Month: January 2024

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The Perfection Triad

perfection triad

Perfectionism can lead to difficulties with emotional aggression. Sometimes emotional aggression occurs because we expect others to be perfect. Sometimes it occurs because we expect ourselves to be perfect. But what does ‘perfect’ really mean? When I teach an ecospirituality group, I often ask several students to describe their ‘perfect’ day. One might say that a perfect day would be spent on the beach with a good book. Another might say that a perfect day might be spent cuddling with a loved one. Yet another might say that a perfect day would be a day doing nothing. All of these answers are different. After gathering all of these responses, I then ask the class, “Okay, which one of you is right?

Of course that question is meaningless, because each person has described the perfect day for him or her. They’re all right answers because they’re the ones choosing what ‘perfect’ means for them.

So what does ‘perfect’ mean? There is no objective definition to the term. Each person defines it for herself or himself. The idea of perfection manifests itself in the Perfection Triad. When the Perfection Triad is internally focused (that is to say, when I’m speaking about myself), it looks like this:

The ‘Perfection Triad’

  1. I make the rule(s)
  2. I break the rule(s)
  3. I punish myself

What this means is that I have made a rule that I must be ‘perfect.’ This rule is destined to be broken, because, as the saying goes, “Nobody’s perfect.” So when I inevitably break the rule that “I must be perfect,” I punish myself by feeling guilty. I may even punish myself by engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors.

The good news here is that in all three of the components of the Perfection Triad, “I” am the common factor. Since I’m the one making the rule, I’m the one breaking the rule, and I’m the one punishing myself for breaking the rule, I can change any of the three components to get a better result. Let’s look at what happens to the other two elements when I change any one element. We’ll start with changing “I make the rule.”

If I am making the rule that “I must be perfect,” and then I’m constantly breaking the rule by failing to be perfect, I can choose to change the rule just a little bit. Suppose I change it to something that is more achievable, like, “I’ll always do my best.” This means that I don’t have to be perfect all the time as long as I was acting to the best of my ability. So if that’s the rule, then I’ll rarely break it. If I don’t break the rule, there’s no need to punish myself. So the entire meme has changed to something that is achievable.

What if I changed the component that says, “I break the rule?”

The only way to change this component is to never break the rule. If the rule is, “I must be perfect,” then the only way to avoid breaking the rule is to be perfect all the time. This is what happens with most perfectionists. They try to avoid breaking the rule by attempting to be perfect all the time. Unless they have a very liberal definition of what it means to be perfect, they’re likely to have a hard time keeping this rule, but let’s assume it is possible, by their definition, to manage to be perfect all of the time. In such a case, the rule never gets broken, so there’s no need to punish themselves for changing the rule, and there’s no need to make a different rule as long as they’re able to avoid breaking the rule they have made.

Finally, let’s look at what happens if we change the component that says, “I punish myself.” If I decide to change it to something like, “I won’t punish myself,” then there are no negative consequences for breaking the rule, so there’s no need to make a new rule. There is also no problem, since I’m not punishing myself.

If you find yourself a victim of the Perfection Triad, ask yourself which component would be the easiest to change. Remember that you, and only you, are in control of defining the rules, keeping the rules, and deciding on the punishment, if any.

Sometimes emotional aggression occurs when we expect others to be perfect and they fail to live up to our expectations. This is an external meme because it involves other people, and other people are external to ourselves.
The externally-focused Perfection Triad looks like this:

The ‘Perfection Triad’ (External)

  1. I make the rule(s) for others
  2. Others break my rule(s)
  3. I punish others by engaging in emotional aggression

In this externally-focused triad, we expect others to live up to our expectations of perfection. When they fail to live up to our expectations by breaking our rules, we punish them by engaging in emotionally aggressive attempts to force them to follow our rules. This triad is especially heinous because we are expecting others to live up to our definitions of ‘perfect’ instead of their own definitions.

Once again we can move to a solution-focused meme by changing any one of the components. Let’s start with, “I make the rule for others.” I can change this component by ceasing to make the rule for others, or by making a rule for others that it is possible to follow. In either case, the rule doesn’t get broken, so there is no need to punish them by engaging in emotional aggression.

