I've never really gotten in touch with my inner child, but TNT is having me work on getting in touch with my inner parent.

The fact is, I'm not that good at parenting myself.  It's not that I didn't have good parents--I did.  My problem is that I never learned how to treat myself any way but harshly.  Call it the remnants of being a ruthless perfectionist, but much of my inner dialog is scolding and criticizing myself.  This frequently horrifies people, but it's rather true.

Along with the perfectionism comes black-and-white thinking.  I would seesaw between taking huge amounts of time to make the bed "perfectly" to not bothering to make it at all because it wouldn't look right anyway.  I've been known to procrastinate on doing anxiety-provoking things (like making phone calls) that nonetheless need to be done immediately.  It's all an opportunity for me to harp on myself and my carelessness, my procrastination, my anxiety, my willingness to pay a fine in lieu of making a simple phone call.

I babysat throughout 8th grade and then high school for the same family.  The two girls were more like my little sisters than the two kids I watched for a few hours every week (the oldest is now in college, which makes me feel practically ancient!).  I had to prod them into brushing their teeth at night, into washing their hands, and then read them to sleep.  They pulled some crazy stunts, as kids are wont to do.  I remember one incident where the youngest girl spent over 20 minutes "washing the soap" because it was dirty.  But I didn't yell at them or scold them.  I just kept encouraging and occasionally (metaphorically) strong-arming them into doing what needed to be done.

Although I have mixed feelings about whether I want my own children, I do know that I have parenting skills. I do okay with other people.

But with myself?  That's a different story.

For me, it helps to imagine what I would tell Aria to do.  If skipping a meal or snack would make her sick, then I would insist she eat.  It would be nice if she volunteered, or if she grew a pair of thumbs and opened the damn can herself, but if she doesn't, I would make sure she ate.  I need to learn how to do that with myself.  Be gentle but firm.

As for the criticizing bit, that's a whole 'nother story.  When I was talking to TNT yesterday, she said "Gosh, you are really hard on yourself."  And I was all "Ya think?"  People have always told me to be gentle with myself, but it's not something I've yet figured out how to do.  It's like all I can see is people who are doing more, who are more successful than me, and I feel that I "should" be doing all that and then some.  I've never learned how to give myself props, that reassuring pat on the back that I've done a really good job.  I can do that on occasion--I've finished a story recently and loved how it turned out--but not consistently enough to make any sort of difference in my day-to-day life.

That's one of the things I still need to work on, those "adult skills" that I never quite picked up.

What are some of the ways in which you have learned to be a good parent to yourself?

Those three words have been the curse of my life. If I had to identify one thought that has plagued me for as long as I can remember, that has to be it. The feeling has always been with me. No matter what I do or how hard I try or how much I achieve, I never feel that I have accomplished enough.

I used to think that if I could just get one more good grade or lose one more pound or get one more pat on the back, then I would finally fill up my "enough" deficit. I've had enough therapy to realize that there is no amount of achievement that will ever make me feel good enough. I was lucky in that no one made me feel this way. My parents never criticized my report card or told me to try harder. They never pressured me to achieve academically--in fact, I think they would have loved for me to bring home a "B" just so I would see that it's not the end of the world.

I look at my resume, and all I see are people who have done more. It's what psychologists call "upward comparison," when a person compares him/herself to those who are somehow "better off." The wide world of the internet, the fact that I have freakishly successful friends, and my own abysmal self-esteem means that I perceive many people as being more successful than I am.

There are a lot of really amazing, cool, brilliant, successful people out there. In many ways, it's inspiring and I feel honored just to be allowed to listen in on some of these people's conversations. These conversations also make me feel tremendously insecure, because my Inner Critic voice is blathering away in the back of my skull that "I suck, I suck. I don't have get paid to blog about science. I haven't won any awards. I haven't gotten any feature-length stories. Therefore, I suck."

I am aware that I'm measuring myself against Pulitzer Prize-winning veterans of science writing. And I still feel that as a newbie to the field, that I'm never going to measure up.

This "upward comparison" helps explain why I get so distressed sometimes at seeing images of freakishly thin women. It's not so much the thinness, but the achievement of thinness that gets me. The thinness itself is irrelevant. But the fact that someone has "achieved" something I haven't really tortures what little there is of my self-esteem. When I get depressed, these "I suck" mantras only get louder and more constant. My initial attempt at losing weight was a way to make these mantras shut the hell up. I just wanted to feel better.

And, like so many other things in my life, I never felt like I had lost enough weight. There was always someone thinner or sicker than me.

It's a shitty way to go through life, in this frenetic quest to achieve something, anything, just so you can feel good about yourself. And the achievements, when they come, do give a momentary rush. Just as quickly, the rush is gone. Only now, the bar has been raised, the achievement itself has been discounted and brushed off, and nothing less than the past achievement will be tolerated. The demands go up and up and up.

This is one of the mindsets that still leaves me paralyzed and unable to really move forward. I can't imagine ever feeling like a success. I can't imagine looking over my resume and feeling satisfied. I get frustrated because I know I have accomplished what looks like a lot of things to outsiders. It just doesn't feel that way. Nothing is ever good enough. I want it to be. I want to feel successful and satisfied, I just can't figure out how.

I ran across this study in PubMed today and posted it to the ED Bites Facebook page:

"Low perception of control as a cognitive factor of eating disorders. Its independent effects on measures of eating disorders and its interactive effects with perfectionism and self-esteem."

I (obviously) found it fascinating, and I think it explains a lot about risk factors for EDs. Psychologist Herbert Lefcourt defined perception of control as "a generalised expectancy for internal as opposed to external control of reinforcements." Basically, your perception of control has to do with how much you feel you can effect the course of your life and what happens to you. Aside from the existential question of how much control do you have over your life anyway, I think a low perception of control is linked to factors like perfectionism and anxiety.

