Open Up Your Heart
Let the light shine in
Thanks for joining me here at Say Yes to the Mess! This is my periodic note of encouragement for those who are tired of pleasing, performing, and pretending to be perfect. It’s exhausting and I hope you enjoy leaning into the messiness of life here. I’m Amber Keating—licensed psychotherapist, healing coach, and recovering perfectionist. I love guiding people into greater connection with themselves, their loved ones, and the incredible world around us. Tapping the ❤️ button lets me and others know that you find my words helpful. Forwarding this to a friend may be exactly the thing they need to drop their own perfectionist ways. We’re done with pointless rules, LFG!
It’s been almost two months since I’ve shared a longer post. How time flies when you’re surviving a nation careening into fascism. So I’ve been deep in my cocoon, maybe hiding from the daily horrors, maybe gestating around words and writing. I’ve also been grappling with my own insecurity, as I read more writers’ works here on the Stacky space. There are some REALLY GOOD writers on here… why would I deign to think I belong among them?! Aren’t negative beliefs – and they’re resulting perfectionism – fun?! By fun, I of course mean annoying and exhausting. Since music always helps me reconnect to myself, this article’s title is brought to you by the incredible Colin Hay and his song Waiting for my Real Life to Begin.
I’ve been exploring and healing the wounds that created the above negative beliefs about myself for my entire adult life (would you believe that’s been over 30 years?!) and they still resurface occasionally. I’m finding that’s happening quite a lot as I move through perimenopause. It’s like puberty for middle age! My hormones are wackadoo and leading me to age regress at times, like I forget everything I’ve learned and practiced in this life about connection and authenticity. I put a variety of masks back on and pretend I’m fine when I’m very much not. It’s especially weird because I legitimately know better and have plenty of evidence that authentic connection is far more enjoyable than putting on a front.
So here I am asking myself (yet again), as well as you: What if you no longer needed to hide your pain behind that mask? Maybe you don’t have the evidence I do that there are places where the mask isn’t necessary, or maybe there aren’t many of those places in your life, so you keep your coterie of masks at the ready. That makes perfect sense and I’m not suggesting you throw away tools that work for you. We all have a mask collection and at our best, we can decide when and how to wear them. I think the challenge arises when we’re unconsciously wearing them and in situations where they may not be necessary. When we do that, we prevent ourselves from being deeply seen and from experiencing genuine connection.
Let’s explore that a bit more. Have you ever found yourself drained, exasperated, and wondering “Why doesn’t anyone SEE how hard I’m working?! Why does no one appreciate me?!” Those of us who learned to overachieve at a young age often cycle through these phases of excessive doing or giving followed by flashes of resentment or exhaustion. Maybe you’ve noticed that the joy of giving doesn’t last as long as it used to and that’s making you wondering what’s wrong with you: “This always felt so good, so why do I feel like gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe?!”
Perhaps you’re exhausted but not sleeping well, your mind wakes you up at night with racing, negative thoughts that are hard to turn off. You wish others could see how hard you’re working. You could even be comparing yourself to others, trying to figure out, “How can they do all those things but I can’t anymore?” Or an even scarier thought (in my experience), “What if I don’t want to work this hard anymore?” Another common experience as we come to terms with burnout is deep grief: bouts of crying but being unsure of why it just keeps pouring out. We might also experience a fracture of sorts in personality, such as showing people one thing while you feel entirely different inside, but you’re not able to actually show that to anyone. As the distance between our mask and our authentic self widens, we may even engage in unconscious unhelpful behavior, like overindulging, being irritable with loved ones, overeating, drinking too much, or shopping too much.
Okay, I know that may have sucked to read but hang on, there’s more here! Let me explain… This is all good news because it’s an opportunity to reconnect with your true nature, which became distorted at some point in your life in service of your survival. Overachieving and excessive giving are ways that you avoided rejection and received approval, whether as a child or throughout your life. We humans are smart and observant creatures; even before we can speak, we are noticing patterns and learning what works or what doesn’t work to keep us connected to the adults caring for us. Through simple trial and error, we learn what types of behaviors yield a positive response from caregivers and the words or actions that are reprimanded. Especially in environments with excess or toxic/traumatic stress, our genuine essence and gifts can metamorphose into strategies for avoiding harmful attention. What you really want is heartfelt connection, but what you received was praise for performing. Again, this is all incredibly useful when you’re experiencing frequent, intense, and uncontrollable stress. Then… and here’s the kicker… that performance becomes our entire way of being. There are various lovely qualities you have, but when they become the thing you have to do or be to receive acceptance, things get dark and twisty.
If any of this is resonating for you, my guess is that on some level you already know that you’re deeply tired of wearing that pleasing, performative mask. When I started really paying attention to how profoundly depleted I felt, I cried ALL the time. I would take the ten minutes I had between supervision and therapy sessions, close my office door and have a solid crying jag before putting the mask back on for the next session. I think back to those days and I want to hold my younger self in the deepest of bear hugs and tell her to take a damn break! See, genuine connection feels immensely different from praise. If you’re not convinced, let’s dig in a bit… Once you read these next few sentences, I encourage you to sit quietly and write down what you noticed. Keep it to yourself, share in the comments, or shoot me an email!
Take a few moments to turn your attention inward. Imagine someone in your life that you can truly be yourself with. If you can’t think of a person that empowers you to be authentic, consider animals, places in nature, spiritual guides, or perhaps a beloved stuffed toy. Create this sense that you are in a place where you are unquestionably safe, whether you’re snort laughing or silently daydreaming. Notice the thoughts and internal sensations that arise as you think of this person, place, or object. Write down some descriptive words.
Next, I invite you to shift your attention to a situation in which someone gave you positive feedback for something you did. That could be a recent occurrence or an event in the past. Maybe it was a friend, a superior at work, a community member… it doesn’t really matter. Tune in to the memory of it, what you did, what the other person said, the internal thoughts and sensations you had in response. What do you notice? What might be different between these two experiences?
Until next time, wishing you soft places to land and all the safe connection you can find, because connection matters most!
Are you tired of pleasing, performing, or pretending to be perfect? Are you considering making a change? I’ve created a group that helps burnt out perfectionists rediscover their joy and passion. The first group is forming now, with a proposed start in July 2026. Click here to book a free consultation. This will be a 45 minute phone call in which I listen deeply to your challenges and share my insights as an experienced coach. If you feel at the end of the call that we’d be a good fit to work together, I’ll share full details about this opportunity.