Another solution-focused approach is for others to simply agree not to break the rules I’ve made for them. This solution is a control-freak’s dream, because it means that if others agree to abide by our rules, we have effectively controlled them. Unfortunately, this is not a real solution, because if others have agreed to allow us to make rules for them, and they’ve agreed not to break the rules we have made, then there is probably some sort of abusive relationship going on. Even so, this is the solution we are attempting to get when we punish others by engaging in emotional aggression after they’ve broken our rules.

The final way to move this triad to a solution-focused one is to change the “I punish others by engaging in emotional aggression” component. The only way to change this component is to cease acting in emotionally aggressive ways when others have broken the rules we have made. If we cease to punish others for breaking our rules, then it doesn’t matter what the rules are, and whether they break them or not. Since there are no negative consequences for not playing by the rules, there is no problem.

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Controlling Others

controlling others

“Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.”

-H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Controlling others is an attempt to make others responsible for our own emotional states. The actions that happen in our lives lead to a response. That response is a set of beliefs and behaviors about what just happened. When I act on those beliefs by engaging in behaviors, I get consequences. If those consequences are good, nothing has to change. But if those consequences aren’t what I wanted, then the only person who has the power to change that is me. Others cannot change those consequences for me.

How many of your attempts to control others have been the result of your beliefs? Is it difficult to change your beliefs because if you did so you’d have to take responsibility for your own emotional states? It can be pretty scary to assume control of your own life. If you are in control and you fail, then you have nobody to blame but yourself. On the other hand, if you are in control and you succeed, you and you alone are responsible for that success! In that case, you get all the credit!

Emotionally Aggressive Controlling Behaviors

A common excuse for emotionally aggressive controlling behaviors towards others is, “People treat me with disrespect.” While this may be true on occasion, we really have no control over how other people treat us, as much as we might like to think otherwise. The behavior of others is an external event beyond our control. What we can control is how we react to the way we are treated. One way to rephrase the above statement could be, “I can’t help the way others treat me, but I can change the way I react to them.”

There are at least four ways to fail and at least four ways to succeed. Look over the lists below and see if anything from either list sounds familiar:

Controlling Others: Four ways to Fail

  1. All-or-Nothing Thinking: “You always do this…” or “You never do that…”
  2. ‘You’ Statements: “This is all your fault!”
  3. ‘Musterbating:’ “Shoulda, woulda, coulda…”
  4. False Comparisons: “Everybody else gets this, why can’t you?”

Four ways to Succeed

  1. Exceptional Thinking: Look for positive exceptions to the ‘rule’
  2. ‘I’ Statements: “This is how I feel about what you said/did”
  3. ‘Solution-Seeking:’ “What can I do to help so this doesn’t happen again?”
  4. True Comparisons: “You did that much better than other people would have”

The next time you feel the temptation to control the people in your life, review these lists and remind yourself that you can’t control others. You can only control yourself. If you control or change the way you respond to others, then they may be willing to change the way they respond to you.

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Mindful Self-Control

Self-Control Point Ruston letting go

“Happiness is the absence of the pursuit of happiness.”

–Chuang Tsu

Self-control is a requirement for happiness. This quote by Chuang Tsu reminds us that if we are happy, there is no need to pursue happiness, and that if we are pursuing happiness, then it is obvious that we must not be happy! So how can self-control lead to happiness?

Emotional aggression is the pursuit of happiness in unproductive ways. When we act out of emotional aggression, we are trying to get others to be responsible for our happiness. If I rely on others to make me happy, I have just handed control of my life over to others. If others are in control of my happiness, then I can only be happy when they choose to indulge my need for happiness.

The need to control others can sometimes reveal our own insecurities. These insecurities lead to emotional aggression because when we feel vulnerable we feel out of control. When we feel out of control, we sometimes feel that we can regain that control by controlling those around us.

Sometimes the desire to control others manifests in something called self-sabotaging behaviors. A self-sabotaging behavior is a pattern of action that leads us into failure. By deliberately setting ourselves up to fail, we can be attempting to punish those who care about us by punishing ourselves. Sometimes this takes the form of, “I’ll show them! I’ll hurt myself in some way so they’ll regret the way they treated me!”

Ultimately such behaviors are attempts to solicit pity out of others by making them feel guilty. To a person engaged in self-sabotaging behaviors, negative attention is better than no attention at all. In such a case, this person may not know how to seek attention in positive ways, so he attempts to seek attention in the only way he knows how: By injuring himself in some way and hoping this self-injury will cause others to reach out to him.

