For the first 40 some-odd years of my life, I lived in ongoing dread of making mistakes. The fear, shame and self-loathing that came when I made mistakes of any sort were overwhelming–to be avoided at all costs. This dread of making mistakes drove me endlessly to extremes of perfectionism. It drove me, as well, to become utterly 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 journey, the major part of the struggle I suffered around making mistakes was the legacy of the damaging mothering to which I was subject.
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 always came with that familiar irritated, impatient brusqueness; that familiar 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 so 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 constantly pummeled 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–the year I’d memorized the whole of Longfellow’s epic poem, Hiawatha as a special credit project. The teacher gently asked my parents if they would consider easing up on the pressure for me to achieve. It seemed to her that I was pushing myself mercilessly. In great surprise, they informed her that they were not pressuring me at all, that the grueling pushing must be coming from inside of me!)
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. Clearly, 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 merciless critic of my own work. Even without supervisors to point out my mistakes, I had a keen eye for my failures of insight and my off the mark interpretations. Since the way that I worked was always a far cry from how I was trained to work–much more present as a whole, real person in relationship with my clients–my self-criticism was often conflicted and intense.
The shame I felt whenever I made a mistake or misstep in my ordinary everyday interpersonal relationships was equally intense. Inadvertently hurting someone’s tender feelings completely undid me. My apologies and attempts at recompense were as limitless as my guilt and self-berating. I’d feel completely worthless. Everything I’d ever done right would pale before this grievous wrong I’d just committed.
There was no quarter of my life free from the scathing self-evaluations, the intense self-deprecations of what I came to call the Hatchet Lady voice inside of me. Any "mistakes" led her to the same caustic denigration of everything I might have held dear about myself. The self-berating was as vitriolic for the smallest missteps as it was for the larger mistakes. Any "mistake" led always and directly to the utter unraveling of any shred of self-worth I had built on the basis of prior positive "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 horribly discouraging pattern. A life without this endlessly repeating cycle of unraveling seemed unimaginable.
Then, at 44, in the magical moments of my first meeting with the little one inside of me, something incredible and momentous shifted in my being. As my heart opened wide to this extraordinarily vibrant, alive and tender creature I became totally committed to loving and cherishing her. I couldn’t imagine allowing anyone (even the Hatchet Lady) to treat her vulnerable, trusting little self with harshness, impatience or criticism. Something fierce and ferociously protective was awakened in me: an inner-Mommy completely devoted to this little, precious and unquestionably lovable creature I was just coming to know. (See The Little Ones Story for more about this unfolding.)
It was inconceivable to me how anyone could ever have been impatient with her or have expected her to be able to do more than she was capable of or have expected her never to make a mistake. She was so little and delicate! She needed love and tenderness and supportive help to grow and flourish. Her very being stirred that in me, immediately, unquestioningly.
In that instant there was a knowing, in every cell of my being, that this little one and I were both really "okay," really lovable just exactly as we were. I knew then that this had been and was always so, from my beginnings and through all the years up to that very moment. For years and with no real success, I had been trying to embrace this truth about myself. It was what I had, for years, been helping all my clients to know and embrace about themselves. Yet, never before had it taken hold in me as an in-the-belly/heart knowing about myself. The Hatchet Lady had always shredded the idea with intense and excoriating ridicule before it could implant itself.
Along with the knowing that we were lovable just exactly as we were came the cell-deep realization that we (the little one and I) had never ever 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.
For so many years, and long past my mother’s death, I had been perpetuating her mistreatment of me through the lacerating voice of the Hatchet Lady I’d grown inside of me. Continuing ceaselessly to malign myself as my mother had, I’d been repeatedly affirming the belief that the criticism, condemnation of "mistakes" and absence of love from her was indeed my fault, that there was truly something wrong with me. In this self-damaging way, I could keep alive the emotional myth, the hope that, if only I could figure out how to be the "right" kind of kid, then I would finally get the loving I so craved from her.
In the profound moment of meeting my little one and feeling the immediate 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.
Full of these realizations, I could begin the slow and deliberate process of dismantling the devastatingly self-destructive ways I had been using all my life to keep hope alive. I now understood there truly was no hope at all. The Mommy-inside, gradually strengthened and fed by the Grandmothers and by Spirit/the Great Mother, started becoming the boundless, always present source of the love for which I had been so hungry. An ever more substantial and more rich 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 understand a whole lot about so-called mistakes: They do not make us bad or wrong. They are nothing about which we have 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, to waking up our inventiveness and creativity. Sometimes, what looks like a "mistake" is really a doorway-in-disguise that leads to something unexpected and magical and nourishing!
In the beginning of this new season of my journey, 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 anymore. 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 magical for ourself.
Over the years since those earliest days of this enormous 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 deepest, most sincere regret for having created, by my words/actions/inaction, 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 well have done something terrible, without falling into feeling we’re a terrible person, we’re so much more available to the person we’ve injured. We can make room to fully 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 contribute the tangle of creating 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.
Be especially gentle and loving 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 handcolored 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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