I love the idea that the opposite of anxiety is creativity. I muse on this a lot. I’ve been asking myself, what’s the opposite of perfectionism? Is it play? I think that’s certainly a part of it. Is it meaning? That belongs in there as well. But after many walks with the dogs, and talking with my horses, and chattering with all my lovely birds, I arrived at this:
The opposite of perfectionism is trust.
The thing about the nervous system is that it’s a reality-based machine. It relies on the recognition of truth. Truth can be a hard thing to handle because not everything we see, observe and live is lovely. Along with the glorious and beauteous and wondrous is the hard and the blistering and the brutal. A regulated nervous system, to my mind, is one that holds all these things and maintains the capacity for nuance. Where the edges of our skin grow to hold multiple perspectives and understandings. Where the desire remains for mutual flourishing, and amidst all of that we stay connected to our truth.
For as long as we meet the full force of reality and make choices involved to our own care, we’ll be ok. We’ll move with the flow of life instead of against it. This is not the same as things being easy or comfortable or even enjoyable, but it is congruent. It’s a life that has capacity for the full force of joys and sadnesses, where we listen to the voices of our inspirations and act on them. Where we meet life with a robust sense of self and what we’re capable of.
It’s a life where we stay connected to our own humanity.
Except, as we all know, there are times when that option is not there. Where it’s not as simple as “making choices” because those choices are impossible. Think childhood living situations where the circumstances are less than ideal, or where you find yourself thrust into inescapable and harmful situations not of your own design.
Even then, the nervous system remains benevolent. Our feeling tendrils designed to extend out into the world turn in on themselves. We call them back, those parts responsible for feeling, and where possible, turn them off. A loving act of the body where it decides, if choice is not available, and running away or fighting is not possible, then we shall turn in ourselves. We shall coil ourselves around our own heart and make our outsides a people-coloured human-skinned shell, enamelled for protection.
Do you want to hear something beautiful?
Your body, your very physicality, changes according to your nervous system state. Your heart drops from higher in your chest, down and further to the left. Your lungs shift position to fall and embrace the heart. Your rib cage, which in safety spread like wings, forms a protective case, clustering all your organs together in one place.
This is your body’s response to threat but it’s also deeply loving. Come closer, your heart calls, and your body dutifully follows. Your entire being trusts your heart.
Yesterday, someone wrote to me. They said they’d read my words about perfectionism, and what they felt in response was grief. At all the things they haven’t done. At all the things that their perfectionism got in the way of. And the possible future grief about what it might prevent them from doing moving forward.
And what this tells me is that they’ve lost their trust. Not just trust in the world (although I’m sure that’s absolutely true), but the bigger form of trust that’s in themselves.
I want to also add this:
If you grew up in a household where addiction or mental health challenges were part of your experience, you’ll recognize that your very survival depended on not acknowledging the truth. Sooner rather than later, you made an agreement of some sort not to see what was happening. That these eyes didn’t want to witness what they saw, that these ears were better blocked, and that this heart was much safer tucked away. And so you lived inside a story—a collaboration between body and mind designed to keep you in one piece, to keep you as the okay-est version of yourself that was possible in the life you found yourself living at that time.
A lack of acknowledging reality that was useful and necessary and very, very kind.
That is, until we find ourselves in different circumstances and that story is no longer all that worthwhile.
I’ve been thinking about this very hard, because I care and I understand this deeply and I also know that so much of what is life reducing and demeaning and the things (and sorry for my frankness) that make us feel like shit are often so unnecessary. At least in the place we find ourselves living now.
But how do we Get It? I mean, we can get it up here **taps self on the head** but how do we feel it? How do we embody that type of risk, take that kind of action that helps us create something bright and new? Which could be a picture, or an essay, a painting. Or perhaps a whole new life.
I think it starts with grief and if we’re lucky, it sizzles into anger and then quickly becomes boredom. And then, acceptance and then love.
