Do It Yourself...Or Not

Hello. My name is Tiffany Campbell. I have a disease. I am a perfectionist. I have been working toward recovery for several years now.

Wait – if you don't think you are a perfectionist, keep reading anyway. One of Satan's greatest weapons is isolation: disconnection from God, family, friends, and just people in general. He can use perfectionism to isolate you, or a myriad of other tactics, including passive-aggressive resentment, a lack of appropriate boundaries, ingratitude, unhealed childhood trauma, the general frustrations of daily living and just about any other type of emotional bondage he can get his filthy claws on.

One of the symptoms of my perfectionism has been an unwillingness to ask for help. Society's constant glorification of “being independent” has driven the nail further in the coffin on this one. Yep, I'm a do-it-yourselfer. Unfortunately, that seems to include keeping myself emotionally healthy – without anyone else's help. There's the disconnection. It can start in such small ways. Today, I peeled an especially frustrating hard-boiled egg that ended up mutilated in my hands. I was still calming myself from the disruption to my peaceful feeling when my daughter asked me (in the middle of dinner prep) to untie a knot that was also particularly stubborn. My perfectionist self, instead of risking showing any weakness, would have persevered until the knot was out, building up all kinds of anger along the way and allowing Satan's negative whisperings to influence me. Realizing that my peace was drifting further away, I courageously spoke up for my own needs and said, “I need some time to calm down and finish getting dinner ready before I work on this knot, sweetie. I'm feeling really frustrated.” Wow, what a difference that made in my evening!

Not only am I reluctant to seek help and understanding from others in meeting my own needs, I also have at times fallen into a resentment trap within my marriage. This is a boundary and communication issue as well as a perfectionist issue. It happens when instead of quickly finding an appropriate, respectful way to communicate my feelings if I feel I have been wronged or neglected in some way, I don't say anything because of a simple fear of confrontation (having to stand up for oneself and disagree (appropriately) with someone does not come too easily to a perfectionist either, since one of the main culprits that created my perfectionism was my need to please others and receive their praise, affirmation, and approval. If I don't have that, then something must be wrong with me. It's really tough for perfectionists to feel disliked or as though we have displeased someone...it's also really hard not to get what I want, but I didn't say that out loud). When I am falling into this trap, I do not ask for help within my marriage enough. Instead of seeking to connect, I withdraw and actually contribute even more to the disconnect and frustration I was feeling in the first place. Withdrawing from others is dangerous. It puts you right where the Adversary wants you. The less we are connected with others, the more influence the devil seems to have on our thoughts.

Recently my husband has taken the lead once again on our family's memorizing of an inspired document. First, we memorized The Living Christ, a testimony of the divinity and role of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Now, we are memorizing The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Each evening we have worked on this, new power and strength has come to our marriage and family. The first sentence is as follows. “We...solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of his children.” When my daughter asked what “ordained of God” meant, Daddy replied that it meant that God has given marriage special power. Wow. The crippling resentment that I've wasted my energy on has the potential to be replaced with real power when I choose to connect with my husband rather than withdraw. I knew as soon as he said it that it is true. Aside from God himself, I have felt no greater source of happiness and encouragement than in my husband when he is supporting me. No wonder Satan tries so hard to rob our relationship of connection.

Marriage is not the only relationship with power, however. There is a simple uplifting, encouraging strength that comes from connecting with people, whether it's a child, a friend, a spouse, or the local librarian. Shifting your focus from things to experiences, from self to others, is a healing balm like no other.

As I am beginning to understand the simple power of connecting with people, thanks in part to Nicholeen Peck's blog post, and also to Sister RosemaryWixom's talk in General Conference, I am finding new joy in life. As I let down my perfectionist standards and look at the tremendous progress our family has made over the past year, and even in the past month, I am beginning to feel like I'm actually succeeding. Not in a prideful, “all is well in Zion” way, but in a “truth will set you free” way.

The truth is, I don't have to get everything right. I don't have to do everything myself. I don't have to shy away from asking for help because that might mean that I'm weak or a failure. I can take time to connect with my family, to watch when my children ask me to watch – for the twentieth time, to sit down and read a book and let tasks wait that can wait. I can be flexible and allow my agenda to change for the day. I can just hang out with my family and friends. I can reach out instead of withdraw. When my eyes are resting on people, I can't see all the supposed material evidence laying around of all the ways I'm failing. When my focus is on people, I can't feel the nagging guilt that I ought to be achieving something right now instead of wasting my time chatting. (Ick! Do I really think that way sometimes?) Suddenly, surprise visits and interruptions are less of a nuisance and more of a pleasure. What a joyful way to live!

