Aleta Edwards's Blog

As I have gotten older, I find that I must rest more. A friend commented that St. Paul said, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." While St. Paul was talking about temptation and I am not, I related immediately. My mind and spirit have boundless energy, but my body needs to rest sometimes. The rest feels like a disruption that I resent, but need to accept. I do so, but not graciously. In order to be my best at doing the things I really want to do, I need to respect self-care, and this takes time. I like to help people and to write, but I acknowledge that self-care is necessary, not just an option.

While allowing time for self-care is not easy, I ask myself, if this self-care is so hard for me, how would a perfectionist feel about perhaps not doing everything on their to-do list to be able to lie down for an hour? For them it would not just be an issue of needing to do it, but of perhaps feeling like a failure for not completing everything on their to-do list, for not incorporating that hour of self-care into the list in the first place, for not being a good person, or worse, calling this laziness. Self-care is hard, but crucial. For a perfectionist, there is a kind of inner judge saying terrible things about the person, making everything more difficult and painful. Like other things, self-care is harder for the perfectionist. If you set a standard that is too high or too ambitious, and you think that to be a responsible person you "should" be able to do everything, you will judge yourself when you cannot.

The frustration and acceptance I struggle with are still there, but the pain of those with the self-judging component is much worse. Part of what I do is to help people with perfectionistic personalities remove the self-judging part. I have listened to many clients beat themselves up because there are not enough hours in a day to do self-care and what they wish they could do. The frustration of that we all live with, but the self-critical part is typical of the perfectionist and creates much more emotional pain.

This is why I love to work with perfectionists and issues of shame. As I say in my book, Fear of the Abyss, these are good, decent people who suffer so much in so many situations, their inner judge always ready to cause emotional pain. Accepting that self-care must be done can be hard enough, but it is much harder with the element of self-judging. Don't let shame and perfectionism take self-care away from you! You matter!

​People are often curious about what goes through their therapist’s mind, how they feel about them, what emotions they have.  While I do not work only with PCS (Perfectionism, Control issues, Shame) issues, most of my clients are of this type.  First, I have to say that I believe the way I feel toward my clients is a special kind of love.  These clients -- and I say this after over thirty years of practice -- are kind, good people, extremely considerate, and very ethical.  They wish no harm to anyone, and if they only treated themselves as well as they treat others they would have no problem at all.  Interestingly, people in this group tend to be very, very bright.
 
People often call for an appointment and describe themselves as highly accomplished, which they are; they go on to tell me that they are in a lot of pain, with anxiety and self-depreciation.  They almost always sound like they think they are very unusual, excelling in what they do yet feeling this way, but actually it is common.  People who drive themselves hard do not just do it for a goal or to do a good job, but to keep overriding feelings of being unworthy.  The monster must be fed, and accomplishments follow each other at a rapid rate to keep the real feeling, of being inadequate or bad in some way, out of awareness.  People call to get help, because they are exhausted and do not want to suffer anymore.  They don’t realize that with insight-oriented therapy, such as a psychoanalytically or psychodynamically-oriented therapy, bringing the real, underlying feelings into awareness is what they need to do.  They know they have very sad feelings; that’s why they keep pushing them back with all their achievements.
 
