Tales of a Recovering Perfectionist | Adrianne Haslet-Davis | TEDxStLouisWomen

hello thank you I'm I'm thankful because I had no segue for bug sex or a segue for that matter of a Swiss Army knife penis so that worked out well for me that there was something in between I'm not no matter how many ways you can arrange 26 letters I just was couldn't figure it out I'm here to talk about something completely different um all of the speakers today have been so incredibly dynamic I feel like my jaw has been on the floor the entire time but I have a question for you if you could get someone and have someone think differently about something about you what would that be would you want them to notice your internal scars just like they notice your external scars would you want them to have a better understanding of who you are on the inside would you want them to see how beautiful you are on the inside not just the outside I know what mine would be in the spirit of confession and the spirit of of releasing information today in this wonderful venue this wonderful event with this fabulous audience I am here to make a confession to open myself up and tell you something I will do this AAA style my name is Adrian haslet-davis and I am a recovering perfectionist it feels really good to get that out first of all but even more so it feels really good because I'm trying very difficult very difficult ly to be okay with not being okay and I think us as women men - for sure I can only speak for myself and and for women but from the women that have talked to about this it's very difficult for us to to talk about and perhaps one of the reasons why it's so difficult to talk about is because we are women and we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect all the time don't we don't we yes I already see nods in the audience and we put so much pressure on ourselves in school I was not the best student I would always get report cards back and I would be okay eight grades but the comment section besides being overly social and talking all the time surprised for us was was did not complete assignments on time and it's interesting it wasn't until my adult life that I learned that procrastination is a trait of the perfectionist the perfectionist is afraid of completing a task because it won't be perfect I read that one day and it floored me to the point of cancelling plans and sitting on my couch and just sitting there like a potato like a couch potato and boiling over all the times that I had done that in my life and I thought my gosh that is so true unfortunately with the parents I'm like I was a perfectionist I couldn't complete it doesn't what it doesn't quite go over as well as you would think so if you're trying to go home and make that call maybe it well maybe it won't let me know it didn't work on mine but I even carried that need for perfectionism into my career I'm a professional ballroom dancer I dreamt of being Ginger Rogers since I was five years old it was the only television we were allowed to watch my family owned a children's book store for 25 years before that word that I can't pronounce but it's similar to the letters of bad and nasty moved in and and took over most of the independent bookstores and so we weren't allowed to watch TV but we would watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the one VHS tape that we owned that would play over and over and over and I wanted to be Ginger Rogers with my hair in the wind in those dresses and I got to be a ballroom dancer and I survived a 70 plus audition process to become a ballroom dancer and I was one of the three chosen still don't know how that happened but my dream came true and yet I was still striving for perfection why was that I got this dream job that when you're little you think I have this dream job of doing this but really I'm going to sit in a cubicle and do something else and then do this on the weekends I yes the fortune 500 companies and running my own companies and doing these things certainly paid for the dance lessons to get me that role later but then it hit me it hit me like a ton of bricks I was up there standing in a line of look-alikes oompa loompa style bronze at least a pound and a half a bronzer right wearing nothing but a fringed bikini let's be honest it's called a dress but it's really a French bikini we've all seen him and there was a guy on a microphone who was about to tell all of us dancers exactly who mathematically based on our moves was actually perfect and I stood there realizing this smiling with my perfect posture with my partner thinking this is ridiculous Adrien how long were you gonna fight this and just like that I had a life-changing moment my husband and I were walking in Boston on a first date after he had returned from Afghanistan designing and encrypting spy satellites for the United States Air Force to prevent terrorism when we were walking hand-in-hand and a bomb went off behind us I grabbed my husband and I buried my head into his chest and I plugged my ears and I said the next one's gonna the next one's gonna and I woke up there was soot and smoke everywhere I was conscious through the entire thing and so was he I was looking at the back of his head wondering if I was alive or this was heaven and I screamed his name and I couldn't hear me I couldn't hear myself scream I thought I was dead I screamed his name again and he started to move and he sat up and he sat up and he grabbed on to something below me I couldn't even lift anything above my neck or below my neck and he started to scream the blood-curdling scream that you never want to hear anyone especially your husband or wife scream and I couldn't believe it and I was trying so hard to look and I finally prop myself up on my arms and kind of leaned over onto my right side and I just see nothing but space and a waterfall of blood where my left leg used to be and I thought that was it I'm no longer Ginger Rogers that's it dream is gone and what's scarier than a dream being gone is not realizing that your dream actually came true and not celebrating it when it was and just like that Boston's bravest came and swept us up and took us to the hospital and the first two days were pretty groggy as you would imagine when you get your leg blown off by a terrorist you're on every single drug imaginable I'd never even strike sprained an ankle at that point so vicodin was new to me and I thought how this stuff is crazy and I remember waking up after my second day I'm after my second surgery and I must have been moaning or calling for someone it was sort of foggy and then it suddenly became oh so very clear when the light flickered on it was in the middle of the night at some hour and the light flickered on and in walks the hottest male nurse that I've ever seen in my entire life and I was like wow that that should not happen when someone's been blown up by Tara that just should not happen that is not okay I don't know why that's okay by on any level but it's good eye candy I can say this because I said it in front of my husband it's fine um and he's not here right now so uh so it's not like he's gonna say this right um so I see this male nurse and because I'm under so many wonderful drugs I don't feel any pain and so I see him and he says he looks at me and he says oh oh Adrienne you're up I'm glad you're up and I said I'm up and I start to like you know do the thing that we do right I'm like I'm like trying to fix my hair and I feel it and I've