As a card-carrying perfectionist, I have often viewed life as a competition. There is The Best, and there is everyone else. My lifelong goal has been to be The Best at whatever it was - not out of a healthy sense of competition, but more because I viewed myself as a failure if I wasn't The Best. My constant striving was fueled by a desire to finally feel like I could measure up to everyone else.
As a teenager, my quest towards being The Best was challenged daily by the extremely competitive environment I lived in - that of honors classes and music conservatory. I was a concert flutist, and attended a prestigious music conservatory while enrolled in a performing arts high school. Not only did I need to achieve perfect grades (which I nearly conquered, if not for my dammed music theory classes), but also achieve first chair status in orchestra, small wind ensemble and concert band. I was absolutely ruthless during those years. Actually, I had forgotten how awful I was until curiosity led me to flip through my high school yearbook. Most of the messages from my friends include some mention of how I "pushed them to work harder", "drove them crazy", and "made their life a living hell." Ouch. The process towards becoming The Best usually included alienating myself from my close friends, all of whom were flutists and strove towards the same goal as mine. It made for some tenuous, stressful times. As far as I was concerned, losing friends was just part of being The Best, and I accepted it as a mater of fact. The most important thing - indeed, the only important thing - was to win.
My anorexia only amplified this thinking process. Losing weight, conquering my need for food, sleep, and affection, was the way I found to "win" the competition. Anorexia made me feel special. It was my trump card. Giving up my eating disorder meant giving up this one way I had of feeling special, of being The Best. As long as I ate less, and weighed less, then at least I could be The Best at that. Right? Too bad this contest is so tremendously self-destructive.
Although I've learned in the past few years that this is a very distorted and disordered way of thinking - a way of thinking that preceded the eating disorder - it's still very much there and very much present. Now, reading my high school's alumni magazine is an exercise in self-loathing. The accomplishments of my classmates make me almost feel ill when I look at my life. My therapist calls this "compare and despair." I have similar feelings when checking out the stats of some blogs I follow. I spend entirely too much time and energy trying to figure out what makes some so successful, how they have so many followers and sponsors and lead such gorgeous glamorous lives. Now, I can't even say "Well, at least I'm eating less then they are!" Because I'm in recovery, and almost certainly not.
Now, it seems I am hungry all the time. Like, ALL the time. I'm assuming it's due to the fact that I'm actually paying attention to hunger cues (which I used to do my best to ignore.) Giving in to my hunger would mean, in my head, that I'd be eating more than most women. I defined being The Best for so long as eating the least. Because of this, now, I seem to be The Worst, which is pretty much a living hell for someone who has perfectionism.
I don't always want to feel I need to participate in the contest but don't yet quite know how else to feel okay with myself without these concrete measures. I always have this profound sense of inadequacy, and this was mediated, temporarily, by the eating disorder. It quelled the anxieties of not measuring up, of not being good enough.
I know that I need to stop defining myself in relation to others. And not just any "others," but those who have achieved more and done more and make me feel like utter crap when I think about what my life is and what it has done. I know I need to compare me to, well, ME and to hell with everyone else.
Have you ever struggled with competition? Do you have trouble with perfectionism? How do you avoid the compare and despair trap that so many bloggers struggle with? Do you get caught up in comparing your stats with more successful bloggers?
As a teenager, my quest towards being The Best was challenged daily by the extremely competitive environment I lived in - that of honors classes and music conservatory. I was a concert flutist, and attended a prestigious music conservatory while enrolled in a performing arts high school. Not only did I need to achieve perfect grades (which I nearly conquered, if not for my dammed music theory classes), but also achieve first chair status in orchestra, small wind ensemble and concert band. I was absolutely ruthless during those years. Actually, I had forgotten how awful I was until curiosity led me to flip through my high school yearbook. Most of the messages from my friends include some mention of how I "pushed them to work harder", "drove them crazy", and "made their life a living hell." Ouch. The process towards becoming The Best usually included alienating myself from my close friends, all of whom were flutists and strove towards the same goal as mine. It made for some tenuous, stressful times. As far as I was concerned, losing friends was just part of being The Best, and I accepted it as a mater of fact. The most important thing - indeed, the only important thing - was to win.
My anorexia only amplified this thinking process. Losing weight, conquering my need for food, sleep, and affection, was the way I found to "win" the competition. Anorexia made me feel special. It was my trump card. Giving up my eating disorder meant giving up this one way I had of feeling special, of being The Best. As long as I ate less, and weighed less, then at least I could be The Best at that. Right? Too bad this contest is so tremendously self-destructive.
Although I've learned in the past few years that this is a very distorted and disordered way of thinking - a way of thinking that preceded the eating disorder - it's still very much there and very much present. Now, reading my high school's alumni magazine is an exercise in self-loathing. The accomplishments of my classmates make me almost feel ill when I look at my life. My therapist calls this "compare and despair." I have similar feelings when checking out the stats of some blogs I follow. I spend entirely too much time and energy trying to figure out what makes some so successful, how they have so many followers and sponsors and lead such gorgeous glamorous lives. Now, I can't even say "Well, at least I'm eating less then they are!" Because I'm in recovery, and almost certainly not.
Now, it seems I am hungry all the time. Like, ALL the time. I'm assuming it's due to the fact that I'm actually paying attention to hunger cues (which I used to do my best to ignore.) Giving in to my hunger would mean, in my head, that I'd be eating more than most women. I defined being The Best for so long as eating the least. Because of this, now, I seem to be The Worst, which is pretty much a living hell for someone who has perfectionism.
I don't always want to feel I need to participate in the contest but don't yet quite know how else to feel okay with myself without these concrete measures. I always have this profound sense of inadequacy, and this was mediated, temporarily, by the eating disorder. It quelled the anxieties of not measuring up, of not being good enough.
I know that I need to stop defining myself in relation to others. And not just any "others," but those who have achieved more and done more and make me feel like utter crap when I think about what my life is and what it has done. I know I need to compare me to, well, ME and to hell with everyone else.
Have you ever struggled with competition? Do you have trouble with perfectionism? How do you avoid the compare and despair trap that so many bloggers struggle with? Do you get caught up in comparing your stats with more successful bloggers?
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