One thing that has been very hard for me is to see such talented people -- intellectually, artistically, businesswise, etc. -- think so little of themselves.  After thirty years I do not feel so enraged for what happened to them, but I still feel anger.  I often think of people who raise, with caring and love, children with cognitive limitations, and when they grow up, they are confident in themselves and kind to others.  That’s an amazing achievement and certainly not an easy one in our competitive society.  Then I think, “But it takes a real talent to have a gifted child, and to convince that child that he or she is totally inadequate and just not good enough.”  To make someone believe what flies in the face of reality is quite an achievement, a terrible one.  While some parents are quite disturbed and just out-and-out mean, others are well intentioned, and because of how they themselves were raised, impart the message that, if something is not perfect, it is nothing.  We have all heard the saying, “Better to not do it at all if it is not done right.”  That may be true if we are talking about something important and work-related, but in everyday life, is it not how we learn?  And is it then surprising how many adults are terrified to try anything new, because they might not excel at it?  The degree to which people are stifled at times seems to me a kind of soul death, and it is truly heartbreaking.
​Looking at what people need to heal, it is also heartbreaking to not always give them what they want.  Oh, I want to!  But if I were to collude with people to keep at bay those feelings driving their misery I would be violating my objective of helping people get better and achieve greater authenticity, not stay the same.  I believe that my clients know that I love them and have utmost respect for them, and I know that what I say, or don’t, matters to them a lot.  It carries weight.  When a perfectionist tells me about a new achievement, what do I do?  Do I jump on the bandwagon and become yet one more person who needs to see achievements in order to value the person?  How can I do this if the goal is for them to heal?  I cannot.  I cannot let them get the message that I need to be impressed by these achievements to see their value and to care deeply about them.  I don’t know how many times I have heard, early on in therapy, that nothing impresses me, that I am stingy with praise.  This is not a part I like, and sometimes doing the right thing does not provide immediate gratification.  I might ask if this is important to them, what they would like me to say, or something to that effect.  I believe that they are not their achievements, but unique, valued individuals in their own right.  I cannot act like their worth comes from their achievements.  The gratification comes later.  But it takes time to face the feelings driving such perfectionism and anxiety, as I discuss in my book.  Those pushed-back feelings are not the happy ones.  I only comfort clients when the message is real and true—what the person has been through and still was not corrupted, the courage shown, the considerations that I appreciate.  But they do not have to perform for me and I cannot and will not encourage that behavior.  Why not just comfort and compliment them on their achievements? Because perfectionism didn’t just happen: It was born of emotional pain, sometimes agony, and feeling like a horrible person if they aren’t perfect. 
My clients are all intellectually or artistically superior for some reason.  My fondness for them is not because of that.  But to a person who never knew any other way of being valued and cared for, he or she might not know that right away, and thus I get told that I am stingy with praise, hard to please.  I don’t say this, but I am the easiest person to please they will ever meet.  It is a trap that would be easy to fall into, but I have done this for a long time and I don’t fall into it.  If there were a way to just comfort a person (and at appropriate times I do) and have them heal, I would.  But the clients’ need to  form their narratives, and slowly and with every consideration to their dignity, t. They need to face the sad feelings that make them strive for what is impossible.  This works.  It is a tremendous joy to see people getting better and watching as they notice it in one small way or another, but it’s not easy.  It would be so much easier to say what people want and watch them smile and say how nice you are, but that is not what we’re trying to do.  I will not betray their trust in me that I will try my best to help them heal, that I will provide the safe and understanding environment they need to do that.  This is not done overnight.  It takes time.  We do not like to face what we have struggled to keep out of awareness.  When people get impatient and want all the suffering to end, I silently think how it will be as fast as they themselves can tolerate.  Recently, there was a post of a study saying that one therapy session is as good as many.  WHAT?  I wondered if an insurance company did that study.  It is so not true.
 
I will end by sharing an exchange I had with my wonderful psychoanalyst, back in my 30s.  I told him about something, a score I had on a test or something like that.  He was old school and always called me Mrs. Edwards.  He said, “Mrs. Edwards, why are you trying to impress me?”  Dear God!  What can one say?  He then said, “Why are you trying to impress me with your intelligence?”  What was I going to say, that I wasn’t doing that?  LOL, right?  I think I said, “Oh my God” or something like that.  I took a couple of deep breaths and mumbled something about wanting him to think well of me.  He said that he did, and didn’t care about things like that test.  He was wonderful and seeing him was one of the nicer things I ever did for myself.  I am not so direct.  I know something like that has to be said, but I say it in a much gentler and roundabout way, and for all I know, he may also have with some.  I might be very low key about it, or ask why those things matter, but his excellent intervention was very to the point and I was at a point to cope with the embarrassment of it, because I knew how much he cared.
 
I love being a therapist.  I love working with perfectionists, and they are great people.  However, sometimes, like clients, we have to delay gratification, too, and just deal with it if clients interpret our behavior as being hard to impress, etc.  It is a wonderful job and the reward comes when you see people really healing.  Shortly after that they don’t need you anymore, and that, too, is part of the job -- again not my favorite part, but it is the goal.        

