For the first 40 some years of my life, I lived in constant dread of making mistakes. The fear, shame and self-loathing that came when I made mistakes of any sort were overpowering, to be avoided at all costs. This fear of making mistakes drove me to extremes of perfectionism. It drove me, as well, to become disinterested in anything I couldn't do reasonably well right from the get go.
It's certainly true that our everyday world generally has little tolerance or respect for mistakes. Still, as with so many of the issues in my healing journey, a major part of the struggle I suffered around making mistakes was the legacy of the damaging mothering to which I'd been subject till my mother died when I was 30.
Needing help of any sort, in any circumstances, fell into the same category as making a mistake-for the same reasons. My mother's help invariably came with irritated, impatient brusqueness and the message that my incompetence was beneath contempt, burdensome in the extreme.
The fear of getting anything wrong wove its way through all of my school years. I felt shamed when I made mistakes in class or on tests. I would berate and ridicule myself horribly, always certain that I should have known better. I'd pummel myself verbally, constantly pushing myself toward some unachievable standard of perfection.
(Several years ago, my dad told me about an open school night meeting my parents had had when I was in third grade. It was the year I'd memorized the whole of Longfellow's epic poem, Hiawatha as a special credit project. The teacher suggested to my parents that they ease up on their pressure for me to achieve. She felt that I was on overdrive too much of the time. In great surprise, they informed her that they were not pressuring me at all; that I must be driving myself.)
When I began seeing clients during my graduate psychotherapy practicum, I was given one hour a week of supervision for each four hours of client contact. The supervision process was intended to help student-therapists to learn how to do therapy. Nevertheless, I would face each weekly session with gut wrenching, nauseating anxiety. I would feel annihilated by any teaching that attempted to correct my awkward early efforts at doing treatment. Anything that was viewed as a gaffe filled me with shame, guilt and a despairing sense of worthlessness. Despite performance evaluations that were reasonably positive, I felt certain that my supervisors found my efforts contemptible. It didn't help that one, a world-renown author of a classic in the field, actually did approach most of us with a large measure of disdain. Or, that the other was a very cold, distant and rather unrelated woman.
As I moved on to begin my professional practice with private clients, I was a pitiless critic of my own work. Even without supervisors to point out my mistakes, I kept close count of my failures of insight and my off the mark interpretations. Since I worked in a way (choosing to be more present as a whole, real person in relationship with my clients) that was a far cry from how I was trained to work, my self-criticism was often conflicted and intense.
The shame I felt whenever I made a mistake or misstep in my everyday interpersonal relationships was equally extreme. Inadvertently hurting someone's tender feelings undid me. My apologies and attempts at recompense were as limitless as my guilt and self-berating. I'd feel worthless. Everything I'd ever done right would pale before whatever grievous wrong I'd just committed.
There was no quarter of my life free from the scathing self-evaluations, the unrelenting self-deprecations of what I came to call the Hatchet Lady voice inside me. The self-berating was as vitriolic for the smallest missteps as it was for larger mistakes. Any mistake led to the denigrating of everything I might have held dear about myself, the shredding whatever sense of self-worth I might have built from other accomplishments. (See Criticizing Yourself and Eating My Way Home for more about this devastating process.) No amount of therapy and self-work seemed able to touch this horrible pattern; a life free from this recycling torment seemed unimaginable.
Then, at 44, in my first astounding meeting with the Little One inside of me, something momentous shifted in me. As my heart opened wide to this vibrant, delightful and vulnerable creature I became instantly committed to loving and cherishing her. I couldn't imagine allowing anyone (even the Hatchet Lady) to treat her tender, trusting little self with harshness, impatience or criticism. Something fierce and ferociously protective was awakened in me: an inner-Mommy absolutely devoted to this precious little being that I was coming to know. (See The Little Ones Story for more about this experience.)
It was inconceivable to me how anyone could ever have been impatient with her or expected her to be able to do more than she was capable of or expected her not to make mistakes. She was so little and delicate. She needed love and tenderness and supportive help to grow and thrive. Her very being stirred that in me, immediately, unquestioningly.
In that instant there was a knowing, in every cell of me, that this Little One and I were both truly okay, lovable just exactly as we were. I knew, too, that this had been so, from my beginnings and through all of my life up to that moment. I had been trying, for years, without success, to accept this truth about myself. Even though I'd been, for all those years, helping my clients to know and accept this truth about themselves, it had never taken root in me as an in-the-belly/heart knowing about myself. The Hatchet Lady had typically trampled the idea with her ridicule before it could implant itself. Not so this time.