Low perception of control can help explain some of the environmental influences on EDs. For some people, events in their life can lead to a low perception of control. For example: will Dad be drunk today? Will the kids at school make fun of me? For me, I don't remember any events that led to a low perception of control, but I always had this nagging doubt that one day everyone would find out I was quite a bit more flawed that everyone thought I was. I attributed all the good things that happened in my life (getting an A on a test, having fun with friends) to something that was entirely outside of my control. The teacher just "happened" to ask questions that I had studied for. Things like that. But I blamed all of the bad stuff on me. I feared it was only a matter of time until everyone found out just how inadequate I really was.

Some people who have a low perception of control develop a "f*ck it" attitude. It doesn't seem to matter whether you try or what you do, because it won't change anything. However, my low perception of control was combined with a high need for control, which meant I went in the opposite direction. Lacking a sense of control over what might happen to me, I felt the need to "make up for it" by trying to control myself and everything around me as much as possible. I became constantly vigilant over what might go wrong. Ultimately, my anxiety systems just kept going up and up, and I found that not eating was a good release, both in terms of biology (starvation-as-emotional-novocaine) and in terms of psychology.

My pseudo-control of food became all-important to me, and soon I came to feel that as long as I could maintain an iron grip on what I ate and how much I exercised, everything would be okay. When you add perfectionism and low self-esteem to the mix, you have a recipe for disaster.

The study's authors concluded:

"EDs are associated with a tendency to worry about mistakes, a low sense of self-esteem, and a low perception of control over internal feelings and external events. Perception of control and self-esteem seems to moderate the predictive power of concern mistakes on symptoms of ED. The results suggest that a low perception of control is an important cognitive factor in ED."

Some of the most important parts of my recovery have been relaxing that need for control, realizing the areas of my life over which I do have control, and making peace with the large number of aspects of my life I legitimately don't have control over.

As a card-carrying perfectionist (and the card must be replaced if the card gets dirty or bent), 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 stop hating myself and finally feel like I could measure up to everyone else.

The anorexia only amplified this thinking process. Losing weight, conquering my need for food, rest, 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, weighed less, and exercised more, 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 by decades--it's still very much there and very much present. Reading my college'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. Now, I can't even say "Well, at least I'm eating less then they are!" Because I'm almost certainly not.

My metabolism has once again gone through the roof. It calmed down somewhat during my Europe trip and yet again with my stomach bug, but now that I'm back in my work routine at the bakery, my metabolic rate has gone into overdrive. It seems I am hungry all the time. Adding an Ensure Plus each day is starting to seem like a good idea (it's quick, easy, and convenient). All of this means I am eating more than anyone I know.

This brings me right back to the contest, and how I defined being The Best for so long as eating the least. Now, I seem to be The Worst, which is pretty much a living hell for someone who has perfectionism. I feel like a failure because I cannot seem to resist my hunger and I feel like I should. I don't want to restrict as much as I just don't want to eat more than my minimum meal plan. Of course, eating less than what my body needs is restricting, but I never said an eating disorder was logical.

I don't always want to feel I need to participate in the contest--after all, Lily Allen said that whoever wins the rat race is still a rat--but I don't know how else to feel okay with myself without these concrete measures. I have no sense of myself except in relation to others. I only know I'm smart because people tell me I'm smart, not because I have an innate sense of my intelligence. It goes along with my body dysmorphia, and how I'm always comparing my size to others', in large part because I really don't have a sense of what size I am and what my body looks like. I can't do that with my life, either. 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 the most and done the most 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. I'm following my dream to be a writer, which I know darn well isn't going to put me on a financial par with most of my classmates (although I've never been much worried about the financial yardstick, thankfully). I'm starting from scratch and busting my buns, and I need to start giving myself credit for overcoming a difficult and lethal illness.

The question is: how? How and where do I start?

When my first therapist met me, she said that I wasn't going to have annnnnnnnny trouble, that I was going to be just fine. The second part of that message didn't really register with me because I was too busy scoffing at the first bit. I think my therapist was trying to do a little bit of a cheerleader routine for me by telling me that I had a promising future! and I was smart! and I had no reason to stay anorexic!

I should have asked her what is a good reason to stay anorexic. But, alas.

The problem was that telling a perfectionist that she's not going to have any problems really isn't the best way to ensure either honesty or a realistic idea of what recovery is really like. Because any small mistake I would make then translated as: I can't even do recovery right, so screw it. At least I won't screw up the eating disorder. I shouldn't be having problems- my therapist said so! I'm obviously not meant to recover...

Of course, my friends and family wanted me better right away, which at first I thought was completely pathological (because not wanting to see a loved one suffer is totally pathological). They should know recovery is a process, that I might not want to get better right away. And I projected all of my own perfectionism crap onto everyone else, convinced that they wouldn't be able to tolerate knowing about one single slip of mine. So I started to keep even more secrets, afraid to give up the illusion of "The Perfect Recovery."

The irony is that the only person who strove to create a perfect recovery was, um, me. This secret-keeping meant that I never addressed my triggers in therapy, never allowed myself to ask for support and basically stayed stuck as f*ck. Everyone else was aware that I was barely keeping my head above water, but a lot of the struggles stayed below the surface. No one knew how bad it really was. I was deeply embarrassed to be struggling and I often had no real way to explain my fears and anxieties.

In order to begin to move forward in recovery, I had to lose the idea of the perfect recovery. I had to develop the humility to put all my cards on the table and say "this is where I'm at." Then, I had to keep putting all my cards on the table, even when I had a bad hand and would have rather tried to bluff my way out of the situation. I had to accept that I might lose a few rounds and that--here's the kicker--it was okay. It's pretty hard to learn how to play canasta if you're always trying to skirt the rules.

One of the best parts of my honesty policy is that I have a lot more trust and street cred with my parents and friends. They don't have to guess if I'm secretly combusting on the inside and smiling on the outside. I'm not hiding it; I'm letting it all hang out.