​Today I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned.  My dental hygienist is a very nice young and insightful woman.  She was telling me how she worked in my dentist’s office and previously in another, and a coworker at the other clinic was a troublemaker.  She tried to diffuse the situation with the coworker, but to no avail.  She told me that she finally left that job, that she told the dentist the truth about what had been going on, and that she left on very good terms, even though he hated to lose her.  She went on to tell me that she started thinking about her life, how she loved coming to work and helping people, and wanted to keep that, and that if she needed to, she could get more hours with another dentist.  She said that the quality of her life and her feelings about her job mattered more to her than staying in a place she had come to hate.  She said that the troublemaker was young and healthy, and asked why, if she didn’t like her job, she didn’t do something about it.  She added, “But people don’t know what they want.  We learn to want what we are told to want.”
 
This was a very sad statement, especially from someone so young, but it is unfortunately true.  We are taught what to want and keep trying to get at it whether we like it or not.  We are told that the school, the job, the money, the prestige--all meaningless without some satisfaction or contentment--are what matter.  Having more than others, being the best--the list of what we are told to want goes on and on.  People go broke getting the car they are told to want, or will perhaps attend a school they feel is really not training them well.  I can’t begin to count the number of people I have worked with who felt stuck in a job they were miserable in because it was a “good” job that paid well, and a lot of people would love to have it.  This has been a theme I have seen over and over for thirty years, and it is very sad every time.  We are told to want to chase after certain things and, if it is soul-numbing, too bad; we are supposed to keep on. As bad as this is and as tragic as the waste is, what is it like for people with a lot of shame?  “Surely”, they think, “Everyone else’s feelings have more validity than mine.”  Many people with an inordinate amount of shame can’t get beyond this.  Then they have the issue of having to tell their parents or other loved ones that they do not want, for example, to follow the career they had hoped for.  More shame.  Many people with a lot of shame will tell you they don’t even know what their feelings are.  When they begin to know them, they cry and realize they had never known before how they really felt about things.  In trying to be “good,” they totally squelch who they really are.  They go through the motions, hoping to alleviate the mental torture of trying to be what they think someone else wants, or what others say they “should” want. 
 
It is no wonder that people are starved for meaning, and in my view those with shame and perfectionism have been robbed of that more than almost anyone.  A kind of numbness lies beneath their sadness, understandable given that they feel they can’t even have their feelings.  Many are stuck in unsatisfying situations because they are regarded as prestigious or to be what they think “everyone” wants.  They would have to be crazy to leave.  As a psychologist, one of the saddest things I see in helping people with shame and perfectionism issues is that they really do think their feelings don’t matter.
 
No matter what you are going through and what your life narrative is, please remember that your feelings DO in fact matter, and that they have to matter first to you.  Apparent ​success and achievement are not the same as contentment or liking yourself.

​A lot of people have asked me what a PCS person is.  It is an acronym I use in my book, Fear of the Abyss: Healing the Wounds of Shame and Perfectionism, and it stands for Perfectionism, Control issues, and Shame.  It represents a type of personality, not an illness, and many people with PCS traits are very high-functioning.  However, the PCS person does not have just one trait but many, including the PCS traits, that form constellations, and a PCS person bears a heavy load, one that can lead to anxiety, panic, depression, eating disorders, and other problems.
 
People with this kind of personality have difficulty making decisions and feel that they are never adequate.  If other people stay until eight at work, they will stay until ten.  If they have to give a presentation, they will go over and over it, too many times, to try to make it perfect, but they never feel it is good enough.  They have difficulty making decisions, because every path has pros and cons, and they are afraid of the terrible self-judgment that would result from the cons.  Subjectively, they believe they just fear others judging them--and they do--but the real problem is that the criticism of others resonates with them.  Those who like themselves more do not feel so hurt by the criticism or disagreement of others. ​A PCS person is afraid of disappointing anyone and afraid of being disappointed.  Sometimes they are afraid to commit, because they fear that someone “better” or more perfect, can come along, and they will then be disappointed by their initial choice.  They are afraid to disappoint anyone, because it makes them feel like they are not good people.  Things are often seen as all good or all bad, black-or-white.  While most PCS people are extremely intelligent, this black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking prevents them from seeing the richness of different situations and choices.  Some people say they are “control freaks,” but this is not malicious: They are just trying to not be caught off guard and to somehow be at fault.  You can not plan a response with the unpredictable.
 
PCS people like to be needed, and this is ongoing validation that they need.  However, as I have written in another blog, no one wants to just need.  The other person wants to be needed as well, and this often leads to problems in relationships.    
 
