I should know what I want from life. I don’t. I don’t know what I am fighting for, other than health right now. But in order to fight for my health I have to fight off Ana, I have to fight off anxiety, obsessions and fear – and trust that it will be worth it.  I have to leave a place where I feel safe and warm and in control and run and leap in to the freezing cold sea and swim for dear life.

They don’t seem to want to accept that I have presented them with a ‘happy’ me for so long, but I haven’t felt like that inside. I can see that is hard for them, I get that – it’s the way I felt when an old friend told me she had and ED a few years ago and even I hadn’t noticed. It made me feel horrific for not noticing her pain, 

But that’s the biggest danger of eating disorders, they makes you good at ‘sucking it up’ at hiding your feelings and amazing at pretending you’re fine. Because Ana always CONVINCES you and everyone around you, that you ARE fine. It’s just the way I am, I just like to be healthy and in control and I don’t like chocolate. 

I was obviously good at it, because everyone around me isn’t accepting just how long this has been going on. I just wish they'd believe me. 

Needs, Should and Don't

A few things I need to take from today's session and use to keep focused and why recovery is worth it.

I don't need to pretend I am okay
I don't need to pretend that it's easy.
I can't ignore that it's there
I can't ignore that it's not an issue
I shouldn't ignore these thoughts
I shouldn't forget about mistakes
I need ackknowledge my achievements
I need to live for now.

Be mindful and focused on RECOVERY.

A recovery that DOESN'T need to BE PERFECT
A recovery that IS NOT going to be LINEAR
A recovery that is UNIQUE to ME
A recovery that needs FOCUS and DRIVE
A recovery which needs PERSEVERANCE and PATIENCE

As long as I am still going in the right direction, it's okay
As long as I make little changes, it's okay
As long as I am becoming more aware, it's okay

Recovery is HARD, WORTH IT and POSSIBLE.

POEM: If I Were Thin

A poem written after a session at the EDU with Ms. F and after a day thinking about HOW I got here, what keeps me here and the thought processes that have been with me my whole life. Through my work at the EDU and with my psychotherapist I am becoming more aware of my attachment, addiction to and hate for Ana.

If I Were Thin

Unattainable goals
The desire for control
The spiralling jealousy
Which plagues my soul

The constant abuse
Delivered inside
That nobody else hears
And from which I can't hide

The mirror is shattered
From the hurtful song
I can't look and like
Everything is wrong

I'm not the prettiest or smartest
The richest or most thin
And all of the blame
Comes from within

Have I caused this harm?
And done too much wrong
By caring too much
And hearing your song

Have I slipped too far?
And played for too long
why can't I let go?
And silence your song

My desire to be best
For them to hear my pain
Confusion and exhaustion
It drives me insane

I craved perfection
To be better than you
To be the one they envied
To follow things through

By being the thinnest
I’d feel confident within
Id stop comparing,
If I were thin

Tennis with Ana...

Today has been epic in terms of emotions. I could not begin to count the number of different feelings/thoughts/emotions I have felt today. I have been in an all-day emotionally tiring tennis rally with my eating disorder...

It's Me vs Ana in this match...

...So, in relation to my earlier post, I am going to pick up where I left off, where I was about to serve for the day's match, by attempting to make a higher calorie dinner than I have been used to, face a 'fear' food - yes, baked beans - and see if I could take some points from under Ana's nose...and...

I had the jacket potato and baked beans (picture evidence!) which I TOTALLY needed to do. I need to now remember that was a point won against Ana which I need to keep doing BUT it is not the end of the world if every attempt at challenging Ana isn’t as successful. 

I need to remind myself that there is no need for perfectionism EVERYTIME when I am taking a shot at her. I did check online for the calories of a small potato, but I had already eaten it. It is recognising the thoughts but making positive and healthy choices even if they are harder than settling for the anorexic choices. 

Hello, Jacket and Beans!

