4: Healing from extremes: Obsessions

Throughout my life, I have found myself easily obsessed with new ideas, music, work, self-absorbed people, and more. One thing that’s important to mention about why I have so much energy to obsess about something or someone comes from, I believe, a total lack of interest in me. I didn’t want to feed me, clothe me or take care of me in any way. By adulthood, I did those things at a minimum level, to pass as normal, masking and joining were what I knew better than my own interests, and better than I knew myself. Obsessiveness was both an escape from myself and a route to safety in some ways. I couldn’t defend myself, so how could I anticipate the next moves of bullies like my mom? By focusing excessively on them. I was a highly sensitive person raised in an invalidating environment, which resulted in deep mistrust of self, the feeling of having to fight to be ok, and deep shame. In my experience, obsessiveness, perfectionism, and low self worth go hand in hand. I certainly tried to protect myself from punishment and shame by getting everything perfect. I was motivated solely by praise for gold stars, so being perfect was just the minimum. I had to be exceptional on top of that to get more praise. There was safety from criticism in perfection, it seemed. But really, there is no safety from criticism with critical people. They will always find something. The real safety is in elevating your self worth to the point that you don’t care what petty, critical people think. But in the absence of self worth, perfectionism is a form of protection. As is obsessing about what the bullies in my life were going to do or say, and how I could get ahead of them.