At the bottom of the perfectionism, the avoidance of small, neutral mistakes at all costs, is shame, that many call low self-esteem.  It’s the same thing.  The attempt not to have any “black marks” at all, the perfectionism, is a defense against feeling very imperfect.  While no one likes rejection very much, the PCS person feels that someone else has “discovered” his or her supposed badness when he is rejected. 
 
Many PCS people do not reach out for help until there is a crisis, when their anxious perfectionism isn’t working in the current situation.  They can become very depressed or anxious suddenly, and will tell you sincerely that they don’t know where it came from.  It is hard to be this way, and the energy it takes to keep the shame at bay is tremendous.  It makes other people the cruel judge when the judge is actually internal.  While many say shame and perfectionism go hand in hand, which is true, they are not the same or equal in importance.  The perfectionism is a symptom that defends against the shame, the terrible, nagging feeling of not being good enough, of not being smart enough, nice enough, something enough.  The perfectionism and other symptoms discussed above become problems in their own right, but they are still defenses against the shame.
 
Because of this, it is important to decide how you address the problem to get some very well-deserved relief.  If you aim only at symptom reduction, telling yourself over and over you don’t need to be perfect, the emotional pain will remain and the symptoms will need to be constantly driven away, almost by brute force. If you face the sad and painful feelings that make you feel you need to be perfect, you will have the sadness, process it, and come to be free of the anxiety and the conflicts with others the perfectionism causes.  A symptom that is not needed, will not be there.  Addressing the underlying issue allows you to make decisions that are not based just on running from painful feelings.  It is the running away that causes the problems.
 
To read about PCS people should not cause you anxiety.  Reading about them should just show you that, if you have these anxieties, you have choices and a lot of hope for significant improvement.   PCS people are usually extremely kind, responsible, and intelligent, but they often suffer in silence.

I cannot say this enough.  Knowing your underlying dynamics will bring you more happiness, peace, and control over your life.  You can't really live in the present when unconscious issues from your past determine your choices.  People ask a lot about relationships, and I think we need to distinguish between what is done consciously and cognitively, and what is driven by underlying feelings, in which case we then use our rationale to justify it. 
 
One complaint that I hear often is people choosing the wrong partner, over and over.  I have seen many successful women, for example, in relationships with men with severe addictions, and they try time and time again to induce the person to stop using the drug of choice.  I have known many men who choose women who are emotionally abusive and unstable, and they complain of the loneliness and anxiety of this choice.  I have seen women with abusive men, who erroneously think that if they only think of the “magical” thing to say or do, that man will change, as if they have that control over other people.  A person can make a mistake.  A person can think someone is nice and then see a whole different side and leave right away.  I am not talking about that.  I am saying that when there is a pattern of behavior that leads to a bad choice, over and over, there is something else going on.  To address it on a conscious level will not help and I believe that doing this also prevents people from getting the kind of help that will enable them to understand why they do this. 
 
Labels are very popular now.  Some people will say, I’m a rescuer.”  Labels do not explain anything and do not help.  Having compassion for others is not the same thing as selecting badly over and over.  It is well known to therapists that many people leave one relationship only to start a new one with the exact same kind of person.  It is very sad, heartbreaking, when people tell you the number of years they have spent learning that there is a pattern and that this has something to do with them.  I feel that we owe our clients at least that.   ​While relationships are on everyone’s mind, the best you can do is learn your own dynamics.  A chapter of my book looks at one particular dynamic of the PCS person, a person with a constellation of traits including perfectionism, control issues, and shame.  There are others.  One of those others that is often seen is the fear of dependence or needing someone.  Problems with relationships are inevitable.  In theory, relationships offer a tremendous healing opportunity for individual personality issues. In practice, certain issues make relationships that much more challenging.
 
As human beings, we tend to keep trying to get our needs met; often those needs aren’t even conscious.  When powerful needs drive our behavior and we’re not aware of them,
they can devastate a relationship.  Sometimes people are aware of hurting others, but they don’t know why and can’t seem to stop.  A fear of dependence presents a huge challenge to a relationship.  People with a fear of dependence usually aren’t aware that this is their fear.  What they are more aware of is that they like to be needed.  The sense of being needed makes them feel worthy and secure—a feeling they do not often have.  Of course we all like to be needed, but the kind of person I’m talking about has needs that are stronger than the usual ones.
 