Another aspect of self-sabotaging is that it is abdicating responsibility to succeed. If I consciously act in ways that go against my own best interests, then I don’t have to try to find a way to be successful. The good news is that you can choose how to feel, and how to behave. In fact, you are the only person who can make that decision for yourself. Another person can never tell you how to feel or how to act.

Self-Control and Beliefs

The key to self-control is to realize that events and circumstances do not cause your reactions. What you believe about events and circumstances cause your reactions. Think about the last time you were stressed out. Were you stressed out because of the events in your life, or were you stressed out because of what you chose to believe about those events? If the stress was a result of the events in your life, then there is nothing you can do to change, and you will never be in control of your own life. You will live like a leaf on the wind, constantly blown to and fro on the winds of chance.

But if the stress was the result of what you chose to believe about those circumstances, then the good news is that you are in control of those beliefs. You can change them so that you are no longer stressed out by life’s bumps and bruises. The choice is up to you. You are in control.

External events – whether in the past, present, or future – cannot influence the way you feel or behave until you become aware of them and begin to think about them. If you had a crisis in your life, but you never knew it happened, would it stress you out? Of course not, because you didn’t even know about it.

So it’s not the events that cause stress. It’s your own beliefs about the events that cause stress. To fear something, or to worry about something, or to react in any other way to something, you have to be thinking about it. The cause of your reaction is not the event – it’s what you tell yourself about the event that causes your reaction.

What are you telling yourself about the circumstances of your life that may be interfering with your ability to control yourself? What alternate narratives could you tell yourself that would increase and enhance your self-control? How can you use your mindful skills to make this happen?

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Mindfulness and Control

mindfulness and control

“He who angers you conquers you.”

-Elizabeth Kenny

Mindful Ecotherapy relies on the 7Cs of family resilience. These resilience factors help you to better weather the storms that come with life.

The second ‘C’ of the 7Cs of family resilience is “control.”

If someone has the ability to anger you, then that person just controlled you.

If you allow others to ‘make’ you feel angry, you have relinquished control over your own emotional well-being.

Similarly, anger is often the result of failed attempts to control others. By analyzing our beliefs about control, we learn to manage our moods so that control is no longer an issue.

Once there was a sculptor who was famous for his carvings of animals. Of all the animals he carved, his elephants were the most lifelike and inspiring. One day an art student came to him and asked him the secret to creating such beautiful elephants.

“The answer,” he said, “Is simple. You just get a block of marble and chip away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”

When difficulties arise in a relationship, it’s usually because we’ve set out to carve an elephant, but we suddenly find ourselves carving a bear or a donkey or some other animal instead. When this happens, we’ve gotten caught up in the details of living, and we have lost sight of our original goal, the elephant.

Go over your list of standard arguments with your partner, and decide for yourselves which ones will lead to a happier relationship, and which ones involve side issues (i.e., arguments that are not ‘carving the elephant.’) You may disagree with your partner over which ones are which, and that’s okay too.

Maybe your version of the elephant is slightly different from your partner’s version. Just remember that by sharing your vision of a happier relationship with your partner, you can both come to agreement on what sort of elephant you would like to carve together.

The first step is agreeing that you will focus only on those actions that lead to the end result you both want. Once you’ve agreed on that end result, you can both begin to ‘chip away’ anything that doesn’t look like the relationship you both want to share.

Remember to keep it focused on solutions. You can talk about the problem all day if you wish, but that doesn’t do anything to actually solve the problem.

If your intention is to have a happy, healthy relationship, then anything that doesn’t promote that is irrelevant. It’s just marble to be carved away. If you find yourself constantly discussing problems, and never reaching resolution, ask yourself, “What is my intention?” or perhaps, “Is this the elephant I’m trying to carve, or is it just excess marble?”

If both you and your partner have the same intention, then the rest is just details. You’re working towards a common goal, and all that remains is to resolve how you both approach the common goal.

If, on the other hand, you both have different intentions, then you both have different goals. This is the source of a lot of friction in relationships.

Always remember that you can only control your own intentions, and not your partner’s. Use your mindful communication skills to find common ground and to avoid the temptation to try to control others.