Be Good Enough

Driving to school one morning, Chris Evans announced on Virgin Radio that ‘perfection is the enemy of good enough’. It had been the usual chaotic start to the day. I ran around making breakfast, looking for lost shoes, answering emails, yelling the time to the kids every fifteen minutes and praying that they really were getting dressed. The traffic had presented its usual problems and as is routine, I found myself hurtling along the back roads, hoping that nothing would be coming in the opposite direction.

Just as I rounded a particularly sharp bend in the wrong gear, Chris’s words reached my ears. ‘You don’t need to be perfect; you just need to be good enough’. I slowed down, caught my breath and listened. He was talking about a book called ‘The Perfection Trap’ and the author that he was due to interview later on, Professor Thomas Curran. ‘There, listen to this kids’, I yelled (I have to shout because no one takes any notice otherwise). ‘This is what you have to remember today.  Just try to be good enough.’  Typically, they both just ignored me.

By the time I got home, I did manage to listen to some of the interview.  However, by then I was working and no longer able to pay attention. But that phrase ‘perfection is the enemy of good enough’ stayed with me. As the day wore on and I got irritated with the things I needed to do, I kept repeating it to myself. Keep on going; just get it done, it doesn’t need to be perfect.

I’ve spent all my life, from my time as a teenager until now, striving to be perfect. And I haven’t succeeded. So, I’ve considered this to be failure. The consequence of which is that I believe that I have failed and my life has been a waste. Sometimes I’ve got close to perfection. Other times, I’ve tried so hard and then, halfway to achieving what I want, I’ve realised that it is a pointless search. So, I’ve given up and not tried anymore.  Seeing this written down here, I can tell you that it makes me feel very, very sad.  I don’t believe that I have ever truly reached my potential and I wonder if I could have done more.

Intrigued by the parts of the interview I heard, I looked Professor Curran up. (thomascurran.co.uk) He’s a Professor of Behavioural Psychology and Perfectionism is his primary area of expertise. Intrigued at the idea that Perfectionism is a thing to be studied (and being a sucker for a psychology/self-help book), I bought The Perfection Trap.  I’ve now read it and it explains a lot.

Professor Curran describes Perfectionism as our favourite flaw. Think about it; how many times have you been asked in a job interview, what are your strengths and weaknesses and responded ‘oh, sometimes I’m a bit of a perfectionist’. It’s a cliché and a joke.  We laugh at it. Except it isn’t funny. Perfection is an impossible goal. Trying to reach it sends people mad. It is unattainable. It’s a malignant ideal. Yet we persist in believing in it.

According to the Prof, there are three types of Perfectionism:

1. Self-oriented Perfectionism – where you believe you must be perfect and nothing but being perfect will do.  This is the standard that you set yourself.  The voice in your head telling you that you must be perfect all the time or you are failing.

2. Socially Prescribed Perfectionism – where you believe that others expect you to be perfect.  Where you are sure that everybody thinks that you are perfect and so you cannot not be perfect for fear of what they might think about you or how you will be judged.

3. Other–oriented Perfectionism – the belief that all other people out there are perfect.  This is us watching the TV, or YouTube or TikTok or Instagram and believing the rest of the world is perfect and that everybody gets it right all the time.  And if they are all so perfect, why can’t you be the same?  It has to be possible.

Of course, those of us who struggle with perfectionist ideals don’t just suffer from one of the above.  Nope, we normally have issues with all three.  I know I do.  I made sure that I always had a chicken in the freezer for 15 years of my life so that (a) if I need to, I could be the perfect wife/mother/host and able to rustle up roast chicken at a moment’s notice; (b) so that I can reassure myself that if I need to rustle up a that dinner for other people they would believe I was able to deal with any emergency situation; and (c) so that I could compare myself with the rest of the world, who (if they were faced with an urgent food situation) would always be able to cope with aplomb because that’s the way it is on the TV.

How mad is that?

