The Healthy Compulsive Project

The world can be really annoying. But we can question how annoyed we need to be. And examining our response can lead us to understand lots about ourselves. It could even make us happier. What do we expect of the world, and how do we handle it when it doesn’t meet our standards? This isn’t just about letting others off the hook, but an investigation into how we spend our energy, the quality of our relationships, and whether our priorities and our behavior match up.

Perfectionism has gotten a bad rap. Used well, it can serve us and others very well. Used badly, it kills the spirit. Perfectionism that feels necessary will grab and strangle you. Perfectionism that is simply desired can be very fulfilling. And watch where you bring it: it fits better in some arenas that others. 

The archetype of the Saint can draw people with obsessive-compulsive personality to a life of devotion—even if that devotion is not standard religious fare. Righteousness can become so pronounced that they—and those around them—can hear nothing other than that siren call to perfection. Religion is then used as justification for rigidity. The draw is understandable, because it seems to them so clear that being religious is the right thing to do. None of this is to dismiss the value of religion, but as encouragement to sort out a true spiritual calling from an unconscious need to prove that you have good character. 

We've all got a monster hiding under our bed: shame, fear, depression, or anger we feel we need to avoid. And we often try to avoid it with urgency: getting things done, fixing, and producing, always staying so focused on speed and efficiency that we lose site of what's most important. In this episode Gary explores the questionable strategy of urgency and how to return to the things that give our lives meaning. 

For some of us chaos is disturbing on a deep level. And it's often beyond our control. But the question is whether the chaos is just out there in the outer world, or in our inner world. Our assessment and our reaction to it determine partly just how chaotic it is. In this episode Gary shares some of his own personal experiences with chaos and how he has dealt with them. 

Living with urgency and living with ease are two opposite approaches to life.   If asked which we prefer, most of us would say ease, but few of us actually live that way. Join me in this episode to explore our surprising resistance to ease, the unhealthy side effects of urgency, and suggestions for how to transition from a life of urgency to a life of ease. 

Stop thinking you’re supposed to be smelling the roses when you know that planting and managing the garden is what really makes you happy. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to be happy? I suspect that most of my listeners would agree, but find that as hard as turning off the sun. It feels out of our control. Everything that’s unresolved, imperfected and out-of-order are exposed to the light whether we want to see it or not. I think that to the degree that we can control it, it requires a different approach than the one that’s often suggested—or perhaps I should say, an additional approach that doesn’t go against popular wisdom, but takes into account the psychological territory we’re in.  So, in this podcast I will make some realistic suggestions about how people with compulsive and perfectionistic tendencies, planning and list-making in particular,  can work with those to achieve some degree of happiness.  

Some people are reluctant to go to therapy for fear of wasting their time there. Others may already be in therapy but fear they are wasting their time. This is understandable for the many compulsives who feel strongly about being efficient and effective. But you can go to therapy and use your time there wisely.  To help listeners make the most of therapy I’ve outlined some of the most important tools to make sure that you don’t waste your time there—and so that you don't feel like you’re wasting time when you’re actually doing good work!

Beneath our everyday surface anxieties are deeper more substantial fears, core fears that control our behavior and affect our mood more than we imagine. If we can identify these core fears, and learn to stare them down, they have less power over us. To do this we need to also identify our coping strategies, the ones that allow us to temporarily escape these fears by controlling, overworking, people pleasing or obsessing.  Once we do so, we can pursue our passions rather than just avoid our fears. 

Seriousness is a questionable virtue. A least for those of us who tend want to have everything a certain way, need to have things resolved, and have a hard time delegating because no-one else will do it as well. When we get stuck in this mode, we need help to let go and appreciate life as it is. One character who has been doing this for thousands of years in the archetype of the Fool. The more we tend to reject his qualities, the more we need them. Seeing his image can help us to find those qualities inside of us and achieve a better balance in life.