Embracing the reality that we were lovable just exactly as we were brought with it the realization that we (the Little One and I) had never deserved the terrible, crushing emotional mistreatment to which we had been subject. We finally understood in our belly and our bones that my mother's mistreatment of me had been about what was so in her and not at all about what was so about me.
Before this realization, I had perpetuated my mother's mistreatment of me through the lacerating voice of the Hatchet Lady that lived inside me. Maligning myself as my mother had, I'd affirmed that her criticism, her condemnation of my mistakes and her lack of love for me were all indeed my fault. If I believed that there was something wrong with me, I could keep alive the hope that if I could figure out how to be the right kind of kid, then I might finally get the loving I so craved from her.
In the moment of meeting my Little One and feeling the awakening of the loving Mommy-inside, I knew–at last and beyond any doubt–that the absence of love from my mother was about her inability to love me. It was never at all about any not-rightness or unlovableness in me. There had never been anyway I could be that would have opened her loveless heart.
With these realizations, I could begin the slow and deliberate process of dismantling the self-destructive ways I had been trying to keep hope alive. I understood there was no hope at all. The Mommy-inside, strengthened and fed by the Grandmothers and by Spirit/the Great Mother, gradually became the boundless, always present source of the love for which I had been so hungry. An ever more substantial inner reality, she was displacing the ragged dream-of-the-impossible: the dream of the outside good mother who would never be.
From the beginnings of her emergence, the Mommy-inside lovingly assured me that mistakes are things that happen in everyone's lives, frequently. “No one can do everything right all of the time,“ she said. She's helped me to see a lot about so-called mistakes: They do not make us bad or wrong. They are nothing about which to feel shamed or humiliated. They can provide us with chances to learn more about what we're involved in or about what we're trying to do. They give us the opportunity to stretch and grow. If we're afraid of mistakes, we rob ourselves of the adventure of exploring our furthest edges. Fixing a mistake sometimes opens us to whole new possibilities by awakening our inventiveness and creativity. Sometimes, what looks like a mistake turns out to be a doorway-in-disguise that leads to something unexpected and magical and nourishing.
In the beginning of this new season of my healing process, when I'd make a mistake, the Hatchet Lady would still start to rev up her meanness engine. But, the Mommy-inside would be right there, telling her she didn't have to do that, that there was no reason for her to be mean to us. She would remind the Hatchet Lady that we were lovable even though we might have done or said something wrong. She would remind the Hatchet Lady that nothing terrible would happen to us because of the mistake. She would help the Hatchet Lady and the rest of me not to feel so scared.
The Mommy-inside would hold us all safely as we did what needed to be done to make things right. We would take responsibility for what we'd done or not done, apologize, figure out how to fix or replace anything we'd messed up or broken, or even invent some way to make the mistake into something new and exciting for our self.
Over the years since those earliest days of this shift, the Hatchet Lady has really hung up her fangs. Every once in a while she sets to grumbling a little. I'm always kind to her, reminding her gently of what all the me's of me have come to know and trust. I remind her that she doesn't have to feel scared or be mean to me anymore. I remind her that we are safe and lovable no matter what we've done.
When I make mistakes these days, even the really big ones involving clients or hurting someone's feelings, I still feel very sorry to have done that. I'm able to listen easily and caringly to everything the person has to say to me about the pain/upset my actions (words or inaction) have set in motion. I can listen openly even when they might be very furious with me. I'm able to take responsibility for and able to own the truth of what I did/said/didn't do. I'm able to express my sincere regret for by my words/actions/inaction, having created the space for such pain and grief. And, I'm willing and able to look with the other person or just with myself at what there is that I might do to make amends or how I might avoid making the same mistake again.
What I no longer do is feel like a terrible, worthless person. Nor do I feel shamed or humiliated. Nor do I feel that everything good about me is invalidated by this misstep. Nor do I berate and verbally abuse myself for simply being a fallible human being.
When we can acknowledge that we might have done something terrible, without falling into feeling that this makes us a terrible person, we're so much more available to the person we've injured. We can make room to hear their upset and anger. We can be listening attentively instead of trying to defend, justify or explain ourselves as they are trying to express themselves to us. And, we don't create a situation in which the one we have injured feels that sharing their upset will be devastating to our self-esteem. This allows a healing to happen.
Remember to be especially tender and compassionate with your fallible, mistake-making simply human self.
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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