The book talks about how much damage living like this does to your mental health.  How believing that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is the worst possible way to live your life.  Why do I think that being taught that to be the best and perfect means that I have to suffer to get there?  Which teacher decided that was a good idea? Worse still, why do we go along with this awful belief that to be the best we can be, means that you must turn into someone so tough, so uncompromising and so fearless that you inevitably become reclusive, tormented and mentally distressed?

The worst sort of perfectionism though is the Other-oriented Perfectionism.  It’s the Perfectionism where we spend hours looking at the amazing lives of others on Facebook and all of the other social media platforms and wonder why your own isn’t so fabulous.  Then you try to make it amazing but nothing ever lives up to your expectations.  But your expectations weren’t real to begin with.  This is because the person whose life you are so desperate to emulate has spent so much time creating a façade that isn’t really real either. This is most likely due to them suffering from extreme levels of Socially Prescribed Perfectionism.  They believe that they must present their perfect life to others or suffer criticism.  

So, the cycle continues.  We believe we must be perfect.  And then we look at others and believe them to be perfect.  I try to live up to this because I am afraid that I will be judged if I am not perfect.  In doing so, we are just driving ourselves slowly crazy. That is why mental health issues are at an all time high and why so many of us are anxious and depressed because our lives can never live up to what we think they should be.

I am about to start another week of work, whilst trying to juggle two kids, a husband and all the problems that we all have on a daily basis. It will be full of ‘did I send that email?’ ‘Have we got milk in the fridge?’ ‘How long will it take to get to that meeting?’ ‘Do we have anything for dinner’.  This week, I’m going to stop crippling myself with guilt and remember that I am doing good enough. I’m not going to beat myself up when the PE kits aren’t ready, the beds aren’t made and I didn’t prepare the document I promised I would finish. I’m going to think that I am good enough. I think it’s about time we all did.

You can find all of our Spring Blogs here and our Summer Blogs here.

Growing Up Is Hard To Do

On quiet nights when there is little to watch on the TV and we have exhausted all the box sets and streamed series’, my husband has taken to watching YouTube. He likes the travel videos. Mostly the ones showing people camping in freezing cold parts of the world that he is unlikely to ever visit. I personally cannot see why. But as he listens through his headphones and watches this on his laptop, it makes for peaceful evenings. I don’t argue and let him get on with it.

One night this week, my husband was watching some form of wild camping malarkey in the coldest part of Alaska (or some such country at the end of beyond), when he put his laptop down and wandered off from our lounge (with headphones on and still connected) into the next room.  Our son appeared and seeing his Dad walking out went and picked up the laptop. I watched on, rather unconcerned. Then, out of the corner of my eye I could see him fiddling with the laptop and tapping on the keyboard.  He very quickly put it down and went to find another seat. From there, with the smallest hint of a smile on his face, he began casually scrolling through his phone.

My husband almost ran back into the lounge, looking rather bewildered with his mouth open and headphones askew.  I didn’t move. After all these years, I have learnt that my husband being particularly confused is not in itself something to worry about. It is now apparent that this is a rather natural state for him to be in.  He looked around, checked his laptop, didn’t say a word and wandered off again.

My son got up and went over to the laptop for a second time.  He began fiddling and typing again. This time he didn’t move and the broadest of grins came over his face. Before I knew what was happening, my husband had raced back into the lounge. Seeing my son sitting with his laptop, he began shouting ‘is that you, are you doing that?’  Now, whilst I know that my husband’s confused state is not something to worry about, him being confused and panicking normally is. I knew at that moment that I would need to act. This was going to necessitate me moving from the sofa.

‘You listen to this, just you listen’, my husband said, thrusting his headphones into my hands.  My son, who could now barely do anything for laughing so hard, typed away on the laptop.  Through the headphones came the words ‘what a chump, what a chump, what a chump,’ repeated over and over again.

