Ep.65 Perfectionism is Just Anxiety | Calm Your Nervous System with Hypnosis

1You're Waking Up Preparing for the Panic Attack and You Don't Even Know It

I talk about this openly in the episode because I think it is one of the most important things I can say.

The old me woke up every single morning preparing for a panic attack. Not consciously. It was just there. Would it hit the second I opened my eyes? An hour later on the drive to work? Sometime in the afternoon? I was organizing my entire morning around when it was going to show up.

The amount of anxiety that causes on its own, to wake up and literally not expect anything to be different, is enormous. Expecting to have the same fight with your partner. The same conversations. Nobody changing. That was the world I was living in.

And then I watched this movie with my daughter. The main character in Ugly Dolls, she is an ugly doll, one of the ones thrown off the factory line for being imperfect, and she wakes up every single morning asking what could happen today. Not dreading. Not bracing. Genuinely open and curious about what the day might bring.

That used to be the opposite of me. I was the pessimist. I was looking at everything glass half empty. I was not willing to be surprised by life.

How many of us are waking up on the same side of the bed, with the same alarm, the same routine, never expecting anything to be different? And then wondering why nothing changes?

2Control Is Not Protection. It's the Thing Blocking You.

This one hit me personally when I was watching the movie with my daughter because I could see my own control playing out in real time.

A few years ago, she had asked to watch Ugly Dolls. I said no. I walked in for 30 seconds, saw characters being mean, and immediately shut it down. I told myself I was protecting her from bad programming.

But what I was actually doing was blocking her from getting to make her own decision. I wasn't letting her decide for herself, I don't actually like the way these characters are being and I don't want to be that way. My control took that away from her.

And this is what control does. It feels like safety. It feels like we're being responsible and protecting the people we love or protecting ourselves. But it's also the thing that judges a book by its cover, cuts off the experience before it can happen, and keeps us stuck in a very rigid, black and white world.

Control was a big one for me. Getting out of the anxiousness, the fear, the control. Those are the hardest days. And they're also the days where the most growth is available if we're willing to stay open.

3Perfectionism Is Just Anxiety Wearing a Different Outfit

Perfect doesn't allow you to have fun. I say this in the episode and I want to say it again here because I think we need to hear it more than once.

I used to take my oldest daughter to Painting with a Twist. She loved painting. But from the moment we started going, with the teacher's version on the board and a right way to do it, she stopped being able to enjoy herself. She would look at the teacher's canvas, look at mine, look at hers, and just shut down. She couldn't have fun because it wasn't perfect.

I stopped taking her. Not because painting wasn't good for her. Because the idea of perfect was stealing the whole experience.

And that is exactly what perfectionism does to your nervous system. I'd rather be a little bit messy and happy than squeaky clean and stressed the fuck out of my nervous system. That's a direct quote from me in this episode, and I mean every word of it.

The bigger question I ask in the episode is this: who came up with the rules of what perfect is? Because I will tell you, the people who created these paradigms, these very strict and rigid ways of being, they already had the insecurities. Their ego needed to be right. And it came from their own unworthiness.

As a dancer growing up, I thought I was supposed to have the perfect ballerina body. That was never going to be my body type. A teacher told me at 17 that I would never be in a professional company because of my body. And I spent so much of my 20s not knowing who I was because someone told me I wasn't right.

That was her wound. Not mine. But I carried it for years. And I can guarantee that most of us have experienced something like that.

4Not Being Yourself Is the Thing Giving You Anxiety

This is the piece that I think gets missed the most.

Think about how it feels to show up somewhere and realize you're wearing the wrong thing, or you said something that came out weird, or you just feel like you don't quite fit. That flood of emotion. The self-consciousness. The spiral.

That's anxiety. But it's not random. It comes from years of being told, directly or through subliminal messaging, that the way you are is not enough. That the way God brought you into this world is not perfect enough, not right enough, not wanted. This is how the subconscious mind gets programmed. The messaging goes down the line and everybody just believes it.

And everybody just believes it, that we're not enough. That's the subliminal programming. And not being yourself, shrinking, fitting, performing, is actually the very thing giving you anxiety.

We are each individually unique. We came here to look like we do. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Our uniqueness and our differences are the very things that make us shine, that make us drawn to other people. And who would want to live in a world of walking, talking, looking the same robotic humans?

Your uniqueness is not the problem. It is the whole point.

Step 1: Set the intention to be surprised and delighted

One of my intentions every single day is to be surprised and delighted by what the universe has in store for me, and to be open to it, to really open that door. You can set this intention before you get out of bed. You don't have to believe it fully yet. Just crack the door open.

Step 2: Ask yourself what could happen today

The character in Ugly Dolls woke up every morning with this question. Not dreading. Not bracing. Just genuinely open. What if that was your first thought instead of the worst case version of your day?

Step 3: Shake up the morning even just a little

What if you got up on the wrong side of the bed? What if instead of pressing snooze you actually got up? Or you rolled over and cuddled your partner for five minutes. Or you had a slow morning because that's what felt good. The point is to interrupt the autopilot, not replace it with a new perfect routine.

Step 4: Ask who made the rules you're following

When perfectionism shows up today, whether it's in your body, your work, your home, your parenting, ask yourself: who came up with these rules? Because I promise you they came from somewhere outside of you. And they do not have to be yours anymore.

Step 5: Point yourself in a direction

We are the creators of our life. And I say that to give the power back into your hands. If you just point yourself in the direction of something different, you are going to head that way. Even if it's just 1% different today. Some days it'll be 5%. But start with 1%.

I would love to hear from you. What rules have you been following that were never actually yours?