Support4Change Blog

February 2, 2007

Categories: Q-and-A Club AND Lessons of a Perfectionist

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT
 

Here is this week’s Q-and-A Club question, although it is the last day of the week. But I want to get it up so I can add next week’s question soon. [For introduction to this, see the question for Feb. 11 to Feb. 17.]

Category: Deepening Faith and Spirituality

ADDICTED TO THE ADRENALINE OF DOING TOO MUCH

How can you learn to move and act more calmly if you are addicted to the adrenaline of doing too much?

Action Question: If you know that slowing down is good for you, when are you going to slow down?

As I write this entry, I am amused because it fits in so well with the rest of what I had planned to write this evening, namely, promising to do more than I have time to do. You see, on Valentine’s Day I had said I would write what I am particularly grateful for each day. But if you’ve also read Focus on a Fern or my section on Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist, you know I struggle with putting more on my plate than I can chew.

That is why today I take back my promise to write something every day. Instead, I’ll just do what I can. Some days the people who stumble onto this blog may find thanks and other days they won’t. But they’ll all survive. That’s what perfectionists have to tell themselves all the time. Others WILL survive if we don’t always do a perfect job!

The title today refers to “Christmas” letters, although the holidays are long past. But for several years now I’ve written a yearly letter early in the year about the prior year. It makes the pre-holidays less stressful. After spending the weeks since our trip Down Under doing lots of other things, today I finally got the letters done. So you will understand why I’ve chosen the following gratitude for today.

Today:

I give thanks for life.

I give thanks for a computer so I don’t have to write every letter in long hand.

I give thanks for the people who design the programs that allow my computer to work.

By the time I write another journal entry I hope to have organized my articles into categories so it will be easier for people to find ones they might be interested in—but that’s not a promise. Just an intention.