It is most significant that Satan's best efforts seem to be to disconnect me from God. Not only am I reluctant to ask for help from others, but I am forgetful of the partnership I am supposed to maintain with God on a daily – or hourly, if need be – basis through another matchless source of power: Prayer. As a perfectionist, I get into my agenda and can become obsessed with success, forgetting not only those I love, but the God I need. I will plug ahead on my own, with too much confidence in my own abilities, going through the motions of prayer, but not really giving it my thorough attention, then wondering why things aren't going so well. Prayer is like the pulse of my relationship with God. Connection with the Almighty always brings more peace, joy, and an increased capacity to apply the light and truth I've learned and become the person He means for me to be. So as I speak of the power of connection with others, God is most definitely not to be forgotten. In fact, the two are incredibly interrelated. After all, God often answers our prayers through other people. When we seek connection with Him, he responds by sending us other people, through whom we can feel His love.

We're not in this life to do it all by ourselves. We need Him. We need our family. We need our friends. We need people. I'm ready to finally stop resisting my need for connection and start tapping into deep reservoirs of energy, peace, and happiness by reaching out to God and others and responding when they reach out for me. We are instruments in His hands. I know that when we are trying our best to do something good, the Adversary will do his best to stop us, whispering to us that it's not worth it to pray and feeding us negative, isolating thoughts that keep us from connecting with people and reaching out for help. I'm so grateful for the way the Lord is leading me to discover things as they really are and as they really can be.

Missing Keys

This morning I was about to blow it... again. Continuing in my quest to implement Nicholeen Peck's state-of-the-art Self-Government system in my home, I recently realized that a few key elements were missing from my parenting. There's the obvious: my own self-government skills – the ones that I'm working on developing so that I can actually stay calm during all these 'teaching moments' with my children. (But I am making progress!) Then there's the not-so-obvious: 1) practicing the right way to do things when something has gone wrong and 2) teaching my children to think of their daily life as filled with privileges that they are earning.

Now that I am in my second trimester of pregnancy, the morning sickness is gone, but instead I wake up with the morning grumps. So after a tough emotional journey toward getting myself started for the day, the kids and I began our typical home school routine.

One of them had moved the sit-n-spin into our kitchen, right to the very spot where we stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance and our Family Mission statement. So, naturally, they fought about who would stand on it during the Pledge. That was just the beginning of a series of serious rude behaviors. By the time we reached the time for our hymn and scripture reading, each of the children had earned a handful of chores. The voice of discouragement rang loud and clear through my mind about how our school today was going to be a series of battles and take longer than it should. I was already feeling like a failure for not teaching enough the day before. Satan always tries to make me feel like a failure when the children are acting up because surely this is a reflection of my poor mothering skills. There was no sense of calm in my heart. After sending the little one to Time Out so that he could “get ready to follow instructions” I just stood there for a moment, clenching the dry erase marker in my hand very hard and closing my eyes, fighting for a sense of calmness and some form of guidance about how to proceed.

My daughter watched me fighting for control as I followed the one idea that came to me. I brought out the Children's Songbook and shakily announced that instead of singing our normal one song, we would sing several. I could see in her face that her heart became filled with compassion for me and as we sang, she quickly wrote a note and placed it in her own makeshift envelope and handed it to me. Hearing the singing, James rejoined us, although still showing signs of grumpiness. I read her note which said, “Dear Mommy, I love you So Much. Love, Jesstyn.” I was so touched by her kindness that I lost my voice for a line or two in the song. She beamed and came to snuggle for the rest of “I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus.”

The singing and her kindness brought the Spirit back into our home and I was able to be calm and think through what was needful. Too often in my parenting, I am too concerned with keeping our schedule or continuing with my agenda/project/task for the moment. I skip over the seemingly time-consuming parts of the Self-Government system, one of which is practicing the right way to do things. I do usually remember to tell the child what the right way to handle it was, but very seldom do we actually take the time to role play and practice it. Today, once I could feel the Spirit again, I could see that my little one still had not had a change of heart. I could not continue with our lessons for the day until he was a happier boy. So for the next fifteen or twenty minutes (maybe it was only ten minutes, after all, I'm not sure), we role played and practiced the right way to communicate about the sit-n-spin.

This small investment of time made a huge difference in how both children responded to my teaching and reminders about good behavior for the remainder of our morning. The acting out of choosing the right put them in the mindset of wanting to choose the right for the rest of the morning. It was amazing.

In hindsight, he was probably acting up because he was feeling disconnected from me. He was already wanting me to read books to him instead of what we were doing. Had I continued with our routine, his behavior would have worsened. This simple missing key – taking the time to practice the right way with him – actually created the connection he needed at the time and filled a need so that he could feel more secure and be happier and more obedient. Nicholeen once said that the most healing thing she knew of when you are struggling is connecting with people. I am finding this to be so true and helpful for me. It works for children too! Connection! Perhaps that is the true missing key.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I will outline the change that has come over my children as they have begun to understand that free play time, media, snacks and desserts are actually privileges that they earn with good behavior and honest work.