It's different for me- I've never been much on sharing to begin with (for many of the same reasons I didn't share about ED stuff: I was really afraid people would think less of me if I had "issues") and this has an extra layer of meaning added to it. It still doesn't feel natural. I really wanted the perfect recovery. I wanted to have that light bulb moment where I would just ditch the anorexia and start eating cheesecake. It never happened. Most of the time, I wasn't even sure I wanted to recover.

But here I am, recovering. Not perfectly, but recovering nonetheless.

I saw this blog post on my Real Beauty Is... newsletter, and it really struck me how much I've been letting go of who I was in recovery.

Danielle Boonstra writes:

I used to identify myself with so many external things. This, I thought, helped me to know my worth in the world. I would question "Is my job good enough? Do I make enough money? Do we live in a nice enough neighbourhood? Am I smart enough?". Of course all of this was meaningless. Being in competition leads to misery every single time. Life is not a race.

And so I work on shedding these things. I get better and better at it everyday. Who I really am is not concerned with how much money I make. My authentic self is concerned only with creative expression of my divine purpose! As I let go of the labels I used to love, I become more me...the me who will not be defined because I am constantly evolving!

Ah, that old tired game of Compare and Despair. The truth is this: I often don't have a clue of who I am, where I stand, or if I'm "good" at something because I'm always comparing myself to others. How could I be smart when there was an 11-year-old mathematical prodigy in my calculus class? How could I be pretty if I had a zit? How could I be a good friend if I got mad at my friends? There was always someone nicer and smarter than me. Which was probably true, it's just that the big cognitive distortion was that this meant that I couldn't be nice or smart. If I wasn't the best, it didn't matter.

I can has perfectionism?

In a way, letting go of who I was is somewhat easy because I didn't really know who I was. Sure, I could find adjectives to describe myself that weren't all negative, and I'm guessing that some of those adjectives are still the same (curious, moody, funny). But mostly, this letting go of who I was means letting go of that insecure girl who needed others to define her. Who was so unsure of herself that she hauled out any and all yardsticks necessary to try and figure out where she stood. I'm still getting out the yardstick too damn often, and it's not helping me or anyone else. I used to get rather angry at that girl for (among other things) being "stupid" enough to get an eating disorder and then being too stupid to get herself out.

The simple fact is I can't really hate the girl who didn't know any better than to go yardstick hunting before she could walk--she was doing the best she could. And even if I could hate her, I just don't have the energy. So I'm letting go of that insecure girl, the girl who cared so damn much how she stacked up and where she stood. I don't know that I can't be defined, as Boonstra says, but I do know that the actual definition itself isn't a tool with which to measure myself. It's a definition. It can change. So can I.

Lying and keeping secrets are second nature to people with eating disorders. I don't really think of myself as a dishonest person, but when I am into my eating disorder, I feel compelled to lie, cheat, hide, and cover things up. A lot of this covering up has to do with protecting the eating disorder--the real problem isn't that I'm hiding food, the real problem is that everyone is watching me eat--but sometimes I don't come clean even after the fact.

And it's that not coming clean otherwise that really cuts to the core of who I am. The reason I keep some things secret is really rather simple: shame. I am ashamed that I have done XYZ. I am ashamed that I screwed up. I am ashamed I lied. So I lie again, rather than face the facts. It's easier--and I don't have to look or feel "less than."

This works in the short term--the very very short term--but in the long run, I just get more and more mired in the eating disorder. So I keep on lying until even I'm no longer sure what's reality and what's the nice little PR spin I've tried to put on my latest fiasco. This, of course, doesn't do me or anyone else any good at all.

In order to stop doing this, I've had to acknowledge two major things:

1. I'm not perfect


2. It is a big deal

Despite my epic perfectionism, I find it just as hard to deal with the second of these, probably because I have to crack through a pretty thick layer of self-delusion. I know I'm not perfect- in fact, I'm painfully aware of that. My perfectionism is more based on the twin facts of not wanting to hate myself for not being perfect and not wanting others to see just how really flawed I am. But I digress.

I believed for years that one skipped snack, one missed exchange, was really no big deal. I thought I was even dealing with issue #1 because I was being gentle with myself for screwing up. Which, like, ha! I was deliberately interpreting the statement of "Don't be so hard on yourself, Carrie" with "My snack is hard today, therefore I will skip and not be hard on myself." When I started going to the gym several times each day, I didn't really think it was worth mentioning because it wasn't that big of a deal, really. Or when I started skipping breakfast. It was just once, it's no big deal. But the next day breakfast rolled around again, and I was paralyzed by the guilt of needing to eat today what I didn't eat yesterday. So I skipped breakfast again. It still wasn't a big deal, right?

I've had to learn the hard way that one slip really is a big deal because it can so easily become one. I hate having to say "Mom, I, uh, threw away my snack last week," because it's super embarrassing, it lets on just how seriously flawed I am, and I also feel like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill (a skill for which I am legendary). I don't think I will stop hating having to say this, and so there is really only one logical solution: no more secrets.

I can't keep omitting things to TNT or my family because I'm afraid of looking "less than" or because I don't think it's a big deal. I can't keep up the ridiculous hubris that I will be able to handle it on my own, that I'm fine, that no one needs to know when things go pear-shaped. I would like to be able to handle it on my own, but the fact is that when recovering from an eating disorder, I need all the help I can get. Maybe I can handle it on my own, but maybe I can't. The worst that happens if I can is that I have a lot of people on my side; if I can't, well, let's not go there.

It's hard for me to change like this, to admit I need help sometimes, to admit I screwed up, to admit that the eating disorder might once again have gotten the upper hand. That doesn't make it any less necessary, though. So I can only reaffirm this: no more secrets.

A number of months back on Twitter, I favorited a humorous tweet that said "I really want to fire the person who writes my internal monologues."

I burst out laughing- I would love to do the same!

Then I started thinking: wait a minute, that person is ME. I write my own internal monologue. Sure, it's influenced by the environment around me--my high school English teacher says "we write what we know." But I get to decide whether I continue my monologue or just hit the delete button.