realized in that moment I the reason I smelt burnt was because my hair had been on fire I lost four inches of hair and I had pieces of things in my hair and glass and and all of this and I'm like trying to calm it down and I can literally feel it like troll doll style like up like literally I'm like reaching for it up here and I'm like trying to call my hair and I'm like like licking my wrist and trying to calm it like a cat and yeah really it was comical because I was so drugged up and suddenly I think that I can think clearly and and I look at him and I said I think I need a mirror and he looks at me and he's like you know um we're gonna change your sheets first and I looked down and I thought wow I really can't feel anything I actually wet myself that's awesome in front of this hot nurse that's so not perfect and so not me my parents would be so proud um even though my gosh I I feel like anyone would think you have an excuse to be able to do these things right like you have an excuse to be able to be this way and yet I still wasn't able to accept myself I still wasn't able to accept what had happened I had to be perfect and so I start to feel around and I feel this gash in my right leg and I can now definitely feel that my left I guess missing below the knee and he changes me he changes the bed he puts me back into bed and tucks me in and I've lost all sense of pride at this time and he then looks at me and he says you know Adrian it's the funniest thing it's the craziest thing you know they're doing a remodel on this floor and I think yeah I think it's throughout the whole Hospital we don't have any mirrors it's just the weirdest thing they just they're just they're just all gone so I'm just gonna do something over here with your IV real quick and then I was out and as I was fading out I was like I've got to do something about this perfectionist business like seriously as just loaned up by a terrorist and a more concerned about a beer it's like this reality hit me and I decided in that time that I would do something about it and I had visitors and these visitors would come and they would ask me these questions like what did you do today what did you do what was your accomplishment today and at that time a couple few days later my biggest accomplishment was going from the bed to the wheelchair to the toilet to the wheelchair to the bed yes and that was my big adventure of the day it wasn't leaving a room at all it wasn't doing anything and I thought that's that's what I did today what did you do and they would say oh well you know I got you know second at you know the comp and the world and it was it was all right but you know I'm so proud of you I'm so proud of you for doing that and they would dismiss what were these huge accomplishments just like I had before and I thought why do i why am I the only one who has to celebrate this like am I really that bad that I'm the only one who gets to celebrate my little accomplishments so I started doing something with my friends I started saying when they would call or they would visit I said you go first you tell me what your accomplishment was today first and I don't want to hear any I'm sorry's I don't want you to apologize I don't want any of that we're all perfectionist I quickly realize I had surrounded myself with perfectionist I'm trying to recover and they are definitely perfectionist so I decided for them to go first and you know when when you're a perfectionist you have a hard time celebrating the little things because you're trying so hard for this unattainable goal that is that is so unattainable that you spend your whole life trying to reach it realizing you missed the little things you missed celebrating the little things like transferring to the wheelchair without falling that's a big deal it takes a while to do that by the way for anybody who's tried it who's been injured or is in a wheelchair it's difficult those wheels move if you don't lock them you don't remember to lock them because you've never been in one before and it's tough and I remember asking my father every day when the surgeons surgeon and the team would come in and I would remember asking him I'll never forget it one day I said you know you need to you need to have them wait outside until I put my face on right like put on my what I call my war paint my makeup it's my war paint my paint to face the day to face whatever's coming at me and I'll never forget the morning when the surgeons knocked on the door and my dad was in the room my mom went to go get a sandwich and and dad said I'll tell them to wait and I don't know where it came from but something inside me said no dad let them in this is the me they're going to get today and he was just as shocked to hear that as I was and he looked at me and he said all right and the surgical team came in and they saw me in a way they'd never seen me before raw barefaced no fixed hair being a ballroom dancer I was always fixed up I barely have pictures of myself without makeup and I realized we don't do enough vulnerability we women don't do enough to make ourselves vulnerable and in that moment I shared with that team so much more than just my physical self I shared emotional honesty I shared physical honesty my challenge to you is to say this is the me that I am today take it or leave it I remember dealing with PTSD as I still am today and saying to my friends after making plans and then calling to say I'm on my way over and I would say just so you know it's an angry day you got to prepare yourself I might take it out on you tomorrow alcohol and apologize but today I might take it out on you come over if you like but it's really important for me to be emotionally honest with you and guess what you don't need PTSD in order to be emotionally honest to somebody so I'm not the only one that gets the break in the room talking everybody right so I would say that to them and we would be start being so much more emotionally honest with each other and a beautiful thing happened they started celebrating the small things I remember getting a call from a dear friend of mine when we still continue to do that you go first you tell me what you did first today and we'll celebrate all of that in all of our recovering phases to become recovering perfectionist and I got a call and they said I walked all the way to work today and I did not spill coffee on myself yes happy dance and then followed directly by that happy dance darn it it made me spill coffee all over myself ahh and then immediately followed by what I think is so beautiful my coffee stain kind of looks like a heart and I feel really bad for those people that won't see that how powerful is that that's what they saw instead of oh my gosh I'm rushing home I can't be I can't be seen this way I can't could possibly go out with a coffee stain on this is this is ridiculous I I can't I can't be seen that way I find it amusing that we strive for this perfection right we strive for this amazing perfection that we can't get I think it's a beautiful thing when you can look yourself in the mirror after a hard day at the beginning of a hard day after a hard night and say this is the me that you're going to get today and you know what I'm really okay with that thank you for your time thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 59,162

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Achievement, Speech

Id: PCaKHuirmY8

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2015