The problem is that people who fear dependence love to be needed so they can balance their fragile self-esteem.  But they have difficulty letting others know that they are needed or appreciated too.  In this kind of couple, one person has to be the lazy, incompetent, or dependent one in order for the person who wants to be needed to feel appreciated and valued.  This is not healthy or helpful for the success of any relationship.  
 
I’ve had many clients who did everything for their spouses and would make little jokes all the time about how their spouse couldn’t survive without them.  They were always shocked and hurt when the spouse would reach a point where he or she felt worthless, unappreciated and unloved.  For a relationship to be balanced, people must experience both sides.  They must both need the other and be needed.
 
For people who have been let down in the past, the prospect of needing someone else can be terrifying.  They see themselves as planning the best vacations, picking the best gifts, and doing all of the most important work in the relationship.  While this makes them feel temporarily worthy, they are unaware of the damage this does to the partner when the partner tries doing something for them.  They do not realize that if they are the best, by default, it suggests the other partner is the worst.
 
When the relationship is in trouble, the stronger partner becomes more and more of a perfectionist.  These people have trouble believing that this is exactly the behavior that they need to stop, and without addressing their individual issues, they simply cannot stop.
 
Couples often come to therapy with one complaining that the other does not do enough of something, and the accused will say that he or she is afraid, because their efforts never seem good enough.  They have not received gratitude, appreciation, or gotten to soothe a wounded vulnerability, and this becomes crippling to the relationship.  They have had to play the weak one to the partner’s perfectionism.
 
Truthfully, people do not want a perfect partner.  People want to feel needed and valued.
 
It is both sad and ironic that much of the damage done to people in a relationship has been by people not even aware of it, because they are so driven by their own needs.  They’re not trying to be sadistic or malicious.  But they behave in their insecure world in a way that makes them feel good about themselves and needed.  Sadly, this does not allow for the feelings and needs of someone else.
 
In light of this dynamic, we can understand how someone might consistently choose a partner with severe/unacceptable problems and issues.  They feel that this person will make them feel needed, and will be very unlikely to ever leave.  It is very tragic to have this be the only force behind choosing a partner, and has very little to do with mature love.  By learning one’s own dynamics and growing, it becomes possible to find a partner who presents a chance of helping each other grow and experiencing real love.  So often the complaints people have about a partner are the very reasons that partner was chosen in the first place; it just wasn’t conscious.
 
I will end this by saying again, that giving a label such as co-dependent or rescuer does not explain or solve anything in terms of dynamics.  And addressing choices that are so very influenced by unconscious forces strictly in a conscious, cognitive way won’t help.  But knowing your own dynamics, processing your feelings, dealing with the real ones instead of selecting someone who can seem to drive them away, can give an emotional freedom I believe we are all meant to have.

I cannot say this enough.  Knowing your underlying dynamics will bring you more happiness, peace, and control over your life.  You can't really live in the present when unconscious issues from your past determine your choices.  People ask a lot about relationships, and I think we need to distinguish between what is done consciously and cognitively, and what is driven by underlying feelings, in which case we then use our rationale to justify it. 
 
One complaint that I hear often is people choosing the wrong partner, over and over.  I have seen many successful women, for example, in relationships with men with severe addictions, and they try time and time again to induce the person to stop using the drug of choice.  I have known many men who choose women who are emotionally abusive and unstable, and they complain of the loneliness and anxiety of this choice.  I have seen women with abusive men, who erroneously think that if they only think of the “magical” thing to say or do, that man will change, as if they have that control over other people.  A person can make a mistake.  A person can think someone is nice and then see a whole different side and leave right away.  I am not talking about that.  I am saying that when there is a pattern of behavior that leads to a bad choice, over and over, there is something else going on.  To address it on a conscious level will not help and I believe that doing this also prevents people from getting the kind of help that will enable them to understand why they do this. 
 
Labels are very popular now.  Some people will say, I’m a rescuer.”  Labels do not explain anything and do not help.  Having compassion for others is not the same thing as selecting badly over and over.  It is well known to therapists that many people leave one relationship only to start a new one with the exact same kind of person.  It is very sad, heartbreaking, when people tell you the number of years they have spent learning that there is a pattern and that this has something to do with them.  I feel that we owe our clients at least that.   ​While relationships are on everyone’s mind, the best you can do is learn your own dynamics.  A chapter of my book looks at one particular dynamic of the PCS person, a person with a constellation of traits including perfectionism, control issues, and shame.  There are others.  One of those others that is often seen is the fear of dependence or needing someone.  Problems with relationships are inevitable.  In theory, relationships offer a tremendous healing opportunity for individual personality issues. In practice, certain issues make relationships that much more challenging.
 