When I taught a writing class in grad school, I spent one day in the first week talking about a chapter from Anne Lamott's book "Bird by Bird." The chapter I discussed at length? Shitty First Drafts. For someone with extreme perfectionistic tendencies, the idea of letting anything be shitty is anathema. The point of a Shitty First Draft isn't that you let it stay shitty. Writing is valuable in and of itself, but Shitty First Drafts don't pay the bills. No, the point of a first draft is to kind of vomit words onto the page and just start writing. The mess can be cleaned up later.

So what does this tangent on Shitty First Drafts have to do with firing the writer of my internal monologue?

I see the random thoughts that fly through my head every millisecond of every day just like those Shitty First Drafts I told my students to get to know. The thoughts are very real--and so, might I add, are the Shitty First Drafts--but here's the thing: they don't have to be the final draft. I can't delete the thoughts as easily as I can delete the drivel I spent this afternoon spewing forth, but I don't have to let those Shitty First Draft thoughts be the final draft.

I'm the writer. I'm the editor. I can edit those thoughts and decide if I want to keep them or not.

I can't exactly fire the writer of my internal monologue, although writers must be proficient at managing unemployment. And there are days when I would love nothing more than to put my brain out of work for a bit. But my internal monologue writer is also the same girl whose fingers type these blogs out, clackety-clack. This monologue writer is capable of getting paid for her writing by the Washington Post, so clearly she doesn't totally suck.

I doubt I'm ever going to stand in the mirror and look at myself and start crooning love songs into my green eyes. That's not the point of this. I can actually handle the "I SUCK!" shriek-fest melodrama moments to which I am prone. I suck. It's a fact. The end. The thoughts that I find the most frustrating are the constant worries, the doubting, the gnawing fear that I'm not good enough, I'm a fraud, a fake, that I'm never going to make it.

But it's like this afternoon when I was spewing drivel. I stopped writing my Shitty First Draft mid-sentence, and said to myself, "This stream of thought isn't getting me anywhere." Then I just pressed delete and started over.

An article I read about this past weekend's National Women's Figure Skating Championship was heartbreaking. It had nothing to do with the sport itself, or with the young lady's actual performance. For that matter, I don't usually watch figure skating anymore as it sets the ED voice in my head yammering about how slender and graceful all of those girls are, whereas I am neither slim nor graceful. Rather, when I read about the extreme perfectionism that has ensnared Olympic hopeful Mirai Nagasu, I felt my heart break just a little bit because I know all too well the hollow achievements such perfectionism can bring and the devastation it leads behind.

The New York Times article, "Nagasu Is in the Lead, but She Isn’t Ready to Exhale," begins thusly:

The good Mirai Nagasu, the one that oozes talent and effervescence, skated at United States championships on Thursday. She cracked a saucy smile and used her eyes to flirt with the crowd. With an Olympic berth at stake and the pressure mounting, she looked like she was having fun.

But now, with one performance standing between her and the Vancouver Games, she must find a way to keep the good Mirai around. That requires telling her alter ego, the one she calls “the evil Mirai,” to scram.

The "evil Mirai" is the silent voice that every perfectionist hears, the voice that hisses "you're not good enough. You suck. You should just quit. You will never amount to anything." It's the voice that makes you think success was a matter of luck, and soon the whole world will find out you're nothing but a fraud. Anything less than perfect--and pretty much everything is--only confirms all of the horrible qualities about you that no amount of gold medals can redeem.

For Nagasu, these nationals will be the ultimate test of character. She won the 2008 national title when she was 14. Since then, she has struggled with injuries, self-esteem and a growth spurt that messed up her jumping technique.

At one point, she considered giving up.

“There are always moments when I think about leaving skating, but when I think about that I’m not very smart and I’m not very pretty and there’s nothing else that stands out about me besides my skating,” she said.

Many times I contemplated dropping out of school, simply because I was so miserable, but I thought school was the only thing I was really good at, so I couldn't quit. I was stuck. Then the eating disorder took over the same role. Sure, recovery sounded nice, but I had messed up everything else in my life that I didn't think I was anything without the anorexia.

Writes author Rachel Simmons on Nagasu:

Nagasu is one of countless high achieving girls who are as fragile as they are driven. Research is confirming that girls suffer disproportionately from stress, despite their stellar achievements. The pressure to be perfect is taking its toll on girls, from depression and anxiety to paper thin skin.

I am reminded of part of Nancy Zucker's talk from this past year's NEDA Conference in Minneapolis, where she explains perfectionism in the story of two people working towards Olympic gold. One is very driven, always forging ahead, always practicing and improving her technique. Everything in her life is about getting this medal. The other is practicing, but also meeting new people and coaches, and learning from her mistakes. To this athlete, the gold medal is more about the journey than the actual event. “When the first girl gets the medal, she experiences the tragedy of perfectionism in this deflation: now what? My whole life was this, now it’s over," Zucker said. "When the other girl gets the gold, the gold is a symbol of a profound journey. It matters, of course, but it’s kind of: what next? The difference is not that there’s always something next, it’s the difference of whether you view what’s next with this hopelessness or this anticipation.”

Simmons refers to this first hypothetical Olympian as having a fixed mindset, "an approach to life in which you believe your traits are set in stone, and failure means you’re not talented or smart. For these individuals, “one test – or one evaluation – can measure you forever.” People with a fixed mindset are terrible at estimating their abilities because for them, they are either amazing or terrible – all-or nothing."

Without grades and exams, I never would have known that I was "good" at school. I was studious, sure, and I was good at getting the work done and crossing my "t"s and dotting my "i"s. But tell me I was smart? It always perplexed me, because I knew other people who had gotten better grades on such-and-such test or paper. One bad grade and my life was over. Even in my science writing program, where grades were pass/fail, I had horrific test anxiety. I didn't do stellar on the midterm, so I studied everyday before the final to make sure that I didn't repeat my last performance. I was so anxious and upset I could barely eat. I got an A in the class, yes, although it shows up on my transcript as a simple "P," a "P" that no employer or editor has looked at or even asked to.

