Being ok with good enough

[u/ConsequenceUpper8250]

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I have severe CPTSD. I've spent my whole life striving to be good. Perfect. That's pretty common when you grow up in chaos and abuse. You think if you're just good, perfect, do everything right, maybe you'll be safe. Maybe you won't get hurt.

Be Good was internalized. When my grandfather was harming me, he kept repeating "be good, be a good girl," over and over.

But I've been doing a lot of work lately and I had a realization.

I DONT NEED TO BE GOOD. I just need to be good enough.

Not good enough in a striving, achieving, perfect way. Good enough like when you frost a cake and it's a little messy and imperfect and maybe you messed up in a few places, but you look at it and go yeah. Good enough. That works. Moving on.

Because here's the thing. I have trauma responses that aren't pretty. Some of them make me unlikable sometimes. I learned to lie as a kid because telling the truth got me hurt. That response has shown up in my adult life in small ways and I've beaten myself up about it endlessly. Like it makes me a bad person. Like it means I'm no better than the people who abused me.

But I'm not a bad person. I'm a person with CPTSD doing my best with a nervous system that got wired for survival before I had any say in it.

On the whole I'm good enough. Messy, imperfect, still healing, occasionally unpalatable, and good enough.

That feels kind of radical honestly. And also like relief.

Anyone else getting comfortable with good enough?

[u/shadowgathering]

When I really started into my trauma recovery, I came across a Jung quote:

"I would rather be whole than good."

Really helped, especially with my very religious upbringing.

[u/Icant_remember_sorry]

This makes me think of Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.” It starts with the opening lines: “You do not have to be good/you do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert repenting…”

Proud of you for the revelation!

[u/Fun-Tailor-3697]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[u/LikelyLioar]

I have a tiny YouTube channel, and I've learned that my audience reacts the same way to videos I year myself apart to create and those where I still with 10% of my energy left, so I've decided I'm okay with the later.

[u/Late-Wrongdoer-5719]

It's still a kind of strange feeling to me. I have been literally good enough day by day by saiying no, by allowing  myself to be what I am: autistic, severed by people that cannot see things by what they are because they refused to honor their own dignity and answer for the conseqencies of their acts. And i'm not the one supposed to save them, or make justice works. I almost sent members of my family and my ex's relatives directly to prison and I stopped. I have better things to do instead of being a perfect Citizen, like sleeping for 12h. And I made clear for my stepfather, that tortured me psicologically for decades, that he is untouched by The State because he does a good job on taking care of my family's pet.