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Hello everyone, Mark DeJesus here, bringing you insights for your healing and freedom journey. Welcome to this broadcast.
This is actually the second official time that I'm recording this. I went through it already, got done with it, and looked and realized it never recorded. So that's the fun we get to have when you're creating content and you realize, "Oh goodness, I never did record." So I got my eye on that recording button, realizing, "Okay, it's officially recording," and what I'm going to share today is going to get out there.
So, speaking of getting things just right, today I'm going to be talking some more about the subject of perfectionism. And it is a mindset that infiltrates a lot of areas of our life and our journey. If this material is a blessing to your life, please subscribe to the YouTube channel, to the content, get on our mailing list. You can get updated on everything that's coming up and that's happening. You can go to marktahjesus.com, where there is written, audio, and video material for your life, for your journey. I love helping, teach, and support, and equip people in healing and freedom, especially when it comes to mental, emotional, and relationship hell.
So, I want to get into this subject of perfectionism and how it infiltrates your life and your journey. And where I want to get into today is, I want to talk about four blocks. Four blocks. These become hindrances that actually keep perfectionists from healing. I found that I've had to walk through the four stages of these blocks or blockades or hindrances that came up in my own healing journey. And I think that if you understand perfectionism in your own life, you may see these tendencies in your own journey. And I think this could help you a lot to embrace some very important things that are needed for the heart healing aspect of your life in your journey.
If you want to understand perfectionism, and, um, I want to put this up on the screen here. When, when you want to discern perfectionism's work in your life, you have to recognize the mindset of "just right" and "never enough." "Just right, never enough." "Just right, never enough." "Just right, never enough." "Just right, never enough." "Just right, never enough." "Just right, never enough." Try to say that 100 times over and over again. It is something that will keep you in a cycle of bondage because there's this pressurized, "I got to get this thought just right," or "get my walk with God just right," or "I gotta make sure this disturbance within my thoughts is just right," "my relationship is just right," "I gotta feel just right about this," "I gotta land and I gotta believe just right." "I gotta this uncertainty issue, I gotta make it just right." And so perfectionism drives you into acting on that, but then it's never enough. So the "never enough" loops you back to the "just right," and then it's "never enough," and you loop back. And it's a cycle of insanity. It's a cycle of pressure. It's a cycle that will keep you in a bondage of self. And it forms distortions in your life so we can't see the life of our heart in fruitful ways to understand what we need. And what we really need is healing. We don't need "just right." We actually need to experience healing in our journey.
But there's four rounds or four blocks of the denial that we move into because these distortions we develop, they become aspects of denial in our life. And as I share with you these four blocks of denial, you're gonna see these patterns probably in your own life as you're navigating your own healing and freedom journey. I'll get right into it.
The first one is a denial that you even have perfectionism in your own life. Denial that it's even there. It may come across as direct refusal. Maybe you're defensive when people bring up stuff to you. You get defensive when people talk about the weak areas or vulnerable areas of your life. They may even say, "You're perfectionistic," and you dismiss it. It can also be a form of ignorance. You just don't know. You don't know what you don't know, and so therefore, you don't know what to do about what you don't know. It takes time. It takes humility. Sometimes it takes a crash. It takes where we start to recognize some patterns of disturbance that we're living by. Many perfectionists defend their behaviors. "Ah, it's not perfectionism. I like things just right." Well, that's exactly what perfectionism likes you to say. "I'm not perfectionistic. I just have high standards." And so we have many, many different forms of how we deny that we even have perfectionism to begin with.
The second block we move into is, you can see it to an extent, but you also feed it. Instead of gaining tools on what we can do in recognition of perfectionism, we just stay in it. And it's like, well, you almost identify with it. "Well, I'm just a perfectionist. That's the perfectionist in me." "Well, I did this, and I went and checked this, and I ruminated all day because I'm a perfectionist." You know, and there isn't a sense of, "You know what? I don't have to be a perfectionist my whole life. I can actually experience healing and grace and deeper heart healing in my life. There's so much more available to me." And many don't see that there's more available for their heart. They might see more available in their big vision and their big goals and how things need to look. And this can affect people in a variety of ways because perfectionism certainly hits the type A personality, but you don't have to be type A to have perfectionism. You can have OCD, you can have just pressure on yourself, you just have a hard inner critic, you just can't settle because you need things to be just right, or you spin about things in your walk with God, you spin about your thoughts, you spin about relationships because things need to be just right and you don't feel that. So then you chase certain things, and it's never enough. So you see it, but you don't connect to the deeper work that's needed in your life, in your journey.