I remember telling one of my first therapists that I thought I was a Big Dumb Loser, or something to that effect, shortly after I had graduated college and couldn't find a job. And she said, "How can you think that? Look at your resume!" Which only served to make me feel worse, because now I was a complete and total idiot for not recognizing whatever qualities it was that others could see and I couldn't. I wrote my resume out, thank you very much. I know what's on there. And I think of the people who won more awards, who did more advanced research, who published more papers, and I think my resume is utter crap.

It was the same with the eating disorder. Grades and test scores became calories and pounds. I couldn't have anorexia because there were people who weighed less than I did, people who ate less, people who exercised more. There was the thinnest, and there was everyone else. There was the smartest, and there was everyone else. My mom used to tell me, "Only one person can be the best." My response was always, "So why can't it be me?" I wasn't narcissistic--far from it. But I thought if I could ever be "The Best" at something, then I might finally like myself, then I could relax. So it was with school, so it was with anorexia.

These traits that Nagasu so bravely and candidly reports are traits I have seen over and over again in people with eating disorders and others who struggle with perfectionism. And hearing about all of these wonderful, talented people who think that they are scum never fails to break my heart. Yet my own inner critic rages on, telling me that these others are talented and I'm just One Big Fake. I feel I deserve this critic, feel almost lost without it. If my perfectionism was part of the reason that I've achieved what I have, imagine how much I'll suck if I don't have that constant haranguing in my ears.

And therein lays the problem: I'm afraid that breaking free will only confirm my worst fears, so here I stay, checking the spelling again and reading everything over and hoping one day, I will finally measure up.

When I was reading the latest blog from Tierney Lab (in the Science section of the NY Times), I thought my head was going to fall off I was nodding so much. It reminded me of head banging to Enya, in a sense. The point is not that the author of this blog can combine the words "head banging" and "Enya" in a coherent sentence; rather, the point has to do with the blog post itself, titled "Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow."

I realized this really described my whole life.

The blog ultimately described why people procrastinate on pleasurable things (opening that nice bottle of wine or using the gift card) and how that can have negative impacts in our lives (the wine never gets open or the gift card expires).

Writes John Tierney:

It sounds odd, but this is actually a widespread form of procrastination — just ask the airlines and other marketers who save billions of dollars annually from gift certificates that expire unredeemed. Or the poets who have kept turning out exhortations to seize the day and gather rosebuds.

But it has taken awhile for psychologists and behavioral economists to analyze this condition. Now they have begun to explore the strange impulse to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today...

When there is no immediate deadline, we’re liable to put off going to the zoo this weekend because we assume that we will be less busy next weekend — or the weekend after that, or next summer. This is the same sort of thinking that causes us to put the gift certificate in the drawer because we expect to have more time for shopping in the future.

We’re trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained, but we’re not accurate in our estimates of “resource slack,” as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Once you start procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana. The longer you wait to open that prize bottle of wine, the more special the occasion has to be...

“People can become overly focused on an ideal,” Dr. Shu said. “Even if they know it’s unlikely, they get so focused on the perfect scenario that they block everything else. Or they anticipate that they’ll kick themselves later if they take second-best option and then see the best one is still available. But they don’t realize that regret can go the other way. They’ll end up with something worse and regret not taking the second-best one.”

...Another tactic is to give yourself deadlines. Cash in the miles by summer, even if you can’t get a round-the-world trip out of them. Instead of waiting for a special occasion to indulge yourself, create one.

Thus ever goes my life. I've always been like this. I squirreled away all of my "good" candy at Christmas and Easter and Halloween, determined to save it for later. Then, of course, the candy went bad and I had to throw it out. I wasn't trying to avoid eating the food--I saved that fun little game for much later--but I wanted to eat the object of my desire at the "perfect" time. The night before a big test at school, say, or a windy, blustery day to brew that special cup of hot cocoa. Never mind, of course, that I'm a bit of a spaz and typically don't think of Ways to Be Nice to Carrie when I'm tremendously stressed. Or that I end up throwing the candy out because I haven't found the "perfect" occasion on which to have it.

When I have my massive to-do list, I usually try to get the dreaded jobs out of the way first. If I'm really overwhelmed, I'll start with the easy tasks (get shower, fold laundry) to get myself going, but then it's on to the icky stuff. I save the best for last. I do it when I'm eating, and always have. I don't like cherry flavored things--I have crap lungs and guzzled bottles of Robitussin as a kid as I got one bout of bronchitis/pneumonia/whatever after another--and so with a bag of Skittles, I'd separate out the red ones and eat those first. I always always ate the green ones last, because I love lime.

I have several unused gift cards in my possession- one for Coldstone Creamery from my birthday almost two years ago now. Part of the reason I haven't used it was related to the eating disorder relapse. That's not too hard to figure out. But I had the card for well over a year before I started relapsing, and even went to Coldstone during that time, gift card in wallet, and deliberately didn't use it. Why? I wanted to save it for a time when I wanted ice cream but money was tight, for a time when I deserved an extra little treat, for...sometime that wasn't now. Only, I never think I deserve an extra little treat (which is a whole issue unto itself), and now I'm left with an unused gift card that may or may not still be valid.

I like looking forward to potential pleasure in the future, but I get anxious and uncertain when I think about enjoying something nice RIGHT NOW. Which could also be one of the major themes of my eating disorder, when you get right down to it. I tortured myself on a day-to-day basis (okay, hour-to-hour or minute-to-minute basis, when you get right down to it) in the hopes that tomorrow or the next day or maybe next year, I will have what I want. Except tomorrow or the next day or the next year, I will be thinking the same damn thing and so life goes on and you approach 30 and start scratching your head and wondering what in the hell just happened with your life.

