When it comes to visiting family, who you are can sometimes regress into the child they remember you as instead of the fully capable adult that you are now.
How do you know this is happening? When you’re afraid to be yourself around them, it’s happening.
When you were a child, whatever fear came up, you figured out a way to survive the moment. These survival skills were very handy in adolescence simply because they worked to keep us alive!
How many times in your life has something happened that was so hard to believe, that it actually hurt to believe it? You know what I mean… it’s that truth you don’t want to hear. It’s like the people who can’t believe the holocaust happened because it was just so atrocious. Or, like the email I got from a woman who found out her husband is cheating on her. It’s very hard to accept a truth that hurts us, but if we don’t, we systematically destroy ourselves.
When you suffer from perfectionism based in fear, you become more and more miserable as time goes on. In fact, the more perfect and controlling you are, the more disappointed with life you get. Does it make sense to be perfect? Is it actually more destructive than helpful? Many times yes.