And there comes a point in time where we crash. Symptoms start really increasing. You realize, "I need help. I need help now." You're still going to have layers of denial to work through, and I'll get to those in just a second, but there needs to be a welcoming. And usually between two and three, there's levels of crashing that happen, not quite explosive, but there's levels of disturbance like, "Something's wrong, and I need to open myself up to some deeper healing in my life and my journey." So you open yourself, "Okay, I got perfectionism," and, um, "Okay, I'm considering these healing areas." But then when you start looking at healing of the heart, three, you start avoiding pain and emptiness in your life. So you want to work on not being perfectionistic, but you're avoiding the pain that drives perfectionism. Are you following me? So we do things like we dismiss pain, we minimize it. "Well, what's the matter with you all? You know, I should be better. I should be better. Other people have had it worse, right? Let me say that. Well, why am I whining about this stuff? You know, come on." Or we pep rally it. "Come on, yeah, yeah, just stay positive. Don't acknowledge that. Don't excite." Or "get over it." "Get over it." "Get over it." Many times in our healing journey, perfectionists will excuse brokenness in their family and their upbringing. Let's say things like, "Well, it was a different generation," which is true, but they're using it as a way to dismiss what they went through and what they need to heal from because we need to acknowledge those things and surround them with compassionate grace, not the harsh judgment, condemnation. "Well, they didn't mean to. They did their best." Or in Christian circles, we can move into acknowledging family wounds is dishonoring. It's disrespectful. What we're doing is we're just staying in a place of avoidance. We're just not letting ourselves heal to look at it, to see it for what it is, to allow God to do a healing work in our life.
So then we go through rounds of this, and either through coaching, counsel, therapy, or your wife telling you, or a loved one, or relationships crashing, there becomes some kind of crash. You have a burnout, you have a series of burnouts. You can't take it anymore. You're obsessive compulsiveness cranks up, pressure happens, anxiety is happening, addictions are going on, and you don't know how to stop because you're looking for ways to numb the pain that you haven't acknowledged and just seen for what it is. Or you've become so obsessive compulsive, which is a perfectionism adding nuclear thrust of pressure to it, right? You start to see it, and you get to stage four of the block.
When you move past this, though, you can actually move into some greater clarity for your healing journey. But this fourth block of denial is, you begin to see it, but you perfectionistically try to heal yourself. So you go, "I'm broke, and I got perfections, I got brokenness in my life. All right, roll up your sleeves. We got to get the course. We got to get the DVD. We got to get the online course. We got to get the ebook, the Kindle, the thing. This, I gotta go to that conference. I think I gotta get help. I gotta go to, I gotta go to therapy. All right, we're gonna make this happen. We're gonna work on these trauma things. We're gonna get rid of it. We're gonna get rid of this trauma stuff, right? Right. I got brokenness, but we're gonna fix it, right? We're gonna fix it. Okay, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go." And so now that the pressure just gets transferred to, "I got to hurry up and get healed by last week." So you become obsessive over trying to find healing.
You can experience healing in your journey through pressure. If you want to experience healing to your heart, which is what perfectionists need, you have to actually slow down. You're gonna have to make room to acknowledge some things you normally don't acknowledge as far as pain, neglect, brokenness, trauma in your life, and why you live with such intense pressure on your life and on your thoughts. We've got to get to that and get our eyes off of trying to taste all the things that we feel in the day. "Well, I need this," or "I need more funds," or "more money," or "I got to make this happen. It's just right, my thoughts," or whatever. And then stop our, you know, denial layers and dismissing our pain, telling ourselves we should get over it, and actually look at what's happening. Slow down because perfectionists actually need to grieve their broken hearts. But perfectionism will never let you grieve. You might have a moment where you have a breakdown and start crying, but you'll wipe those tears faster than you can even think and go, "I gotta move on. What am I supposed to do?" And you don't allow yourself to actually heal. And so healing doesn't happen under pressure. Doesn't happen fast. It takes a while. It takes longer than you realize.
But what a perfectionist actually needs to do is move into a place where they can see their broken heart, not with condemnation and shame, not with denial dismissing it, with sobriety. So the encouragement I have to my brothers and my sisters is to see ourselves through sobriety, not denial or condemnation. Denial's over here like, "Oh no, no." And we do that out of fear. We do that out of shame, certainly, right? Like, "I don't know. I don't want to deal with that stuff." "All right, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." You know, many perfectionists live without, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine." They're just in that cycle over and over again. But it's also not the other ditch. We just collapse into it that we're worthless, we're just piles of garbage, that we're unlovable, and then we just beat ourselves up in condemnation and shame. And it's unproductive, and it can go into self-loathing and self-pity and all that stuff that doesn't allow us to wake up and see the need for healing and how it affects the lives of people around us. And actually, our healing requires a new pathway.
