“Understanding my behavioral patterns trace back to my childhood gave me the power to change them”

How my client’s realization leads her to break free from the constraints of perfectionism.

Perfectionists have a strong tendency to hold themselves to impossibly high standards and go through a mental series of self-defeating thoughts that affects their self-esteem greatly. Many times, this behavior is often associated with work or academic achievements but many fail to realize that it can manifest itself in other ways as well like our health and relationships.

Recently, I worked with a client who was facing many issues with her because of a recent breakup and not being able to meet the standards SHE SET for herself. The main belief she had about herself was “I did something wrong, I was not perfect enough and I ruined it”. During the NLP session, where we worked on connecting the current thought pattern she has with the language she uses and how that manifests itself in her behaviors in romantic relationships.

This strategy helps us identify why she believes certain things about herself like “not being good enough” and where they originate from. It did not take that long to get to the root cause which happened to be a suppressed memory from when she was 8 years old.

The memory was of her sitting on the kitchen table doing her homework, she was struggling to complete it, and as her mother grew patient with her, she ended up getting slapped for it. That painful instance not only was the root cause of her sadness but was also what triggered the belief of “I need to be perfect in order to be good enough for others”.

Initially, this manifested in her academics as she became an overachiever with high grades and certificates, later it became her work as she spent great amounts of time “perfecting” her assigned tasks which she was praised for, and then the tragedy occurred when her relationship fell apart alongside her self esteem which was dependent on external validation.

As she became aware of these thought patterns and their origins, the next step was to focus on how to build new positive beliefs that would allow her to reach her highest potential and be satisfied with the outcome because she knew she did her best. The new beliefs became “I am perfect the way I am” and “Mistakes are ok and they are lessons I can learn from”

Intrusive thoughts and old patterns like perfectionism can be challenging to deal with or even recognize when you are so caught up with what’s happening inside your mind. Meeting go of control is scary and even when we try to, going back to our old selves can become our escape because our ego is comfortable there and it’s used to the routine of how the thinking patterns go.

However, it comes crashing down at one point and when it does, it’s okay to admit defeat or be scared, and reaching out to get help because YOU want to change will always be the greatest self-reward of all.