Stop 'Shoulding' All Over Yourself
A few years ago, my friend’s therapist told her to “stop shoulding all over yourself.” We laughed delightedly, letting the words roll off our tongues over and over. Stop shoulding all over yourself! This particular friend struggles with perfectionism. She is capable, brilliant, successful, and kind, but by her own standards, she is never enough.
I am not a perfectionist. My house isn’t particularly clean. My hair is never styled. And when a recipe tells me to mince something, I usually just dice it instead. I have dozens of half-written songs, a half-written novel, and at any given moment, half of my family’s clothing is waiting around in a hamper, despairing that it may never get folded. From the outside, I may seem comfortable in my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants skin. Often, I am. But I confess, I also should all over myself.
I start shoulding myself over really trifling things. This past weekend, my kids were with their dad. This presented me with a finite but glorious window to do things for myself! As soon as they pulled out of my driveway on Friday evening, I flipped into high gear. I was going to load up my bike and go for a ride on the new trail in town. My inner monologue sounded like this:
I’m tired. You’ll get over it!
I really just want to curl up with a book and a big bowl of leftover saag. You can do that afterwards!
A shorter ride right here on my street sounds better. No, more is better! More is always better!
Last time I biked that trail, I ended up with shortness of breath again for several days. Why am I doing this? Good God, she’s right. Why am I doing this?
I still carry so much should around with me. Some tucked-away part of me still believes that I should reach certain exercise goals or that I should capitalize on every free moment by doing all the things. Here’s the really insidious thing about these shoulds: they mask themselves as what I actually want to do.
I thought that I wanted to go for the longer, hillier bike ride. I thought that the voice telling me to stay home was some lazy, overly cautious, peripheral part of myself that simply wasn’t in touch with my truest needs and desires. As soon as I paused to wonder about this, though, I realized that the opposite was true. I went for a brief and beautiful bike ride on my own street, then curled up with a big bowl of saag and a really great novel.
When friends are going through hard times, I try to offer a gift of some sort—flowers, a card, a care package, or a listening ear. I’m going through a hard time right now. We all are. I’ve picked out the perfect gift for myself: I’m going to give myself the gift of noticing and honoring my own desires.
What shoulds can you let go of in your life right now? What truer desires and opportunities might be buried beneath?
I think I mostly stopped shoulding myself into exercise after my big two month relapse, after reading into ME/CFS and basically scaring myself sh*tless into resting properly.
However, I am a constant and habitual shoulder, both in what I should do and how I should be. I was speaking to a CFS suffererer a couple of months ago who told me that there seems to be a trend for perfectionism among people who develop CFS/ME. I think there’s something in it, maybe about disallowing yourself from fully relaxing and letting go, which your body needs sometimes, almost like it needs sleep. I blamed myself early on for getting so ill, thinking that it stemmed from my base state being one of constant stress and worry and nitpickery, which isn’t conducive to having a happy, healthy immune system (though I don't stand by that, since long-covid seems to have affected a full spectrum of people). But all my shoulding had meant I took a job at the beginning of the year knowing it was a bad fit for my then-circumstances, being an additional stress load I really didn’t need after a rough couple of years. But it seemed the thing I “should” do because it came with a nice pay check and the responsibility I “should” be wanting to take on as someone still in the early stages of their career. Bad idea. Going into covid while already feeling completely depleted just made things harder, I think.
Funnily enough after this illness I seem to have developed what is basically a physiological intolerance to any kind of stress. My fire alarm battery started intermittently chirping yesterday to remind me to change it, and my heart rate shot up till I worked out how to deal with it (the answer: accidentally bash the whole thing off the ceiling and figure out how to deal with it tomorrow). Emotional stress has been laying me up with PEM the same as physical exertion. Maybe this means I really won’t be able to ignore the stuff I know is “true” underneath all the shouldiness any more, and will have to start pursuing things that feed my sense of wellbeing and wellness rather than my self-esteem and the projected image of how I used to think I should be.