As human beings, we tend to keep trying to get our needs met; often those needs aren’t even conscious.  When powerful needs drive our behavior and we’re not aware of them,
they can devastate a relationship.  Sometimes people are aware of hurting others, but they don’t know why and can’t seem to stop.  A fear of dependence presents a huge challenge to a relationship.  People with a fear of dependence usually aren’t aware that this is their fear.  What they are more aware of is that they like to be needed.  The sense of being needed makes them feel worthy and secure—a feeling they do not often have.  Of course we all like to be needed, but the kind of person I’m talking about has needs that are stronger than the usual ones.
 
The problem is that people who fear dependence love to be needed so they can balance their fragile self-esteem.  But they have difficulty letting others know that they are needed or appreciated too.  In this kind of couple, one person has to be the lazy, incompetent, or dependent one in order for the person who wants to be needed to feel appreciated and valued.  This is not healthy or helpful for the success of any relationship.  
 
I’ve had many clients who did everything for their spouses and would make little jokes all the time about how their spouse couldn’t survive without them.  They were always shocked and hurt when the spouse would reach a point where he or she felt worthless, unappreciated and unloved.  For a relationship to be balanced, people must experience both sides.  They must both need the other and be needed.
 
For people who have been let down in the past, the prospect of needing someone else can be terrifying.  They see themselves as planning the best vacations, picking the best gifts, and doing all of the most important work in the relationship.  While this makes them feel temporarily worthy, they are unaware of the damage this does to the partner when the partner tries doing something for them.  They do not realize that if they are the best, by default, it suggests the other partner is the worst.
 
When the relationship is in trouble, the stronger partner becomes more and more of a perfectionist.  These people have trouble believing that this is exactly the behavior that they need to stop, and without addressing their individual issues, they simply cannot stop.
 
Couples often come to therapy with one complaining that the other does not do enough of something, and the accused will say that he or she is afraid, because their efforts never seem good enough.  They have not received gratitude, appreciation, or gotten to soothe a wounded vulnerability, and this becomes crippling to the relationship.  They have had to play the weak one to the partner’s perfectionism.
 
Truthfully, people do not want a perfect partner.  People want to feel needed and valued.
 
It is both sad and ironic that much of the damage done to people in a relationship has been by people not even aware of it, because they are so driven by their own needs.  They’re not trying to be sadistic or malicious.  But they behave in their insecure world in a way that makes them feel good about themselves and needed.  Sadly, this does not allow for the feelings and needs of someone else.
 
In light of this dynamic, we can understand how someone might consistently choose a partner with severe/unacceptable problems and issues.  They feel that this person will make them feel needed, and will be very unlikely to ever leave.  It is very tragic to have this be the only force behind choosing a partner, and has very little to do with mature love.  By learning one’s own dynamics and growing, it becomes possible to find a partner who presents a chance of helping each other grow and experiencing real love.  So often the complaints people have about a partner are the very reasons that partner was chosen in the first place; it just wasn’t conscious.
 
I will end this by saying again, that giving a label such as co-dependent or rescuer does not explain or solve anything in terms of dynamics.  And addressing choices that are so very influenced by unconscious forces strictly in a conscious, cognitive way won’t help.  But knowing your own dynamics, processing your feelings, dealing with the real ones instead of selecting someone who can seem to drive them away, can give an emotional freedom I believe we are all meant to have.

I haven’t posted on my page for a long time.  I have been very busy discussing my book with followers on the internet, where I’ve met many wonderful people all over the world, especially now that the book is in French.  Even so, I want to post more again and will try to be more active here.
 
Today I am thinking about Dr. Seuss, a man who wrote brilliant poems for children, witty, funny, rhythmic, that also teach life lessons, good for “big kids” as well.  One I particularly like is Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Here’s an excerpt I’d like to focus on for now:

​You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.
…
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
…
Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't
Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times
you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win
'cause you'll play against you.
…
 
If you never read this as a child, I strongly recommend it. It is delightful, but extremely thought-provoking.  As you laugh and enjoy the poem, it stops you several times as it comments on life, and especially on the themes of shame and perfectionism.
 