Sigh.

John Tierney summarized the moral of the story best:

Remember the advice offered in the movie “Sideways” to Miles, who has been holding on to a ’61 Cheval Blanc so long that it is in danger of going bad. When Miles says he is waiting for a special occasion, his friend Maya puts matters in perspective:

“The day you open a ’61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion.”

A recent study found that higher parental and grandparental education and higher grades increases a person's risk for an eating disorder. This makes a whole lot of sense to me. And I'm not talking about how parents with higher levels of education might push their kids harder, etc. Or even how more educated parents have more money and therefore their kids experience more pressure to be thin. This could be true- I don't know. But I think the relationship is much more subtle than that.

One of the characteristics of an eating disorder is a drive for thinness. Considering that, through the ED, I defined "thinness" as "success" and/or "perfection," the drive for thinness in me (and in others I've spoken with) seems to be an offshoot of perfectionism. Indeed, even in non-ED university students, researchers found a relationship between stress, perfectionism, and drive for thinness.

Besides the eating disorder, my other main perfectionistic focus has been school. I skipped half of my brother's high school graduation party to study for an 8th grade history test. I worked until all hours of the night in high school, and usually through dawn in college. Driven by fear and anxiety, and fueled by pots of coffee, I stayed at the top of my class.

From the outside, I was a success. I sure looked the part. My parents were proud- why wouldn't they be? Over-achievement wasn't going to worry my parents, especially not after my brother! And this drive, this ineffable need to do more, do it better, was hauntingly familiar to both my parents, but especially my mother. It wasn't abnormal or pathological, right? It was familiar.

This post is not intended as any sort of mother-bashing (though several of my therapists have had a field day with what I am about to share), but my mom was pretty darn obsessive and perfectionistic about school and, instead of food/weight, her other obsession was cleaning. She skipped out on dates with my dad because she had to study. My dad, who had tickets to a concert/play/whatever, didn't want to waste the tickets, so he took my mom's mom instead.* And, also just like me, my mom excelled at school. She placed top in the state in her subject exams upon college graduation.

Both my parents graduated from college- my dad did so somewhat grudgingly, as school was never his "thing," but graduate he did. I know my mom's dad graduated from college, but I'm not sure about my dad's dad. I know neither of my grandmothers went to college, but everyone finished high school.

What I see in my family is not so much a legacy of high parental expectations, but a legacy of perfectionism and drive to succeed. Did my parents have high expectations? Maybe, but my freakishly higher expectations of myself were what drove me. So I fundamentally disagree with the authors' conclusions that:

"Thus, higher parental and grandparental education and higher school grades may increase risk of hospitalization for eating disorders in female offspring, possibly because of high internal and external demands."

Internal demands, yes. This is how the perfectionism manifests itself in myself, my mother, and many of my maternal relatives (of whom I know the most about). My dad is also a perfectionist, though in a very different way than my mother and I. So the link between higher grades and higher parental/grandparental education does make sense, but not in the way the authors might have assumed.

Anxiety can drive success. People have told me they wish their kids could have my GPA and "work ethic" and I have to tell them no, you really don't wish that. I love learning and enjoyed many of the aspects of school, but my high school and undergrad years were pretty hellish. I was lucky, in a sense, that the symptoms of my mental illness helped me succeed, but it also makes it harder for lots of people (myself included) to understand that these personality traits--the drivenness, the perfectionism--have downsides, too.

Note: I realized as I was blogging that the study seemed awfully familiar, and I remembered that Laura also posted about the study and its conclusions here.

*My grandmother, at that time, looked rather young and not unlike Doris Day, so they probably pulled off the whole "couple" routine. It's the epitome of putting the "fun" in "dysfunctional." She also appeared in the newspaper around this time to share the recipe for her "legendary" ham loaf. I have the picture somewhere- I should post it. It's a hoot.

Numerous studies have shown links between eating disorders and perfectionism, and helping sufferers learn to cope with and manage their perfectionistic personality traits may be useful in helping to maintain recovery.

A recent article in the Boston Globe describes perfectionism as

"...a phobia of mistake-making," said Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, which is based in Boston. "It is the feeling that 'If I make a mistake, it will be catastrophic.' "

Striving for perfection is fine, said Smith College psychology professor Randy Frost, a leading researcher on perfectionism. The issue is how you interpret your own inevitable mistakes and failings. Do they make you feel bad about yourself in a global sense? Does a missed shot in tennis make you slam your racket to the ground? Do you think anything less than 100 percent might as well be zero?

So how do you treat perfectionism? CBT is typically the gold standard, helping people recognize and change their ideas that everything must be perfect, the black and white thinking ("If I'm not perfect, I'm a failure"), among other things. The Globe article summarizes a basic perfectionism treatment program as follows:

• Get to know your perfectionism: become more aware of your perfectionistic patterns of thinking and behavior, and their effects on your life and those around you. What are your triggers?
• Challenge your thinking and question your beliefs: Is it really so important for every book on your shelf to be placed even with the one next to it? What would happen if they were uneven? Do you know anyone with uneven books? What are the costs and benefits of spending time making everything "just so"?
• Change your behavior by exposing yourself to what you fear: Practice making mistakes, though not if they will lead to terrible consequences. Send a letter to a friend with typos in it. Burn dessert a bit at a party.

My first thought? Deliberately making a mistake? Are you joking? Obviously, I have issues.


I've always been a perfectionist, practicing my handwriting (in the days before you typed everything) in a little journal, organizing my bookshelves, and let's not even discuss school and grades and test scores. Most studies have found this is true for many sufferers of eating disorders, that perfectionism exists before the ED and persists long after recovery.*

That being said, perfectionism isn't all bad. Though it is distressing to me at times, it has also helped me in some areas. I got a writing gig once because mine was the only pitch letter without any typos. And good grades and test scores have been useful as well. The point is to try and figure out what types of perfectionistic thoughts and behaviors are causing you serious distress, and which provide a more positive role in your life. Two key attributes of perfectionism have been linked to higher levels of distress:

One, he said, is "concealment," the need to hide mistakes and imperfections. The other is "contingent self-worth," the feeling that "in order to be a worthwhile person, I have to perform in such and such a manner, I have to behave perfectly."