I am not going to let myself feel guilty for making a ‘recovery’ choice right now or for taking a step AWAY from her. That'd be like feeling guilty for beating your biggest rival in a game of tennis wouldn't it? How stupid! 

I also feel like I convince myself that it was easy to do what I just did – as with everything in my life in the past I haven’t actually admitted to anyone that I find something’s hard and challenging – so now it feels that I have convinced myself that if it isn’t easy next time then I have failed. It’s like I try and forget how hard it was to do what I did tonight, and how long it’s taken me to eat that meal and how long the beans have been in the cupboard before I opened them tonight. I want it to be easy, so I am good at it. Though, I suppose every time I do it, it will be easier and I will get better at it? Like practising my serve, the more I practice the easier it'll be to serve an ace?

I also read something really helpful written by another recovered/ing anorexic tonight  A post by Kate Peoples on her blog 'Small Steps Upward'  -  that totally made sense and really helped me get some clarity and was like a well-needed cheerleader in today's match! 

This comes with its own problems though – I feel like I should have thought of this before, and I am rubbish for not realising that this is how I felt – and now I am copying her! Anyway, it was about TRUSTING your therapists/team and I came to the conclusion that at this crossroad I have the choice to trust everyone at the EDU that they are not lying to me, they know exactly what they are talking about and are experienced professionals that want to see me get better OR I can put my trust in Ana and carry on living a half hearted, restricted and disordered life? I just need to go for it, have faith that it is all going to be okay in the end. It’s terrifying but it will be worth it to be free and get on with my life. Like trusting world class coaches and ignoring the other players trying to trick me, right?

I also figured that I need to take recovery step by step – not panic about it all at once, which I keep doing. I first need to restore weight, just do it, be healthier and THEN Take time to deal with the emotions about my weight, body and anxieties AFTERWARDS. It's like worrying about the final at Wimbledon when I am only just getting though the second round isn't it? 

It’s REALLY not going to work that way – I need to remember that the sooner I restore my weight, the sooner I can work towards FEELING better about myself and work towards a healthier and happier me. The longer I stick where I am on the scales and with my intake, the longer I will feel like crap. Like, I'd feel crap if I got knocked out in this game because I listened to the other players telling me what to do, not my coach!

What a day! Emotional tennis in my head with Ana, but I think I won that game? New balls please! 

Thoughts are thoughts...

Thoughts are thoughts, but it is the way I act on them that’ll mean the difference between recovery and living with my eating disorder.

It can work both ways I suppose, I can THINK that I am doing enough and my true self is in control and NOT actually challenge myself enough to restore my weight and recover.

AND 

 I can have ANOREXIC thoughts, distinguish that it’s Ana and I can choose to challenge them and work towards recovery OR I can choose to act upon her rules and restrict or measure or weigh.

In both cases it’s acting on these thoughts that can make the difference in recovery or in continuing to live with my eating disorder holding the reigns.

Take today for example. I thought that I ‘Don’t need to eat an apple after my appointment because I am going for a coffee in an hour, and that could be my mid-morning snack.’ I distinguished that this was an anorexic thought, because a) I was hungry and b) I need to have BOTH at the moment to help increase my calories. So I ACTED on this by buying an apple and eating it. Then I went for my coffee, and thought ‘You only need a small coffee not a medium like usual, because there is SO much milk in that and it might make you feel heavy and sick’ at this moment in the queue in Costa, I could choose to act on this thought as Sarah or Ana. Unfortunately in this case I ordered a small coffee. I made a choice ANA wanted, which isn’t helping with my goal of restoring my weight.

This is a habit I have gotten into, challenging Ana with one thing, then restricting because I have already challenged her and I back off and keep her happy. I am becoming more and more aware of this each time I go through my food diaries with my dietitian. Meal by meal or day by day, it's the same habit. I think this is the first step – being AWARE of the thoughts and who is driving them, the step I need to take now is ACTING on them.

