Perfectionism

Marion Woodman was a writer and a psychotherapist of Jungian orientation who at some point in her life suffered from an eating disorder herself, and dealt deeply with this topic in her work. ⁣

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In this quote, Marion talks about the tendency of any energy that is too concentrated at one pole, one extreme, to go to the opposite extreme - a principle called enantiodromy. Like a pendulum, the more energy is pushed in one direction, the more momentum it will have when returning to the opposite side from which it tried to move away.

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The whole day of counting calories, measuring food in order to fit perfectly into the exact allowed number at the end of the day easily gets transformed into its ugly side - mindless overeating and vomiting. The obsessive pursuit of a feeling of perfect lightness and purity of the body sooner or later turns into a feeling of heaviness and disgust. The weight lost after months of restriction returns in all its glory, and often with an addition. And although we see the principle, the voice inside says "I just need to work harder". ⁣

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It is interesting how often, in any form of perfectionism, one encounters the fear that if one gives up on high standards, everything will fail, that is, it will go to the opposite extreme. The logic is roughly as follows: "If with so much effort and such high standards I fail to achieve what I want, what will happen to me if I give up on them?". The paradox is that it is exactly the high standards that push into the opposite which we are so afraid of. Maybe it's time for a different strategy.