Oh, the Places You’ll Go is about growing up and leaving home.  It talks about flying higher than everyone else, running faster, being on television, and suddenly adds, ”Except when you won’t.”  It goes on to say that no one is ever the best in everything.  It discusses making mistakes and life’s hardships.  It talks about having a choice between two scary, dangerous things and not knowing what to do, and is really addressing how a person who has difficulty making decisions will have a hard time with this, because sometimes you just have to do something.  It goes on to talk about ending up in a “waiting place,” a land of ambiguity, indecision, insecurity, and avoidance, and then offers encouragement to get out of there.  I have seen adults very moved by reading this poem. Take a look at the whole poem  here .  Enjoy the genius of Dr. Seuss and smile, while taking in the lessons that we are not perfect, that life is hard, and that we sometimes do better than other times.
 
It is a sad fact that people are full of shame, of never feeling good enough.  I have seen this in different ethnic groups and both men and women.  The people who suffer with this are very decent people, which makes this even sadder.  Trying harder and harder to “prove” to oneself that one is not stupid, lazy, bad, or whatever that inner voice says, does not work for more than a few minutes.  That is why many people with shame and perfectionism are very high achievers.  The only way to not live this way, with a painful, nagging feeling of not being adequate or good or worthy, is to face your real feelings.  I think that practicing mindfulness needs to be done with your authentic feelings, not the feeling we wish we had.  I think to find the road to peace you need to look at those feelings so desperately fought against.
 
In the meantime, enjoy this poem by the wonderful Dr. Seuss.  It is entertaining, funny, and very wise. 

As a psychologist, I see a lot of people suffer because they keep trying to change a loved one.  They try to force an abusive parent to not manipulate and to apologize, or they try to change a partner or a child.  There are parents who try to arrange a child’s whole life, and cannot tolerate any mistakes they may make. 
 
Many years ago in Chicago, I saw a Reiki healer, Deanne Lozano.  She is a wonderful Reiki practitioner and I took a few of her classes as well.  One day we were talking and she said, “People need to be on the level they need to be on.”  We might not mean exactly the same thing, but this has been with me, this piece of wisdom, and has become a part of me.  Deanne came from the place that people need to love people as they are, regardless of level.  As a psychologist, that is not quite my emphasis.  Mine is that we need to ACCEPT that people are where they are, whether we love them or not.  Granted, this usually comes up with loved ones, but it seems to me acceptance is more the psychological issue. 

I have seen so many people suffer by trying to get an apology for years, one that is not forthcoming.  They try everything, to no avail.  Nowadays, it is probably true that everyone has some disturbed relatives or at least ones with some degree of dysfunction.  Adult children are often paralyzed by guilt and cannot get free of being dominated by a mentally ill parent.  Adult children are often filled with shame and anxiety trying to disprove how they really feel about themselves deep down.  I have also seen parents push their children to be popular and to have the best grades, and it really is a soul-numbing way to have to grow up.
 
Often, these are love relationships.  An adult child wants to share things with the parents that are not possible.  While I think who we love is an individual decision. I do think we have to accept.  People are the way they are and, truthfully, we only have the power to change ourselves.  When people do want to change, a therapist can be a guide and companion, but the walk will be walked by the client.
 
When people share with me that they are fighting a hurt or disappointment year after year and getting more and more frustrated trying to change someone, I share with them what Deanne said long ago.  They hear the words and look shocked, and they get it.  People need to be on the level where they need to be.  Deanne said many others have said this better, but I like how she said it.  Maybe she meant love and I mean acceptance, but I have seen that this has set a lot of people free, this ability to accept the way things are, and this provides a foundation of emotional strength and growth.  This does not mean we do not fight to make the world better, or permit or accept clearly wrong or hurtful behavior.  Rather, this idea allows us to accept how another human being is in the world, and not set ourselves up for frustration and further pain but to align our expectations and make decisions that are rooted in reality.  It also enables us to remember that we are not responsible for the behaviors of another.  We know what we give and what we do, and what others do with that must be owned by them.
 
As a therapist, when people tell me that someone who has hurt them HAS to change, I share Deanne’s statement with them.  There is always a surprised silenced, a pause, followed by an “Oh.”  It is a powerful truth.  It actually empowers people and gives them the tool to let go of a significant part of what hurts emotionally.