This moment of mischief and deviousness, something that happens all too regularly here, thankfully provided a moment of hilarity (and yet another story for us to endlessly relay in years to come) in what had been a frankly horrible week.  Being a kid is great. This week though, I have had to come to realise that the problem with being a kid is that at some point you have to grow up. Growing up then involves taking care of the adults.

My Dad has Prostate Cancer. The doctor’s control it. Dad’s had it for a while. At this point, you will need to forgive me as I must admit to having no knowledge about Prostate Cancer. I don’t want to find out about it or even want to know about it. Yes, I probably should be researching it on the internet so that I have the facts and the information. But I haven’t and actually, I can’t face it. 

If you need help with Prostate Cancer or to find out more about it (because you are braver than me) then you can go to Prostate Cancer UK, who have lots of information.

Dad now needs Radiotherapy.  This started a couple of weeks ago but it hasn’t gone well.  Due to the other ailments and medical problems that Dad has, not to mention the various different drugs Dad is taking (the drugs to control one thing, the drugs to counteract the side effects of those drugs, and then the additional drugs that Dad now takes for the new problems that he has due to the treatment he is having that is supposed to prolong his life), Dad is in hospital with an infection that requires intravenous antibiotics and fluids and bed rest.

My Dad is completely confused and doesn’t know which hospital he is in or what day it is. My Mum is struggling to cope. I knew I was in for problems when she started texting at 6.36am and wondered why there was no response until I had got up and found my phone at about 7.30.

It is not an easy situation as we live some way from my parents. It isn’t possible for me to just hop in the car and pop over to sort it all out.  My sister is in a similar position. We do understand perfectly well that my Dad is ill and as a result he is completely disorientated and angry that he can’t go home.  It is taking time for the antibiotics to work. It is obvious that the infection is having a dreadful effect on him that only time and more drugs will resolve.  In truth, us running over there to see Dad for one hour a day (visiting is very specific; only one person, per one hour) won’t make a lot of difference.

We also understand that this is all very hard for our Mum to try to sort out. It has been very painful watching as she has become so impatient with Dad and what has happened.  She seems to be treating the whole episode as being terribly inconvenient for her.  Inevitably, things came to a head. During one conversation Mum told me that she just didn’t understand why Dad ‘couldn’t make himself content where he was until he got better’ and not be rude to the nursing staff, this being what she would do. I was also told ‘I have no idea of what he expects me to do about it all. If he insists on coming home, I can’t give him antibiotics by injection’.

When I tried to point out that Dad was so ill that (a) he wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what he thought and (b) he probably couldn’t understand what he was doing there, that it was clear he didn’t know one day from the next, that his current irascible behaviour was a symptom of all of this and couldn’t she be just a little more understanding. My Mum accused me of blaming her for everything and not being prepared to help. That put a rather swift end to the call.  Following this, my Mum then called my sister to tell her how inconsiderate and unsympathetic I was. It went on and on and on.  

I know that I am not the only person in this position but I didn’t realise how suddenly it would happen to me.  It has come as something of a nasty surprise. Looking after the people who you thought looked after you is not something that you want to deal with. It has added meaning; that your parents are getting old, that they are coming to a point in life where they cannot cope and need help. It’s also another responsibility to add to the mounting number of things that I have to deal with every day. To all of those people out there who are doing this now, you have my admiration. I know that it is going to be one of the hardest things that I am ever going to have to navigate.  At the moment, I don’t know how I will.

You can find all of our Summer Season Blogs here. Catch up with our Spring Season Blogs here.

The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 2)

And now you know about the Lizard that talks to me. Before you assume that I have finally lost it, I think I should explain a little bit more.

Sabre-Toothed Tigers lived on earth between 23 million and 2.6 million years ago.  Woolly Mammoths wandered about at least a thousand years after the first Pyramids were built in Egypt.  Us human beings spent our time trying to co-exist and were probably under constant threat of being savaged and eaten.  To be honest, it’s a complete surprise that we got anything done other than run away.  Back in those days, we were just trying to invent fire and the wheel.  Surviving was the priority.  That and finding the odd small mammal to snack on.

