From all or nothing - to finding balance

Barbara Steingas

Barbara Steingas is an award winning author, inspirational speaker and radiant life coach, helping people to optimize their health and vitality.  She can be found at Steingasbooks.  Barbara is joining Mind Key as a resident columnist, sharing her 21 Tips for Healing.

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             It used to be all or nothing for me. That was due to the need for perfectionism that made me a person of extremes. Either I would have to do something 100% right or not at all. I didn’t know how to be balanced or allow myself any slack for mistakes or learning curves. It was all black and white so to speak, no gray areas.

This is best illustrated when I went to college and I gained the freshman twenty pounds. To lose the weight I ate a thousand calorie per day diet.  If I deviated ever so slightly, I felt I blew it causing me to go all out and binge eat. All the while feeling guilty and vowing that I would start over and be perfect the next day. This yo-yo effect continued through the end of college and upon graduating the toll it took on my body was a part of the puzzle pieces that resulted in me developing an autoimmune illness of my intestinal tract called Crohn’s Disease.

As I was seeking a natural way back to health, after following the traditional medical route for the first several years, I discovered that the cause of me being extreme with the way I ate and needing to be all or nothing was really rooted in emotional issues. To illustrate, if anything happened to disrupt my day, the whole day was basically ruined. I had a hard time letting things go if they didn’t go 100% “right.” I would basically beat myself up emotionally for being flawed.

                I learned this patterning from my loving and well-meaning parents. They did the best they could to love me and raise me, and they had their own dysfunctional emotional issues and behaviors that I learned by observing them. As children we are sponges for learning so we can’t help but pick up on what we are around the most and that is usually our parents.

                In fact, the other day I was talking with my mom on the phone. I was sharing with her something I was excited about and as I was telling her the climax of the story, my mom said “oh I have one more thing I forgot to tell you.” I felt a little annoyed because I realized she really wasn’t listening to me fully. Instead of brushing it off as I would have done in the past and letting it fester I shared with her how I felt by saying “I feel” not “you made me feel” so she wouldn’t feel attacked or made wrong (strategies I learned along my healing journey).

                However, she had her usual reaction that I ruined the whole conversation. Long story short, I got her to realize it was only just one moment in a long conversation and that I was only sharing so we could use another strategy next time, such as her telling me she was tired and wasn’t able to keep up and got distracted. In this way we could avoid upset in the conversation next time something like this happens. She is also the woman who can’t stop cleaning because she is trapped by the need for perfection.

                Nothing is ever completely perfect in life. That is a fairy tale illusion and a very stressful goal to strive for.  It’s like chasing the carrot dangled in front of us that we can never reach to eat. However, it is healthy to strive for improvement in our lives, but we need to allow ourselves to make mistakes and time to relax. That is the art of balance. I had to learn this lesson the hard way by discovering balance physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually in order to survive and regain my health.

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