Sobriety is a great word because it's about being alert to what's going on, what's happening. You're clear. And I want to get more clear about what's happening in my heart because perfectionism chronically gets in the way from seeing what I need to see. Because what perfectionists need is a compassionate and grace embrace. We need to see ourselves through a compassionate embrace. So it's like when you see a young child who's struggling and suffering, what do they first need? They first need a hug and an embrace. It's okay. When we're operating in that kind of love, it's not we're trying to fix it first. It's embrace. And there's aspects of your heart and your journey, there's a neglected aspect of your upbringing, there are stages of your life that have been neglected that are filled with emptiness and brokenness. And that pain is fueled by a self-anger and by shame that says, "We got to make this happen. We got to make life happen." But in the meantime, you don't know how to embrace yourself. And when God loves you, because he loves you right where you are, you dismiss it. And then you don't know how to embrace love for yourself. And so you only know how to love people in moments of performance or more moments of achievement or moments when you feel like you have your exterior mask on appropriately. But they don't know the real you. You don't know the real you. And you don't know how to be loved in the real you, to be loved for who you are.
So what you need today is you need a big hug. That's what you need. And that frustrates, that frustrates the heart of a perfectionist. It's like, "No, I've got to get these things fixed. Look to get fixed first. Let me get this fixed. I can go back to my life." And the healing of perfectionism is, you actually need a whole new way of living and how you see yourself. What I teach quite often is the mindset of total unconditional loving acceptance. TULA. It's an easy way to remember it. T-U-L-A. Total Unconditional Loving Acceptance. This is the first step. It's not, "I'm going to start fixing myself." The first step is a big, big season and continual season and forever learning of the embrace of God who loves us while we were sinners, within our sin, he loves us and continues to love us in our struggle and in our brokenness. And I often encourage my brothers and sisters to even say to themselves on a regular basis, "I totally unconditionally lovingly accept myself right where I'm at." Because that's God's embrace towards me right now. He loves me. He's going to love me through this. And that love is going to lead me to more healing and freedom in my life.
But the temptation is to listen to the pressure of perfectionism, grab onto it, because love is wonderful, but it's also at times, it feels uncomfortable. Because in total unconditional loving acceptance, we see our flaws, and we have to deal with our shame. We have to deal with the way that we see ourselves. And perfectionists have a chronic issue where you see the perfectionism manifesting, there's a performance working with it. They live out of their presentation of life, how they how they live. So those two become tandem with each other and how they unleash torment in your life. And that's what manifests. That's what people will see. But underneath that, what drives this performance perfectionism is this shame and fear. And the shame says, "If people see me who I really am, they won't love me. They'll reject me." So it then shows us the deeper area of what's going on in the heart, which is this abandonment issue. And most of our brokenness in areas of struggle lead down to a root of abandonment. That's why I talk about exposing the rejection mindset. You can see the book over my shoulder, which helps address the root issues of why we feel disconnect from the love of God, and why would we then become performers, which then puts self-pressure on ourselves. And I address this in the book, "God Loves Me and I Love Myself." These are great resources to help you to work through the root issues that I am talking about here.
Perfectionists have a deep level of shame that they carry. They've been neglected. They have emptiness. They have pain. They have trauma. And shame has clouded it. And what shame has done is create this presentation of "just right." Maybe it's religious "just right" living, "just right." Maybe it's how you do relationships, the standards you hold, the standards you hold to yourself. It's all pressure, pressure. And what does it do? It seeks to drown out love and grace. Because love is patient and kind. Love pulls you into relationship. Grace welcomes God's power and what he's done. And grace reveals, even in your weaknesses, even in your struggle, God's operating power is available to meet you and help you in your life. But what shame doesn't want. Shame doesn't want you to see the abandonment that you struggle with. "People will leave you when they see your brokenness. God will leave you. They'll no longer love you." And this abandonment can drive massive, massive amount of energy of combustion. We can, it can alter our mood. It can alter how we relate. It could cause us to spin and spiral. And we think it's what somebody said or something happened, but really, it's abandonment screaming out. And those areas of emptiness and pain, and a lot of that for a perfectionist, for a perfectionist, is the place of neglect. Your emotions have been neglected.
So the first step in the journey is turning, slowing down our perfectionistic tendencies, and turning in how we look at ourselves because we've been avoiding ourselves. And we've gone through layers of blocks of denial. It is time to look at ourselves through the lens of love and of grace, compassionate, total, unconditional loving acceptance. I pray this is a blessing to your life and to your journey and to those that you are supporting and encouraging in their life. If it is, please share this. If it's a blessing, share this with those you can support. And you can subscribe to our materials. You can even donate with a one-time donation or become a regular supporter. It's an honor to share this resource with you. I pray it's blessed your life. I pray that there's some thoughts I've left with you that will continue throughout your day and week. Let it just marinate in your heart. And maybe watch it again and review it and jot down what you feel like sticks out that God is using and speaking to. I pray you experience more healing and freedom in your life. So this is your brother from another mother saying to you, until next time, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'm out.
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