Up: [[Compulsion]] Created: 2022-11-03 Believing that I have to be perfect whips me to relentless achievement. [[Marion Woodman]] says this is actually a desire for death, not life because what I’m trying to do is turn life into something perfect and therefore lifeless. Whatever is human — sexuality and the ordinary world of the body — is not part of the perfect ideal. Natural being is repressed and performance becomes everything. There’s no slow, natural rhythm to life when you’re rushing to attain the ideal. Perfection supports addiction. Trying to be perfect all week can flip into being an insatiable animal all weekend. Woodman says, *There is no **human** balance in the addict.* Promising to go on a diet just strengthens the unconscious which says, *No, I’m not going to do what you say*. It sets up a [[Tension of Opposites]] that can’t be resolved because they are false opposites, so incredibly extreme. It’s all black or all white, perfection or completely out of control and I end up being swung back and forth between these two poles. In *Conscious Femininity*, Marion explains that this is a very patriarchal way of seeing things. It can lead only to despair, which is negative inflation. (p.76)