So very many people experience loneliness over the holidays and others struggle with perfectionism and stress, trying to make sure everyone is having a good time and trying to take responsibility for things outside of their control.  But, now that the holidays are over, many people struggle with the letdown.  It seems funny for people to go through this: We should be glad the stressful part is over, but that is not always how it is.

For people who live with ongoing depressed feelings, stress can be a good distractor.  Oftentimes, people create drama, not even being consciously aware of it, in order to avoid being alone with their own thoughts.  They describe a feeling of emptiness that they fear, not yet understanding that this quiet is the path to insight and peace.  Others live with constant anxiety, and while the holidays can make this worse, they do enable people to externalize the anxiety.  Once the excitement is over there is often a feeling of unease, as they then go back to their usual state.  This is why the time right after the holidays is often a busy time for therapists.

It has been said, and it is true, that a crisis can be an opportunity for growth.  While no one would willingly go through a crisis, when one gets help for issues that are usually ignored, those issues often disappear.  A similar thing can be said for the holidays.  Whether the holidays were generally happy or sad, when the external excitement has died down, going back to the usual level of internal noise or quiet can be disconcerting for many people.  Instead of panicking, it is possible to know that this is the normal state of affairs, and that just like with a crisis, seeking help for those issues that speak to us in the quiet, instead of trying to once more drown them out, can be an extremely powerful thing to do.  Whether the holidays were “good” or “bad” for someone, the after holidays “blahs” can be a wonderful opportunity to listen to our own feelings and to grow and become stronger. 

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I am thinking about love, what it is and what it is not.  “Approximately 150 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.” [1]   Although this holiday was not even meant to be about romantic love, it has evolved that way, and a great many single people once more find themselves suffering through a holiday they believe identifies some part of their lives, as defined by Hallmark.  I do not object to a sincerely selected and sent card or present, but what the problem is, is that we keep allowing business and profit to define for us what the holidays mean, what our lives should be like, or whether we are even happy or not.

[1] http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day

Love is a word that is grossly overused.  People going out with someone for a few weeks say they are “in love” or that they “love” the person.  Then it suddenly ends because they didn’t know each other at all.  It also seems that nowadays people use intimacy, an intense, serious relationship to get to know someone and then, if it doesn’t work, they break up.  This is not love.  Impressing your friends with how good-looking someone is is not love.  Being with someone who makes you feel good is not love.  Even more commonly and unfortunately, “getting” a partner to fit in with what you think others have is not love.  It is a word almost embarrassing to use, as it is so misused and at times manipulative, as when someone tries to own and control the other person.

It seems that love is a sincere concern and empathy for another person, feeling badly for their sorrows and glad for their successes in life.  It is so many other things—an attachment that respects the feelings and independence of the other person, doing things so that you can enjoy the person’s surprise or happiness—and it is not the same as the being “in love” phase, during which people project their fantasies onto the other person.  No, love is what remains after seeing the flaws and imperfections, the disappointments, the very humanity of the person versus the fantasy, and if love remains, it is real love. 

The famous British analyst, Donald Winnicott, talked about the “good enough” mother, the first love in most people’s lives.  If the experience is more good than bad, the person learns to integrate feelings, accept imperfections in self and others, and does not split, alternating between extreme idealization and helpless rage.  When we have had a good-enough background, or have corrected it with therapy, a good-enough person to love, as opposed to using the other to prove something about ourselves, is more the real thing.

We are very geared to making money, and unfortunately companies influence our culture and way of looking at things to a great degree.  Not because they care about us and our values, or the way children grow up, but motivated by a desire for profit.  We know the message about Christmas being a time of great love surrounded by our families, and that is something that simply is not true for a great many people.  Now, with Valentines Day, there are people who feel awful about being single, not because they are really unhappy, but because they feel they are not part of the way things are “supposed” to be. I have sat with numerous clients as they cried because they wanted to get flowers where they worked.  One client sent them to herself, but at least she understood that what she wanted was different from love.  With this holiday coming up, I wish everyone self-love, compassion, and respect.  There are many ways to love with different people, and with animals, and I wish everyone love, whether or not it is stereotypical.  While I am not putting down exchanging cards and sentiments with loved ones, I urge people to think of love that is not romantic as well, and to not compare their lives with a fantasy.