On Guilt, Perfection and Perception

I promised you Guilt. You're getting Perfection and Perception as a bonus.

Last week, I met up with a friend for dinner and a walk through my local Jazz Street Festival. We had a lovely time, yet over dinner she confessed to me that she had been seeing a psychologist because of severe anxiety she had been feeling. After describing her feelings and behaviour, the doctor suggested that she might actually have an eating disorder. She was both shocked and then embarrassed about this.

Now, when I say “eating disorder”, that conjures up images of rail-thin women depriving themselves of food. My friend is neither rail-thin nor overweight. She, like most women, has her ups and downs with respect to weight and, at about 5’6”, weighs around 130-140, which is what I would consider “normal”. What she described to me was her inability to control her eating at certain times. Like many Type-A people, she had this “all or nothing” approach to things; there’s no such thing as moderation. She eats uncontrollably and then, spurred on by feelings of guilt, deprives herself of food to “regain control”.

Experts agree that eating disorders are generally about issues of control – meaning that it’s a symptom people exhibit when they feel out of control in certain aspects of their lives, so they attempt to self-control to compensate.

But the interesting thing about our conversation had to do with the incredible feelings of guilt she had over her behaviour. Besides being embarrassed by it, she felt extremely guilty about it. “What do you have to feel guilty about?” I asked. To which she replied, “That I am unable to control myself. I should be able to control myself.” Ahhhh, so that’s what it’s all about.

That’s when I started to think about the role that guilt plays in our lives. Guilt is a response we feel when we behave (or think) in a way that is less than perfect. How crazy is that?! Why do so many of us expect perfection from ourselves when the vast majority of us would say that we don’t expect perfection from others?

For me, it manifests itself this way: I am feeling bad (usually unfulfilled) about myself in some way, so I eat (or over-eat). Then, the feelings of guilt over having “caved” and not having been able to control myself kick in. In order to stifle that feeling, I eat even more. For me, eating is a way of avoiding feelings. I just stuff myself, so that makes it impossible to feel anything (or maybe it just provides a short-term distraction).

Someone recently wrote about the concept of self-parenting (Wendy, maybe?), and the downside to this behaviour is that children always rebel against authority – that’s their raison d’être. So it goes to figure that if we are self-parenting, that we will rebel against our internal parent. But being the grown-ups that we are, we feel tremendous guilt about our rebellion and lack of self-control.

So, what do we do about this, then?

Well, I think it might start with giving up (surrendering is probably a better word) the idea that we have to strive to be perfect. Or that we even CAN be perfect. We know this intellectually, but for some reason we still keep trying. [ What was it that Einstein said about insanity? That it’s the act of doing the same thing over and over and somehow expecting different results.] I think that on some deep level we have been given the message that we are not entitled to unconditional love – that love is dependant upon perfection. And that the closer we are to perfect, the more deserving we are of love. Because, bottom line, isn’t love what we all crave?

And each of us has a different interpretation of what the expression of love should look like. To some degree, it’s a demonstration that we are accepted for who we are, exactly as we are, flaws and all. For each of us that will look somewhat different in terms of the actual behaviours we are looking for from people, but the need is the same. But isn’t it ironic that we are looking for this outside of ourselves and will not simply give it to ourselves? Why are we withholding unconditional love from ourselves, yet expecting to receive it from others?

But let’s get back to guilt for a second.

Since all of this tends to have a chicken-and-egg quality to it we have to start somewhere, so I suggest that we start by eliminating feelings of guilt. And that’s no easy task. If we give up the idea that we need to be perfect, it cuts us some slack when our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are ”less than” perfect. If we can accept ourselves, in all our flawed beauty, then we are much more likely to feel accepted by others. Because, in effect, it’s not whether or not we are actually loved & accepted but whether we perceive that we are loved & accepted that matters to us. And those are two very different things.

So, now that I’ve mentioned it, what about perception?

Perception is a very powerful thing. And every experience we have in life (and our perception/reaction to it) continues to reinforce our beliefs and perceptions. Anaïs Nin said, “We do not see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.” Which stands to reason that it’s not until we change our perceptions that our experiences in the world will change.

I mentioned in an entry the other day how, once I lost weight, people seemed to treat me differently than they had before. At first that made me mad – wasn’t I the same person I was before? Was I not worthy of the same respect and attention then? But what I came to realize is that the world around me began to change in response to my new attitude towards myself. To some degree, people weren’t treating me any differently, I just perceived that they were.

When I read Wendy’s Spaghetti entry yesterday it reminded me of how I felt when I was much earlier on in my weight-loss efforts. The analogy I used was Jell-O (as opposed to spaghetti), but it’s much the same thing. Every year that goes by and all the experiences that we have serve to reinforce our beliefs about ourselves, the world and our place in it. As we begin to change our physical and mental “shapes”, the boundaries set by our perceptions start to deteriorate and we no longer have a comfort level as all the rules seemed to have changed. That’s where my Jell-O analogy came in: I felt like I was partially-set Jell-O – still essentially the same, yet not quite sure what form I was going to take; malleable and fluid, still. And still wasn’t 100% sure that I was going to like the new person I was becoming.

But I have to say now that all the torment and struggle I went through back then as I began to change was more than worth it in the end. I used to joke to myself that maybe I could “cry myself thin,” meaning that if I shed enough tears that I might lose some weight from all that water. But the reality is that I wasn’t so far off with that assessment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is so much more to losing weight than simply eating less and exercising more. And not wanting to go to the gym or give up tasty treats is only the first level of resistance that we face. Learning to deal with the guilt of imperfection, figuring out who we are as our bodies begin to change, and ultimately changing our perceptions of ourselves, are far more challenging obstacles to overcome than any diet or exercise program will ever be.