I’ve never met a Sabre-Toothed Tiger. I have met a number of managers who thought they had the same qualities, and a surprising number who bore a resemblance to the Mammoths. I imagine it must have been a pretty terrifying experience.  Particularly, if all you were armed with is a rather poorly put together stone axe (think Fred in his leopard skin in The Flintstones).  The problem is that, for those of us living in the 21^st Century, when we experience what we perceive to be a threat, we still deal with it as if it still is a battle between us and the Sabre-Toothed Tiger.  And this is where the Lizard that talks to me comes from.

By the time I had my second child, I’d spent about 15 years working in what are best described as toxic places.  I was constantly worried that whoever I was working for, whether they be clients, customers or managers and employers. I’d be convinced that they were going to find fault.  I could do a great job, the best job, a perfect job. But for some reason it never seemed to be enough.  There was a continuous feeling of wondering who was going to come at you and from which direction.  I had to develop eyes in the back of my head.  The internal politics was horrible.  There was always gossip and rumour.  If you did a good job, someone would find something that you could have done better.

With two very tiny children now in tow and working part-time only, I realised that no one that I was working for looked upon me favourably.  I was now just a Mum in an office, who had to leave at a certain time to get her kids.  The consequence? They stopped relying on me to be competent.  Why? Because I was no longer prepared to give my soul to the people who paid me. They in turn were no longer interested in me.  It sounds outrageous but believe me, this is how it was. 

In 2020, at the time of the Covid19 Pandemic, I realised that the voice in my head got really loud when I was anxious, worried and felt that I was under attack.  As we were all locked down, the voice began to chatter and got louder and finally I joined the dots as to why.  For the first time I really recognised that if I was scared, afraid or under pressure, I had a voice inside my head that began to shout and talk continuously.  

As if by coincidence, one day flicking through social media, I came across a post about a book called “That Little Voice in Your Head” by Mo Gawdat.  Having looked at it, wondered about it, worried about buying it and then not reading it, thinking for a long time that it probably wouldn’t help and generally engaging in endless debate with myself that it might help and it might not, and if it didn’t so what, I could just add it to the huge pile of other self-help books I have and then donate them to charity, I finally bought it.

What I have learnt has finally helped me to understand a little bit about how my brain functions.  I’m going to try to explain it here, probably very badly.  My suggestion to anyone reading this is that, if you want it explained better, you should go and get the book to read for yourself. You can read more about Mo Gawdat, his other books and his mission for us all to find happiness by going to his website https://www.mogawdat.com

Our brains have three parts, the Reptilian Brain, the Limbic (or Mammalian) Brain and the Rational Brain.  I’m going to leave the second two parts for other stories on other days.  This blog is what I have found out about the Reptilian Brain only.

To be clear, you do not have the brain of a reptile.  There is no fear of your inner Alligator suddenly gaining control of you. You won’t find yourself going berserk in your local swamp. What we do all have though is a part of our brain that is primal (and found in reptiles) and completely focussed on our survival.  It controls the body’s vital functions, our breathing, how the blood moves around your body and your heart rate.  It is also triggered as soon as we think we have a threat to contend with.

What I didn’t know during all those years that I was dealing with the stress of work, was that all I was doing was dealing with what I interpreted as daily threats.  Whilst I wasn’t facing death or being threatened with being imminently eaten, my Reptilian Brain treated them in the same way.  Our brains are hard-wired to keep us safe.  Every time my brain sensed a threat, the survival hormones kicked in and triggered the Reptilian Brain response. This included a voice in my head that began to scream that I needed to survive this.  The problem was that, what my brain thought of as impending peril were just difficult meetings. Or phone calls, complaining emails and the employers who were finding things to criticise over and over again.  

