A phrase in a forum board post caught my attention and stuck with me: “I so desperately need … to be ok.”

We will be a lot happier when we stop desperately needing our selves, our relationships, and everything else to be ok.

Does that make sense? If not, perhaps we’re striving for some idealized concept of normalcy, at the expense of accepting our own individuality.

Striving to make things perfect is a hard habit to break. I think about family holiday dinners when I was young. Grandmother was up before dawn starting the rolls, cooking and preparing; the table was set perfectly, and we all dressed up in uncomfortable clothes to look our very best.

Why? To create some perfect tableau of what Thanksgiving ‘should’ look like? (Thank you, Norman Rockwell…)

It’s ok to make traditions and be fancy. But if imperfection ‘ruins’ a holiday, we’ve created the ideal—and invited the upset.

Wanting things to be ok, working toward specific goals for our life and our relationships—that is healthy and productive. But there are a couple of ways we can make this a source of stress.

‘Desperately needing things to be ok’ describes the first problem. Theneed,and the fact that it isdesperate.That is a big demand! Things will not always be ok—in your relationships, in your job, or in other parts of your life.

Sometimes things will not be ok in parts of your life that you can change—so that is often a matter of overcoming the feeling of being overwhelmed, knowing where to start, and taking action.

But sometimes things will not be ok in parts of your life that you can’t change, or can’t reasonably change right now. So learning acceptance, though not easy, is really important. It is mostly a matter of changing our beliefs about the situations.

Sometimes it’s a matter of describing the situation more realistically. We use a lot of absolute words, and we especially use a lot of them when we describe things we’re upset about. Words such as always, never, etc. Changing our vocabulary is a basic tool in changing our beliefs.

Sometimes it’s a matter of recognizing and reminding yourself about the parts of your self, your relationship, your job, etc., that you find pleasing, supportive, or beneficial in some way (even as simple as ‘it’s a paycheck’ in the case of an unpleasant work environment).

This is where a journal can be very useful: it gives you a record you can refer to in times of stress—simple reminders about what you like about a person (including yourself!), place, or situation. You can begin to see the patterns, record the changes, and identify when you are creating demands and stress.

Sometimes it’s a matter of disputing the overstatements.

Useful questions to ask yourself include ‘is it really that bad?’ … ‘have I experienced things that were more unpleasant than this?’, etc. When you catch yourself thinking the negative, think the positive. Say it out loud.

When I say that we are striving for an idealized concept of normalcy at the expense of accepting our individuality, I am getting at one of the ways we sabotage our self-acceptance. Not self-esteem or self-image. Just accept that you are unique and have value simply by being alive, and that you have quirky characteristics just as everyone else does.

Maybe there are ways those characteristics could be viewed as flaws, in that they lead to unhealthy behavior. So we work on that behavior. But unless those quirks (‘flaws’) are sociopathic, we can choose to accept them in ourselves and in others.

If you are, say, impulsive and crave excitement, you can recognize and accept that and find things to do that allow you to have fun with it. The characteristic is not a flaw or a defect. You are not defective, weak, or abnormal.

If your spouse/partner has a different way of looking at things, you can remind yourself why you like that difference and how it may be helpful to your marriage and your long term goals.

Whenever you hear or think a sentence that begins ‘You need to…’ or ‘you should be more…,’ let it set off your absolute thought radar that an expectation is about to be expressed. There’s not much difference between expectations and demands.

When you try to define your self by how others see you or whether or not they approve of you, you are trying to mold your image—what the world sees—to what you think is ‘normal’.

By definition, then, you think you are ‘abnormal’ when you don’t meet their approval—your friends, parents, coworkers, significant others. Great shame or stress about what others think of us can be really crippling emotionally! It may be unrealistic—the fact is they probably aren’t thinking as much about us as we believe they are. More to the point: it doesn’t matter.

So, in sum:

·      the world won’t always be perfect;

·      you will have characteristics that sometimes get you in trouble;

·      there are difficult situations and judgmental twerps we sometimes have to deal with.

 

If other people make judgments about you based on limited or incorrect information, or based on their own prejudices...don’t worry about it. That’s their problem. Don’t make it yours!