I have another challenge tonight too. One of my goals this week is to eat a jacket potato with beans. The anorexic thoughts I have already had about this since leaving the clinic today are;

1) There are SO many calories in that meal
2) You don’t NEED beans, just have the potato plain with salad
3) What could I have instead that ‘sort of challenges me’ but is safer in terms of cal content
4) Just have beans and no potato
5) If that takes me to XX calories, then don’t snack later, it’s ok.
6) Is it bad to eat potato at dinner because it’s late?
7) You don’t like baked beans
8) They’ll make you bloated and grosse
9) Beans are a waste of calories

And there are probably more that I haven’t noticed, which are all Ana trying to talk me out of eating the dinner I NEED to eat and decided earlier I would try tonight. Now, I have the choice to cook and eat this dinner and make it POSITIVE or to listen to ANA and not work towards recovery. These are just two examples of the clouds of thoughts I feel around EVERY drink, snack and meal.

No wonder my head is muddled and obsessed and preoccupied with thoughts about food and eating. If the theory is right, the more I challenge Ana and go against her, the quicker and less significant these thoughts will become….the more I think them, want to challenge them, go through the process and then let her win by acting in her favour, the harder and longer the fight will be. She ISN’T getting weaker if I don’t turn my back each time…

 I have also been told again and again, it is a trait of anorexia to see life as black and white, good and bad and success and failure and I for one am so guilty of doing this. I know I am. Or not feeling like I am doing well enough in recovery and beating myself up about it and then just 'not bothering' or convincing myself that this is all just fake and I could snap out of it. The proof is in the pudding (How ironic?) though, because when I do just try and ‘be normal’ or attempt to convince myself I can snap out of it. I freak out. I ‘run away’ from the challenge and back into Ana’s arms each time I freak out and DON’T try something. That’s my eating disorder RIGHT there. ...

I know it’s all about listening, reasoning and challenging Ana that will eventually mean 'recovery.’ And my gosh, it seems she needs a lot of challenging right now, I better start ACTING on it and showing her who’s in control.

OCD Awareness Week...

For more information or support visit OCD-UK or join the Facebook group 

POEM: I Wish...

I wish I knew a way out,
A way to gain and grow,
I didn't want this life,
The thoughts,
But how was I to know?
I didn't want to be this way,
To lose everything I had,
My house, my job,
My dreams my goals,
To feel so lost and sad.
I wanted to be perfect,
And happy in my skin.
The thing I wish
I knew before,
And believed today,
is that
Happy isn't thin.

Don't Believe EVERYTHING you THINK...

I have the destructive habit of taking MY OWN opinion of me, my body, my life and now my recovery and ignoring everyone else's views.

The biggest problem is that I always come out bottom.

Weightless blog wrote about this today and how cognitive distortions can lead to negative emotions and contribute to eating disorders. They defined cognitive distortions as as “a biased way of thinking about oneself or one’s environment, including one’s body image, weight or appearance”

This relates directly to the work I am doing at clinic on' rewiring' my thoughts and learning to accept that MY perception is not always right. In fact, it is usual wrong, especially if I partake in my habit of dispelling all the evidence around me to ensure I maintain my OWN view of myself.

At the end of their post they ask... Which of these cognitive distortions do you relate to most?
The answer...I can relate to all of them, too well. They are all too familiarly and exactly what I am working on in recovery at the moment. I couldn't pick one that I do more than another, and they are SO destructive. To break these cognitive distortions will to break free from my eating disorder.

This is especially destructive when I have ALWAYS compared my self unfavourably to everyone around me. It's a habit I need to break if I am to be completely free from Ana.

Perfectionism = Control + Fear

I need to know that I wasn't perfect, I am not perfect, Recovery can't be perfect, Every day doesn't have to be perfect and nothing is pure or perfect...

The desire for perfectionism is a combination of my desire of control and my fear of what happens if the control is lost, or if I'll never be perfect.

Perfectionism can be destructive. Mine is.

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.

- David M. Burns-