TRUE LIFE: I Suffer From FOMP.

I did say I was going to blog, didn’t I…?

Welp, in the past four weeks I moved to London and did some things—think sight-seeing and tipsy mingling. (To be honest, I almost typed two weeks because I swear my eyes don’t blink as fast as those weeks flew by.)

In this blog post, I will be discussing doing some other things—think reducing my life to a suitcase and writing this blog post.

If you would like to proceed to the point of the following story, please scroll down to “THE POINT OF THE STORY IS...” now.

Doing things and perfectionism don’t go together. Let me rephrase. Doing things and maladaptive perfectionism don’t go together. What kind of things? Doing any sort of thing actually, except the emotional equivalent of snapping yourself with a rubber band.

As I understand it, perfectionism stems from the belief that I am not enough. Adaptive perfectionism is an encourager. It whispers, “I am not enough, so I will be better.” Maladaptive perfectionism is an insecure little puffer fish. It hisses, “I am not enough, and I will never be enough.” One is means for personal success while the other shears a landscape of personal hell. Don’t be fooled, these pathways are not mutually exclusive, and they can exist in a single person.

Hi, my name is Madison McGrew and I am this person.

I am made up of the stuffs that earns a student scholastic distinction and simultaneously, the stuffs that crumples a person on the floor after a panic attack. I am, at any given moment, a scared, insecure puffer fish—tough and menacing on the outside, and bloated with empty, anxious thoughts on the inside.

Slightly off-topic: there’s a charming new term circulating amongst millennial linguists (“kids”) nowadays. FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. It’s a condition prescribed to that one friend who absolutely has to be everywhere at all times, often hop-scotching between friend groups, just so they won’t miss anything worth experiencing…or at least Instagramming.

Anyway, I suffer from a different fear of an equal charm: FOMP, or Fear Of Missing Perfection. It’s a preoccupation where if perfection was a bullseye, I fear I would miss it every single time. As with any fear, FOMP can be debilitating.

(Maybe I assume I will stink at perfectionism darts because I assuredly stink at regular darts. No really, I’m the reason the wall of your at-home dart board is littered with holes as if a trillion picture frames were once nailed to it. I can’t even hit the board much less the bullseye.)

Regardless, my fallibility begs the question: If I always miss the mark of perfection, what’s the point of taking the shot?

Because, silly, “You Miss 100 Percent of The Shots You Don’t Take.”

We as human beings have this super cute tendency to oversimplify and even trivialize life’s complex experiences into little nuggets of hindsight, collectively called “wisdom.” Wisdom, or for all intents and purposes of this blog post, Cliché Confettiiiiiii! (Exhibit A: I just turned the concept of wisdom into a freaking fiesta.)

You see, Cliché Confetti is like that guy in front of Cooper Hall that shouts indiscernible religious propaganda at college passerby. (I’m sorry; you will only appreciate that if you are of the academic elite to have attended THE University of South Florida.) Anyhow, his words hit you and you think, “Ha, ha, yeah, okay. I wonder if the line at Starbucks is as ridiculous as this guy?” Then you walk away.

The same goes for clichés. Someone can stand outside your bedroom window with an oversized boom box (Londoners would call this an antique) propped to their shoulder playing looped clichés for hours and you will only hear a stream of aggravated grumble like the proceedings of the teacher from Charlie Brown. Why? Because a cliché is just a cliché until you’ve experienced the complexity of life that is responsible for it. You learn from experiences, not clichés.

However, I do think it would be useful to have a person tell me when I’ve learned from the complex life experience responsible for a cliché. For instance, after dutifully preparing to take a leap of faith and then reaping risk’s reward, a Morgan Freeman-type character would come over the intercom of Earth and announce, “Congratulations, Madison, you just learned Life Cliché #349: Believe in Yourself!” Indeed, that would be useful.

When I was in high school, I could have definitely benefitted from someone telling me, “Madison, you dance like a Pop Tart.” And then I would have been like, “Ah, yes. Life Cliché #72: You Are What You Eat.”

(By the way, “A Leap of Faith” is Life Cliché #91 and “You Miss 100 Percent of The Shots You Don’t Take is Life Cliché #264)

I forgot where I was going with all this. I guess it was just to say that, after two Cognitive Behavioral Therapy interventions and a transatlantic flight, I’ve realized that a fruited land of Life Clichés waits at the other side of my FOMP.

In other words, I’ve decided to surrender my maladaptive perfectionism. You’re probably wondering why I haven’t done this earlier seeing as it is maladaptive…. Well, re-wiring neural pathways, re-framing wonted thoughts, and overcoming the unhinged terror that unfailingly accompanies uncertainty is kind-of sort-of easier said than done.

But my therapist told me something that encouraged me to challenge the way I think about my FOMP. He directed me, “Want to be anxious.”

Um, want to be anxious?

Want to be anxious.

Anxiety is necessary. Anxiety is informational. Anxiety is the reason we as humans can cross the road without question but a chicken cannot. Only sometimes, anxiety gets a little trigger happy. Wanting to be anxious uniquely allows the psyche to become more sensitive to when the psychological and physiological effects of anxiety begin to churn. Personally, wanting to be anxious allowed me to become aware of all the times when the fear of missing perfection started to unsettle me. And do you want to know when I felt the pangs of perfectionism the most?

While writing. Ironic, no?

THE POINT OF THE STORY IS...

I created this blog site so that I will have a vastly aloof internet community keeping me accountable in my pursuit of relinquishing the grimmer bits of my perfectionism. So that I can go out and do things in London like attend dreamt-about auditions and tipsily mingle with high society and then come home to write about it. (And so that I can share with you pretty pictures.)

Just one more thing on that confetti piece colored “Believe in Yourself". Up until the very millisecond I met my first fellow Fulbrighter in the UK, I still couldn’t believe I was, in fact, a Fulbrighter. The only affirmation I could summon was, “Somebody who knows the president thinks I can do it, so I guess I can do it, right?”

The president isn’t God. He is human. I’m sure at one point he was like, “I’m not enough. But oh my gosh, a nation thinks I can do it, so I guess I can do it.” Right?

Speaking of God, and being a believer, I acknowledge that the greater part of this blog post was a host to the spirit of fear. And while my therapist was totally onto something when he said, “Want to be anxious,” the one true Counselor offers me something better:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:6-7

Okay. Without further ado, here's a pretty picture:

With love and blessings,

M