I also think talking about all this stuff is so important. What I love most about my treasured friends is that we are all a little crazy, but on a good run, we’re all crazy on different days. Which means that the non-crazy one gets to lead, and we can all bow to their wisdom, and then one at a time, we take turns in thinking we have it all together, until the scripts flips and it’s our turn to be slightly bonkers the next week.
I’ll try and be the non-crazy one today, but let me tell you, I have my moments. God, do I have my moments. I’d go into them in detail, but the people that tell you how to write these sorts of things tell you people who read these sort of things don’t want more than a thousand words and I fear we’ve already gone well over.
So, from the bottom of my weird, crazy little heart, I’m going to tell you: I think your grief is good. Swear at me through the screen if you must, but I’m just going to talk louder and louder. To me, it shows your compass points are turning towards the truth and now your body trusts that you can feel it.
I imagine it’s saying something like:
Look, we don’t have that much time. And you’re really bloody fabulous. And there’s all these things that we haven’t done which aren’t your fault and yes it sucks but screw it, shall we do something different moving forward? Mix things up a bit?
It’s trying to drag you onto the dance floor but you’re insisting that your place is behind the biscuits.
It adds a certain spice to your insides we might call fear, specifically, one of the worst fears we have: the fear that we’ll keep doing the very thing we can now see has stopped us and is no longer working.
I’m going to go off script here and it feels wild and dangerous and slightly naughty and would make all my mentors roll over in their beds (I was going to say graves before I reminded myself they’re still living), who have all taught me very smart things about the body and patterns and how to negotiate such things, but my intuition tells me this:
You have to find out where your laugh has gone. You have to get your smile back. You must treat it like the personal emergency that it absolutely is.
I’ve joked with my friends about starting a podcast called Delete My WhatsApp Upon Death for this very reason. We often talk about the Very Important, Very Serious, Very Adult things that happen in life in the context of such dark jokes that if a stranger were to read them, we’d probably get cancelled (from what, I’m not sure—this is me wildly overrating my own importance), but you know what I mean.
I know that the second I lose my jokes and my smile disappears the situation has become dire. And even if nothing about my circumstances has changed, if I can laugh about it, something in me has lightened. A situation that once felt immovable opens up the smallest crack. A tiny space where joy can leak back in. And where I’ve opened just enough myself to let it find me.
We have to figure out a way to take the situation seriously whilst holding ourselves lightly.
So if I were you, I would put myself on a diet of joy. I would list all the things that make me smile, that are possible right now, and ask myself how often I am doing them. And then I would do at least two of them every, single day.
If I find myself hiding away, I would remind myself to keep on showing up. To put myself in caring places with the people who most get me. Where I can laugh and cry and might be slightly snotty. Where I get to have my crazy week, my crazy minute, and probably because I’m real and let myself express those crazy moments, when I’m in the company of someone else experiencing the same, I’ll find I have something to offer, something that’s really worthwhile.
And I will start to really pay attention: to the reality of this moment. To the times when my mind is a dangerous neighbourhood, and I will invite others in there with me. My friends. Podcasts or audiobooks of people saying the things I think my brain needs to hear.
I will commit to this kind of nauseating, radical self-love (isn’t it a strange thing to remind ourselves of this, to love ourselves?), and notice how much energy it takes to do the opposite. That it’s like holding your foot over a geyser.
I will understand that all this will probably not be instant. That it’s not something that can be forced. That it’s like sleep. That I have to be in bed, lying down. I have to allow sleep to happen. And if it doesn’t, then for a little while, I’ll do something different, but that is conducive to sleep occurring.
I think joy is like this. And that creativity is much the same.
If trust is the opposite of perfectionism, then we have to trust our curiosities. We can do so tentatively at first. We’re allowed to approach with trepidation. We have to prove ourselves trustable- but only to ourselves.
I don’t know how to end this in a way that doesn’t feel saccharine and predictable but if I was sitting around the table with you now, I’d probably just say, shall we have a cup of tea now? Herbal or regular? Want to hear a terrible joke that I really love? What has five toes but isn’t your foot?
xx Jane