Rachel (*not her real name & with permission) came to me as she was having difficulties sleeping and she felt overwhelmed with life. She was also arguing with her husband constantly.
I started by asking Rachel a few questions to establish why her subconscious mind had given her these problems…….
I asked her what thoughts kept her up at night and she said that she had so much to do and worried that she wouldn’t be able to do it all.
I asked her what would happen if she didn’t do it all and she said that she wouldn’t feel good enough. She said that she had always been a high achiever and that needed to continue.
After probing further, I discovered that Rachel had a belief that everyone (including herself) and everything should be perfect for her to feel relaxed and her to do list helped her to achieve this.
I also asked her why she was arguing with her husband, and she said he didn’t help her enough with everything she had to do, so he was stopping her from everything being “just so” and she was really annoyed about it.
I could see here that the list of things to do that Rachel had created in her mind was causing both the insomnia and the issues with her husband and the reason why she had the list in the first place was to make sure that she and everything else in her life was perfect.
The real issue was that Rachel had a belief that “Everything needs to be perfect”.
Creating a long list of things to do and then worrying about it at night and arguing with her husband were the symptoms of the belief.
(* I also suggested that she see her GP to make sure the insomnia didn’t have a medical cause)
How did we resolve it?
We had to find out where she got this belief came from.
Beliefs are created as a result of previous experiences (memories). So, I was looking for a time in her life when this belief was created.
After asking Rachel to talk about her childhood, whilst using Havening® touch. She said that she constantly felt that she had to please her overly critical dad. She said that he only praised her when she achieved something. He was only happy when everything was going perfectly in life.
Children need the love and approval of their parents to feel content and safe. Children learn pretty quickly what they have to do to achieve this. Rachel had learnt that to gain the love and approval of her father and to feel safe, she had to make sure that she was perfect, and her life was perfect. To do this, her mind had come up with a long list of things to do to make that happen, but the pressure to do everything that she told herself that she needed to do, was keeping her up at night and leading her to argue with her husband.
So, we moved onto healing the memories that had created the belief that she needed to be perfect to feel ok.
Rachel identified a few key memories where her dad had criticised her for not achieving what he thought she should have. We used EFT and Havening® on each of those memories until she felt no emotions when she thought of them.
Gradually over time Rachel said that she just felt differently. She said that she no longer felt the need to have a never ending to do list.
After 6 sessions she reported that:
- She was sleeping far better
- She is spending more quality time with her husband, and they are getting on better
- Her to do list had reduced significantly. She only added very important things to her list.
- She said no to more people and didn’t feel bad about it
- Her health had improved. She now had more energy
- She said that she felt free, for the first time in years
- She spent more time with her children and they said that they were happier because mummy was happy again
- She said that life had just got better and she was thrilled!
Are you a perfectionist? Is perfectionism causing you problems in your life and you want to resolve it? Email me at emma@themindmermaid.com for more info