Have you been able to tame the more distressing aspects of perfectionism? How? Any suggestions?

(h/t Mind Hacks)

*This result was recently challenged by a paper stating that, in recovered women, perfectionism scores were no higher than in healthy controls. I'm not surprised that recovery helps reduce levels of perfectionism, and maybe a part of recovery is learning to manage your perfectionism.

In the news lately, I've read a lot about buyer's remorse and the role overspending may have played in the current economic crisis. But in today's New York Times, a story looks at the dangers of oversaving. Psychologists have dubbed this phenomenon "hyperopia," the medical term for farsightedness, as "it’s the result of people looking too far ahead. They’re so obsessed with preparing for the future that they can’t enjoy the present, and they end up looking back sadly on all their lost opportunities for fun."

Just as the immediate rush of a purchase doesn't last forever (hence buyer's remorse), neither does the guilt over the purchase. Researchers found that students who spent more of their spring break studying/working, as opposed to relaxing/partying, had more regrets over the way they spent their time when they were surveyed one year later. Dr. Ran Kivetz of Columbia University, and someone who researches consumer behavior said, "what builds up is this wistful feeling of missing out on life’s pleasures.”

This...this I understand. In fact, this pretty much summarizes my life. I'm not unsympathetic to those who have trouble with managing their money, nor am I particularly proud of this. But I also know that the regret is very true and very real. I don't remember much of college. I remember the chair in which I studied so often. I remember being so exhausted that I was constantly on the brink of tears, and then became even too exhausted to cry. I hate the scent of Juniper Breeze lotion from Bath and Body Works because I used it during the worst of my days and the scent always takes me back to that awful place.

Obviously, mental illness contributed to this hell. I won't deny it. Yet I don't know for sure whether I would have been able to loosen up even if I wasn't clinically anxious and depressed.

Kivetz has this to say:

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “Obviously you need to be responsible and conserve your savings. But it’s been a depressing winter, and there’s nothing wrong with indulging yourself a little. This is a chance to reassess the quality and the balance of your life and to think how you’ll feel in the future. As long as you can afford it, it’s not a bad thing to be enjoying yourself.”

Enjoyment is the key word, as the hyperopia I experience extends far beyond money, and I'm guessing that's the case with others as well. It's about the price of enjoyment, or even (might I suggest) the fear of enjoyment. I will occasionally "enjoy" things, but only if I've earned them. And I put a high price on fun and relaxation. I'm not talking about making sure the cat has food before you go out for dinner. I'm talking about making sure the carpet is vacuumed, the laundry is folded and put away, the papers are organized, and the bills are paid.

This is some of the hardest thinking to break, because I've always been this way, and my parents definitely tend towards this way and I don't know any other way to exist. My threshold for fun and enjoyment are probably way lower than others' and I'm okay with that. But this article just really summarizes the dilemma in which I find myself so often, and the worldview that really contributes to the anorexic thinking.

Thoughts?

I try to keep most of my content here completely original, but this post from the blog On Simplicity just spoke to me so much that I'm copying and pasting the entire thing here. And working on letting go of my perfectionism that tells me I'm being lazy for doing such a thing...





1. No one gasps in horror when you inevitably screw something up. Instead, you can get away with an “Oops” and a charming smile.
2. When you do get something incredibly right, you get to celebrate and bask in the glory–not get a chorus of “Yeah, yeah—what else is new?”
3. You get to try new things without fearing they’ll ruin your perfect track record.
4. People trust your advice because it came from trial and error, not from some superhuman talent.
5. Expecting amazing things from yourself can be a great thing. Having the outside world expect amazing things from you can be soul-crushing. Just ask Superman.
6. Sometimes the best ideas, art, and inspiration come from mistakes.
7. Who wants to color inside the lines all the time or live life like a paint by number?
8. The straight and narrow may be the fastest way to get somewhere, but it sure as hell isn’t the most exciting or even fulfilling.
9. Incredibly high standards of perfection can only alienate the people in your life and make them feel judged.
10. Having “off” days is a part of life. They’re what make the other days sparkle.
11. Perfection is so much more thrilling when it hasn’t become routine and mundane.
12. Persistence can work just as well as perfectionism, without all the stress and guilt.

Think about it: your unique set of personality traits and life experiences ultimately led down the path of an eating disorder. Yet I can't quite believe that these are necessarily all bad.

My first therapist was kind of baffled at how I could have low self-esteem: after all, she said, look at my resume. Aside from the blinding stupidity of such a statement (I felt worse about myself because I felt so bad when I really shouldn't), there was a grain of truth to her statement. The same traits that made me so exquisitely vulnerable to anorexia, such as perfectionism, obsessionality, and tenaciousness/stubbornness, had also allowed me to accomplish quite a bit. Even if I couldn't see it myself.

And this is, I think, some of the most important work to do in recovery, once you get beyond the basics of learning how to prevent relapse and live with triggers. Learning how to live with your genetics, your personality or temperament that you were born with and that was honed over the years.

Of course, these traits can be very non-functional. Even in grad school, when everything was pass/fail (and once I realized this important little tidbit, which was well into the second semester but changed precisely diddly-squat about my work ethic), I spent many nights frantically working on papers the day before they were due. Why? I couldn't stop researching and reading, fearful that I had neglected some tiny fact that would make or break my paper.

Then again, I got a freelance job because I was the only person who sent in a cover letter without any typos.

It's a fine line, to be sure. But the point is to try and make these things work in your favor, rather than against you. I can probably spend my entire life in therapy trying to learn to be not so anxious and less perfectionistic and such, but no small amount of this is innate. I popped out of the womb this way. So it's up to me to learn how to deal with it.

