March 9th Discussion - Perfectionism & Goodism

This posting on perfectionism reminds me of my best friend, Tim. We were reporters on the Chicago Tribune and became like brothers.
We liked to take our lunch together so we would leave the Tribune Tower and go to any of a number of nearby restaurants. If we had to wait for a table, Tim would get angry and storm out. I always followed because I figured we'd find a table at the next place. If we did and were seated, Tim might get angry because he couldn't get a waiter to come to our table. So he would storm out of that restaurant. I followed again, and sometimes it might be three or four restaurants before he stayed and ate his lunch. I can only imagine how his stomach must have been in an uproar so how could he ingest what he ate.

I never really figured out why he was so angry but now that I know about TMS pain I believe it was part of his perfectionist personality, which Dr. Sarno says can cause a lot of our pain. His perfectionism created a lot of impatience in him. He liked to fix things at home but used to tighten a screw so much that he could never get it off the bolt.

And while we worked at the Tribune he was very impatient for advancement. He could never get promoted fast enough. Bosses recognized this so they didn't promote him much or enough to satisfy him. His impatience for promotion at work carried over into his lunch hours and showed itself in his impatience to get a table or to be served. I never knew that then, but it makes sense now. His impatience in not being promoted led to him quitting the paper, working as a stock broker, then back to the Tribune, impatient there again, finally opening a scuba dive shop which later failed.

I never thought he was really a happy guy, and later learned that was probably because when he was a boy, just before World War II, his father left him and his mother to fly for Chenault's Flying Tigers in Burma, preferring to face the Japanese rather than cope with his domineering wife. Tim was left with his mother who dominated him. I don't think Tim ever forgave either of them, and that together with his perfectionist personality and its impatience, caused him to have severe back pain he had until he died about five years ago. I think if he had known about TMS, it could have helped him, but I didn't know about it myself until about a year ago. He may not have believed in TMS anyway, perhaps unable to admit he had repressed emotions from his boyhood.

Anyone have thoughts on how perfectionism can cause TMS pain and how to deal with it? I and others would like to know them.