Now, having the odd threat of this type to deal with is ok.  Your mind and body has time to recover from it.  When it happens as much as it would to me, you begin to see everything as a threat, even if it isn’t.  The Lizard that talks to me (or Lizzie if you like) is in fact my now over developed Reptilian Brain. It kicks in and yells at me (in lots of different and imaginative ways) of danger, even when there is none.

From reading this book, I have discovered that by allowing Lizzie to talk to me the way she does (Mo Gawdat suggests that it can help to give your brain or the voice a name to help you to quieten it down, apparently, it isn’t weird, honest) that this has led me to become well practised in dealing with every threat I encounter in the same way.  I have without realising learned this behaviour.  What’s sadder is that this learned behaviour is the consequence of not stopping the stress that I was under years ago. I just went along with it, thinking it was normal.  I now know that it wasn’t normal and it shouldn’t have happened.

I’m still reading the book.  It is a good book but it is hard going.  Training your brain to stop behaving in a way that it has done for over 20 years is tough. It takes time.  It’s complicated.  I find it hard to admit that this is the way I feel.  All I can say at the moment is that I am working on it.  I can’t stop Lizzie yet but I will keep trying.

You will find more of our Summer Season Blogs here.

Summer Reading for Kids

For those of you with children, Summer reading for kids is hard to get them to do! Em has struggled to get both her boy and girl to read and learn that reading can be fun. Finding things for them to read is half the battle. Here are a few ideas.

Fancy some Poetry? Try Attie Lime.

Attie writes Poetry for Primary School Children. You can find here website here and you can buy some of her writing here.

You can find more of our book recommendations here.

The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 1)

This blog is The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 1). You will find The Lizard that Talks to Me (Part 2) here.

This week the Lizard that talks to me has been chatting away.  It comes when I am worried or when I am under pressure.  The more pressure or stress that I am under, the louder it gets.  It will wake me up at 2.30am, leaving me turning over and over in bed, almost begging it to shut up and leave me alone so that I can go back to sleep.  It’s the voice that is with me when I give up trying and sit drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits at 3am.  

I’m not sure when I first realised that this voice was there.  I remember growing up and having the talking in my head.  To be clear, the voice is my voice.  It is me talking to myself. As I’ve learnt more about it, I have taken to calling it the Lizard that talks to me but I didn’t always know what it was.  I didn’t think it was strange until my teenage years when you start to understand a bit more about mental health and the issues that teenagers might face.  When I began to understand a bit more about things like schizophrenia and personality disorders, the voice that I had babbling to me began to frighten me a bit.  

I recall asking my Mum if she had a voice in her head that talked to her.  ‘Well, of course I do’ came back the answer.  When I pressed her to find out if it was weird, she told me to stop being so silly.  Mental health wasn’t something she had time for.  We didn’t discuss it again.  I forgot about it and carried on growing up and hoping it was all normal.  

Having done poorly in my French GCSE exam, I was no longer able to do French ‘A’ Level.  This left me with two options that fitted into my timetable; Economics or Psychology.  I wasn’t that keen on either.  I thought that Economics would be boring and I thought Psychology would be a complete of a waste of time.  The only other people that were doing Psychology in my year were the flaky girls who wore too much make up and very short skirts.  It wasn’t me.  I remember being upset and annoyed that my plans had to change.  However, once I had started the course and we had got through the bits on Freud, the Ego and the Id and Jung and his pyramid (seriously, no idea what all that was about) I began to enjoy it.  

So, it was when I was about 17 that I finally found out what that the voice in my head had a real name.  It is called your inner monologue or internal dialogue.  I can remember feeling happy when I found this out.  At long last, a question that I had always wondered about was answered.  I talked to myself in my head and so did everyone else.  Hearing myself talk was not complete madness; it was real and it was ok.  Answering myself back probably was a little unusual but I could work on that.  Not only was I happy but I was also relieved.  Up until that point I had secretly wondered if there was something wrong with me.  Now I knew that there wasn’t.  