I'm trying to learn where it pays to be perfectionistic (such as on job applications) and where it might not (organizing my spice racks). I still worry that being less tough on myself will ultimately result in my turning into a fat, lazy blob. And that people will think less of me if everything is not "in its place," and I am not perfectly together.

In an article on ADHD in the New York Times, a psychiatrist had this to say about this disorder:

“It’s not an unmitigated blessing, but neither is it an unmitigated curse, which is usually the way it’s presented,” said Dr. Hallowell*, who has the disorder himself. “I have been treating this condition for 25 years and I know that if you manage it right, this apparent deficit can become an asset. I think of it as a trait and not a disability.”

Of course, that doesn't mean that a person's struggles with ADHD aren't real and valid, but that some of the traits that give them this difficulty may, in the end, also be a good thing, too.

What personality traits do you have that you think might have predisposed you to an ED? How are you making them work in your favor? Do you think you can? Or do you think they can be eliminated in therapy?

*Dr. Hallowell wrote one of the seminal books on ADHD titled Driven to Distraction.

I am, to the surprise of no one who knows me, a perfectionist. A hard core perfectionist. I don't remember not being that way. It's one of the reasons I hate games that keep score. If I don't win, I beat myself up ruthlessly- even if it's a game I've never played before. There's this constant dialogue in my head about how I screwed up.

And let me tell you- I've always done something to screw up.

What started this line of thought is going to the grocery store. No, no meltdowns this time. I got in and out in one piece. But as I was unloading my bags, I started thinking about what I had purchased. Plenty of produce, to be sure, but also plenty of other things. Things like a box of Cheez-Its, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups cereal, graham crackers.

I felt insecure and inferior at that moment.

Why?

I didn't have the "perfect" diet. I was eating (gasp!) processed foods. And we all know that Processed Foods Aren't Good For You. There's a part of me that knows this is BS. Bread is processed. Butter is processed. Damn near everything is processed and the human race continues. But the part of me that knows this is the calm, rational side of me. The side of me that doesn't really give a crap about what other people are buying, nor judges people based on what they eat.

The emotional side of me, on the other hand... That side is very afraid that all of the government recommendations might be true. And even if they're not, so many people believe them that they will surely judge me if I don't comply.

Won't they?

I want people to look in my cart, look in my cupboards and think what a "good" person I am, how "healthy" I eat. That the two are linked in my mind and in popular culture is no coincidence. The quality of your diet has become the quality of your person, the quality of your soul.

"Those people who eat fast food," we scoff. "Lazy." I don't get fast food much, but when I do, I do and there's not a whole lot more to it than that. Yet sometimes I'm a little embarrassed to walk into a McDonald's and say yes, I would like fries with that. Because that means I am a Typical Fat American and I am going to take over the world with my fat ass.

The simple fact remain that most people don't care about the size of my ass. Nor do they care about what I eat. I still can't figure out how to escape these standards I've set for myself. I think I'm scared. That if I give up on trying to be perfect, it will mean I have failed.

Hello, black and white thinking. Nice to see you again.

I wish I could stop caring so much. I want to get to the end of the day and feel satisfied with what I've done and with who I am. I can never see how much I've accomplished; all I see is how much I have left to do. There's always way too much. It's the way my life is. I can't imagine things any differently. My parents are a lot like this- though I take it to a whole different level. These feelings are all I really know.

I'm not a "yay me!" kind of person. I find the idea of loving myself to be ludicrous bordering on hilarious. I'm okay with not thinking I'm the bee's knees. I just want to look in the mirror and see a good enough person.

That's it.

I feel like I have been writing all day. Between writing my own stuff and grading student papers, my brain has almost had it.

The grading is taking longer than it should because I feel compelled to grade "perfectly." To correct every mistake, re-arrange the sentences properly, help them on grammar and sentence structure.

I have to remember: that's not my job. Okay, yes, I do need to give them good feedback and suggestions and that's fine. But I'm not supposed to re-write their papers for them. I just want to make it perfect.

Ah, yes. Perfection. You ethereal creature, always beckoning. Like Odysseus' sirens- so seductive and alluring, but then you get there and they kill you. So many things in life are like that, aren't they?

Yet I don't always think I'm a perfectionist because I don't feel that I try hard enough. I mean, there are things in my life that I totally let slide. Sometimes, my Christmas shopping isn't done early. There is (gasp!) clutter in my apartment. My car needs to be washed. Badly.

See? If I were a perfectionist, these things would all be done and ready and things would never be out of place and I would be all together and never have zits.

I just need to try harder. That's all.

It's an asinine argument, to be sure, but I also believe it. On the one hand, I know I'm a perfectionist. I hate making mistakes. I like things to be 'perfect.' But I feel it's an adjective, not a real diagnosis. Not in the way of some of the people in my family. I'm not good enough to be called a perfectionist.

That really sounds ridiculous when I read it. I mean, completely, utterly whacked-out.

And only a true perfectionist would think that.

I don't really think that being a perfectionist is a good thing. I don't really consider it a character flaw, but I do think it can get in the way of things. I mean, is it really appropriate to lock yourself in your room for several days after getting your first A- in college? Um, not really.

My problem is knowing when enough is enough. What is 'enough' exercise? What is too much? Ditto for dietary vigilance. And studying. And damn near every other thing.

Common with perfectionism is all or nothing thinking. That I don't dispute. I'm good at seeing the nuances of arguments and things like that. I can easily put myself in other people's shoes. But with pretty much everything else? All or nothing. If I make a mistake, the whole thing sucked. However, because I made the mistake, I can't be a perfectionist. Because- get this- perfectionists don't make mistakes.

Duh.

I get that no one is perfect. On a weird sort of intellectual level. But I always thought that if I got this award, or this grade, or could lose enough weight, eat few enough calories, exercise enough hours each day, then I could be perfect. I could be 'enough'.

To be continued tomorrow...