The Healing Perfectionist

Hi. My name is Kristine and I am a recovering healing perfectionist.

When I started my healing journey, I entered a dangerous phase of self-awareness. All I could see were the many ways I got in my way and all the toxic behaviors that contributed to my lack of success in love and money. I was so "awakened" to my imperfections that I was determined to get it right. I was determined to heal and decided to never, ever go back to who I "use" to be. And when I reached that point of being "healed," then I could pursue my dreams and find the love of my life, but until then…I wasn't ready.

Oh, the lies I told myself to keep myself safe and enable avoidance of not taking the steps to move forward.

You see, it's ok to recognize your self-imposed obstacles. It's necessary, but I am here to tell you there is no such thing as being 100% healed. At least, that is my belief. I hate this concept of "healing", but I will use the word because it is universally understood.

For me, healing is not about the finish line. Healing isn't about perfection or living unbothered or untriggered. Healing is about understanding how you operate, why you move that way, deciding whether or not it's productive to your life goals and have the ability to change. Oh yea, there is also this thing about acceptance and forgiveness but we don't need to talk about that right now.

I do understand that at some point in this healing journey, we reach this level of mistrust with ourselves. There was a time I told my therapist that I did not trust myself to make better choices in the men I would entertain for potential partners. That was because I had enough awareness to see my patterns but I did not have the confidence in my tools to do it differently.

How did I get out of that? Well, I started practicing. Particularly in my dating life, I looked at men and dating as practice. It was an opportunity to assess my judgment, test my discernment, assert boundaries, and learn my dating and relationship values. That said, I did not turn down opportunities for a relationship just because I was in "practice" mode. If you think about it, life is one big practice session. We weren't born with a handbook on how to navigate this life with ease and limited pain, but we were given guidelines from our caretakers and society. Still, when you decide to step into your own, you'll realize you don't actually know anything about life.

I don't believe there is such a thing as being completely healed, nor do I think we have to reach a particular milestone in our healing to be ready for something, especially relationships. The true nature of healing balances self-discovering alone and self-discovering with partners, and most importantly self-discovering through Him. We need time to ourselves to be ok with being by ourselves and if you do the work, that time doesn't need to be years.

I wish I would have gone easier on my younger self and taken this pressure off being perfectly healed. Still, it took me a while to realize that this idea of perfection was one of my toxic limitations. It was my way to self preserve and a bold face lie from the enemy.

So if you are like me, don't waste your energy on convincing yourself that you are too imperfect or unhealed to love. Take control over your life, sit with the pain of doing the work, talk to God, and then get out there and practice. Be open to learning life with a new perspective and be ok with making mistakes!