I finished my ‘A’ Levels and moved on.  I didn’t think about the voice inside my head much more.  It was enough for me to know that most people had an inner monologue and that I wasn’t entirely potty.  I continued into the world of work and didn’t give the endless chatter in my head much more thought.

Over the years, the more stressful the jobs were that I took on, the more I realised I was talking to myself a lot more in my head.  The majority of the things I was saying weren’t very nice.  They included questions such as ‘why are you so useless?’.  ‘What have you done that for?’.  I’d find me telling myself that I couldn’t do anything right, I was ugly, I was a massive failure, nothing would get any better and that it was all pretty pointless. Oh, and ‘you need to lose weight, be more adventurous, get out more, work harder, put in more hours,’ to boot.  And I’m just writing the clean, polite and unsweary versions of what I would be saying and then arguing with and then contradicting.  

I found that I could have a full blown squabble with myself all alone in an empty room.  Always when no one was looking of course. I was never going to let on that I did this.  I could go around in circles all on my own, either driving myself to anger or to tears.  Afterwards, I used to sit and wonder just how mad I was potentially becoming.

All the time, as the stress of everyday life increased, so did the voice in my head.  It was before kids came along.  I was in my very early thirties.  I was in yet another difficult job.  As part of that I was expected to get out and market my employer’s services and bring in work.  Some of this involved going out and ‘networking’.  Let me tell you, ‘networking’ is no fun.  You have to go out to meetings, have lunch/breakfast or drinks with people that you don’t know, be perky and polite and funny and desperately hope that you can take something positive back to your boss about the endless potential clients that you have made and how this is going to bring in a whole new income stream.  

Women’s networking is hard work.  You go off to a meeting and everyone cheerfully agrees that you are there to support each other, whilst wondering why the hell you have bothered.  However, it rarely brings any actual work.  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve made some really lovely friends this way but it was not all great.  It was at one of these meetings that I met a Life Coach.  

Now, we met lots of Life Coaches.  It was at a time in the early 2000’s when you couldn’t move at networking do’s for Accountants, Organic Beauty product sellers and Life Coaches.  I had big doubts about the Life Coaches.  They said they could change you.  The Life Coaches told us that they could make your life happy.  They said that with their help, you could have the life you dreamed of.  I smiled and nodded along, remaining completely sceptical and deciding not to hand over a well-earned few hundred pounds of my money to them.  

But there was one Life Coach who was kind and seemed very different and genuine.  So miserable and practically crippled by anxiety and depression as I was by the time I met her, that I decided to book a meeting and give this a go.  I figured I had nothing to lose anymore.  After telling her how dreadful I felt, she asked me about the voice in my head. What did I tell myself?  ‘Oh you mean my inner monologue’ I said proudly, trying to show off the little psychology I could remember.  It was the first time (since the days of trying to talk to my Mum) that I had admitted out loud that I had one.  It was also the first time that I admitted out loud to the awful way that I spoke to myself, fought with myself and generally spent most of my time insulting myself.

I laughed it off, telling the Life Coach that it didn’t mean anything.  It was just what I did.  But I think the Life Coach was appalled by how I had been treating myself for so long.  ‘If your best friend spoke to you that way, what would you do?’ she asked.  ‘If your husband told you any of this, what would you think?’  I’d honestly never considered it that way. Wasn’t this how everyone talked to themselves?  Apparently, it wasn’t.  So well practised had I become at belittling myself that I no longer recognised it for what it was.

I met with that Life Coach quite a bit and she taught me some very useful ways of coping with the voice in my head.  Eventually though, I had to stop seeing her.  I became pregnant with our boy and had other things to begin to worry about.  I will forever be grateful to her though for making me realise at that time exactly what I was doing to myself.

However, this is not the end of the story.  The voice in my head remains alive and well.  I still spend too much time arguing with it.  In Part 2 of this blog, I will tell you more about it and how I have since found out that it really is the Lizard that talks to me.

You can find out Spring Season Blogs here. You can find our Summer Season Blogs here.