Knowing What You Are Up Against in Your Own Self |
Take our Addiction Test
Find a therapist to overcome addiction
There are various forms of self-deception in addiction that can extend to recovery.
Perfectionism and procrastination are two unusual forms of self-deception.
In seeking self-knowledge, we may encounter distortions that are like fun house mirrors.
Self-knowledge is necessary for flourishing.
Active in our addictions, we are often susceptible to various forms of self-deception. There are the usual suspects that get trotted out regularly: denial, minimization, and rationalization. There are some unusual suspects that are often trickier to identify.
Perfectionism and Procrastination
One unusual suspect is perfectionism, which is the conviction and the actions that spring from that assumption that one should be able to do everything perfectly. Anything short of perfection is abject failure. A perfectionist fails to grasp what is in her control (intentions, attitudes, and efforts) by assuming she can control the outcomes or results of those actions.
Another unusual suspect is procrastination, which gets its power from the gap between wishing or wanting something and being willing to act in ways to make something more likely come to pass. Procrastination is putting something off that a person claims to want or need because their willingness is missing.
Our patterns may be so deeply engrained that we fail to see them. Many of us not yet in recovery or early in it believe that we must somehow be perfect in recovery, and the fear of not........