mistakes and power: challenging perfectionism
Are you tired of being so hard on yourself? Would you love to feel safe enough to let go of control, and collaborate with the flow of life?
Join Sarah for an illuminating eight week exploration of the contracts and inherited traumas that keep us locked into perfectionism, and the shame and alarmed aloneness that lies at its root.
What purpose could our perfectionism, which so often tortures us so mercilessly, possibly serve? What are the contracts that take us into the self-cruelty of never being good enough, and can we release them?
Do you often find yourself falling short of your own impossibly high standards?
Are there so many things that you’d try, if only you would release the inner pressure to be perfect?
Perfectionism, which seems like an absolute desire for life without mistakes, is actually a combination of predatory aggression against the self (or others), a forceful rigidity that precludes creativity and spontaneity, and an inability to be with the grief of what is true. When we want perfection, we are wanting for something that is unattainable and inhuman. In our perfectionism, we ourselves become inhuman. This desire–for the inhuman–is often a result of having received external shaming, predatory aggression, contempt, or disgust against ourselves or our work (what we create and produce). This can be something that happened in our own life experience, and it can also be something we’ve inherited from our parents or grandparents experiences. Since it is so tied to shame, perfectionism can expertly travel down a family lineage, holding each generation hostage with its promises of safety and beauty.
Control is an attempt to make an imperfect world perfect, to make an unsafe world safe, and to turn chaos into order. While well-intentioned, if we are trying to stop all chaos, then we are also stopping generativity, because it is from the generativity of chaos that all kinds of things are born: spontaneity, expression, surprise, discovery, delight. If we try to stop all chaos, if we deny ourselves our human fallibility, then we are stopping the life force from emerging. There is a physical cost to an immune system that is in the constant stress and aloneness of needing perfection: it is a movement towards death rather than a movement towards life.
Join Sarah Peyton this September for a resonant and warm exploration of the neuroscience of perfectionism: how it has kept us safe and how it keeps us from true safety. Over the course of eight weeks we will work to excavate and release unconscious contracts that keep us in our perfection–which can range from contracts that stop us from being shamed, to contracts that stop anyone we love from being harmed. In order to heal with perfectionism, we must address, make space for, and lovingly accompany the alarmed aloneness and shame that lie at its root. This is because whenever we are truly accompanied, we no longer need perfectionism.
This 8-week course runs from September 17 - November 5, 2024
We will meet online from 1:30-2:55 PM PDT | 4:30 PM EDT | 9:30 PM BST (convert to your time zone here)
Where?
The course will meet via zoom. We welcome participants from all time zones who wish to learn asynchronously for some or all of the sessions. Recordings and visuals will be made available to those who are registered for the live program (typically available within 72 hours of the live session).
When?
This 8-week course runs from September 17, 2024 through November 5, 2024 with classes meeting each Tuesday afternoon from 1:30 PM – 2:55 PM Pacific Time (To convert to your time zone, please click here)
What to Expect:
Each 85-minute class will include lecture and breakout sessions to practice resonance skills and build familiarity and confidence. As a participant you will:
- Explore the concept of perfectionism
- Translate and understand the concept of mistakes into an understanding of power structures inside and outside the brain
- Develop a trauma-informed understanding of perfectionism
- Begin to understand the brain’s inherent desire for beauty and integrity and how that leads to perfectionism and perfectionistic contracts
- Explore the Unconscious Contracts process to loosen perfectionism’s grip
- Recognize the power of warmth and compassion to transform perfectionism in themselves and clients
- Understand the impact of attachment on perfectionism
What You'll Learn:
Week 1 – September 17, 2024: Introduction to perfectionism, mistakes and the instrumental brain
Week 2 – September 24, 2024: Perfectionism, mistakes and safety
Week 3 – October 1, 2024: Perfectionism, mistakes and beauty
Week 4 – October 8, 2024: Releasing contracts of perfectionism and to never make mistakes
Week 5 – October 15, 2024: Having compassion for our perfectionism
Week 6 – October 22, 2024: Perfectionism and attachment
Week 7 – October 29, 2024: The benefits of being imperfect and claiming our own authority
Week 8 – November 5, 2024: Questions and integration
Who Is This Course For?
This course is for anyone who is interested in working with their tendencies for perfectionism and desiring a return to embodiment, as well as for those who are supporting clients with similar patterns.
This Course Includes 1:1 Resonant Support
Get assistant support during classes – experience resonant support from experienced practitioners when you need it during class times. Often, this work can have unexpected depth and touch on deeply held subconscious awareness and pain. Getting support when we need it most helps participants to integrate, regulate, and have a felt experience of the transformative power of resonance.
Cost
Regular price: $370
Early bird: $299 if purchased by September 3, 2024 (20% off)
Continuing Education (CE) Credits
We are delighted to offer 11 CE hours for this course for licensed psychologists, social workers and counselors in the state of Illinois* ($55 additional fee). Per state regulations, live attendance for 100% of the course time and all its sessions is required to receive CEs. Thank you, and we appreciate you for planning accordingly if you wish to receive CEs.
Please note our new sponsor organization: CEs are being sponsored by Centered Therapy Chicago (CTC), an accredited CE provider by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (Lic #268000085). CTC is able to provide CEs to licensed psychologists, social workers (LSWs and LCSWs), and counselors (LPCs and LCPCs) in the state of Illinois.
*For licensed professionals outside of the state of Illinois, it is your responsibility to inquire if our courses comply with the criteria set forth by your state licensing board.
What Participants Have Said About Working with Sarah
For the longest time I believed there was something wrong with me. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not figure out how to make or keep relationships. Any sort of feedback was heard and received as painful criticism, which exacerbated my exhausting and unachievable perfectionism. Learning about attachment and the effects of our early life experiences allowed me to start my healing journey. Then there is the power of the group experience – realizing I am not alone, that others are struggling too, and no-one is to blame! Both Sarah and Jaya create the warmth and sense of safety needed to learn and know what secure attachment feels like. It is beyond words to describe the delight, inner peace and joy I experience from my safe close relationships!
– Julie Duguid
Register
Mistakes and Power: Challenging Perfectionism
$370.00
*PLEASE NOTE:
- Your tuition payment is non-refundable (but it is transferable).
- This course will be recorded for those who want to learn asynchronously for some or all sessions.
- This work is not therapy and is not a substitute for therapy. If you have a sense that you would be destabilized by yourself or others speaking about difficult events, then this course may not be for you. While we hope that the processes and information that we share can be of use in your journey, we do not have the resources to support extreme psychological difficulties.
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About the Instructor
Sarah Peyton, Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and neuroscience educator, integrates brain science and the use of resonant language to heal personal and collective trauma with exquisite gentleness.
Sarah is a sought-after expert who brings neuroscience expertise together with depth work, self-compassion, and the transformative potential of language. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and teaches people how words change and heal us.
Sarah teaches and lectures internationally and is the author of four books on relational neuroscience and self-compassion: Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, the companion Your Resonant Self Workbook: From Self-sabotage to Self-care, and Affirmations for Turbulent Times: Resonant Words to Soothe Body and Mind, and The Antiracist Heart: A Self-Compassion and Activism Handbook, co-authored alongside Roxy Manning, PhD.
