5 Things Women with Perfectionistic Guilt Need to Hear

A Gallup Health and Well-Being Index revealed that women approaching midlife had the highest levels of stress among all age groups and genders. What's worse, according to the study, they were far more stressed out than previous generations of women, and there didn't seem to be any relief in sight. Today's women are raising children, working, caring for aging parents, and tending to their partners (or trying to), while doing their best to remain fresh and youthful. And as a result, they often feel too stretched, too overwhelmed, too exhausted, too unappreciated, and way too weary.

The study also highlighted the fact that among a range of emotions experiences by these over-worked and under-appreciated women, the most pronounced was guilt. No matter how much they worked, no matter how thinly they were spread, no matter how caring, giving, and sacrificing (and no matter how damned good they looked while engaging in all of their service-related activities) it never felt like they were doing enough -- there was always more they believed they could/should/needed to do. And at the core of these women's souls lurked a fear that they were failing themselves, their employers, their partners, and their children. According to the study, this type of perfectionism is eating away at the mental and physical health of today's women, particularly those who are parents.

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I am the mother of a college-aged son who I parented alone for most of his life. I worked throughout his childhood in a high pressure job as a college professor, which afforded me a decent income and a fair amount of flexibility, but was also the source of almost non-stop stress. On the outside I appeared relatively put-together, and I consistently received praise from friends and family who were in awe of how much I could handle.

Now, while I loved being a mom more than I can possibly describe, and while I appreciated the flexibility and adventure my career afforded me, most of the time inside my head I was a complete train wreck, and much like my female counterparts from the Gallup index, I was riddled with the type of guilt that comes from the perfectionist belief that nothing I did was ever going to be quite good enough. I felt guilt when I was at work and not at home. I felt guilt when I was at home and not at work. I felt guilt when I was at school, and neither at home nor at work. I was stretched out, maxed out, whacked out and guilted out on an almost constant basis, fearing I was stretched so thin, that I wasn't giving my best in any area in my life.

And the worst part? I had no one to talk to about my feelings, particularly my guilt, because from my vantage point, everyone else seemed to be doing just fine -- swimming effortlessly through each day, without a care or concern in the world. And in an attempt not to burden anyone, or destroy my image of the all-together-have-it-all woman, I kept my angst to myself and forged ahead with twirling baton in hand.

Now that my son is away at college and I've had some time to reflect on those early years, I realize that my opinion of other women having it more together than I did was likely based on the same false premise as their inflated opinions of me. But no one in my world, not even my female friends, were willing to openly admit their feelings of insufficiency and insecurity and talk about their guilt. It seemed as though we were all trying to live up to some perfectionistic pioneer reality that dictated days spent spinning from task to task, with seamless timing and effortless coordination. And yet nothing could have been further from the truth -- at least for me, and I strongly suspect for all of the other women in my life as well.

So now that I have surpassed the stage of daily parenting responsibilities and have reached the point in my life where I have better perspective and have proactively chucked my perfectionistic guilt right out the proverbial window, I thought I'd do my younger sisters a favor and cough up some confessions, so that they too could take a collective breath, let down their guard, and with all the strength they have remaining at the end of the day, chuck their own perfectionistic guilt right out their window as well.
So here goes:

1. My son never went to bed on time during his entire childhood, not ever, not once.
2. I would rather fry my head in a microwave with an aluminum foil cap than attend Curriculum Night, so I didn't.
3. I proudly watched my son play baseball for one entire season from the warmth of my car (with heated seats) because it never rose above 40 degrees. During warmer seasons I often sat on the opposing side because I could pick up a wireless signal on my laptop more easily, and could work while watching my son play.
4. All those occasions when people popped over to my house unexpectedly and I apologized for the mess claiming I was in the midst of giant reorganization project? I lied -- that was my home's normal fare.
5. My son graduated from high school with an average GPA and an average ACT score and still managed to get into a really great college, and now he's having the time of his life.

Despite winging it all of those years, and despite spending 18 years running 30 minutes late, and despite the days when showering before noon was the biggest accomplishment I was going to have all week, and despite losing track of my son's homework more days than not, and despite driving to work far too many days with a coffee cup perched on the roof of my car (and my son's homework in my backseat), my son turned out just fine -- great in fact. And my career survived, and my family and friends survived, and I survived -- no we didn't just survive, we flourished. And although we didn't have a traditional life, and while I certainly wasn't a traditional mom, we made it work, and every day we experienced joy -- wonderful, spectacular unscripted joy.
So what is my message to all the women out there trying to balance it all and feeling too much perfectionistic guilt in the process?

1. Don't ever say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to your best friend.
2. Know that whatever it is that you're doing, it's enough.
3. Perfection is boring.
4. When your child does something that sends you through the roof, ask yourself if anyone will gasp if you retell the story 20 years from now. If the answer is no, then stop gasping and instead laugh.
5. Take more bubble baths (with wine).

The longer version of this blog post is available on Monica Torres' blog