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For most of my life, I never thought of myself as a perfectionist. Therapists, teachers, friends—they’d all say things like, “You don’t have to be perfect,” and I’d internally roll my eyes because… that just didn’t land. I didn’t walk around with an inner voice saying you must be perfect. In fact, if you’d asked me back then (or even today) if I thought I was perfect, I would have laughed and said, absolutely not. I’ve always felt deeply connected to my humanness and to the humanness in others. But a few years ago, when I was studying core desires—those emotional feelings we crave most deeply when we’re at our most authentic (in life, in intimacy, in kink)—I realized something huge. I do have perfectionism. It just doesn’t sound like perfectionism in my head. Here’s what it looks like for me: I don’t need to be perfect, but oh my god, do I light up when someone tells me I’m the best at something. Anything. When someone says, “No one else has ever done it like you,” it’s like breathing pure oxygen. Can I survive on regular air? Sure. But that hit of “the best” floods me from my toes to the top of my head. My confidence skyrockets. I feel bigger. Stronger. Turned on. Inspired. For me, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about being the best—or, more accurately, feeling like I’m the best. That’s my emotional oxygen. And when the opposite happens—when I get criticism without guidance or care—it can send me into a spiral. Judgment and rejection are hard feelings for me. (And if you’re human, I bet they’re hard for you, too.) We all have multiple core desires that shape the way we move through the world. They’re different for each of us, and none of them are wrong. They just are. I’ll be teaching a full-length class soon on core desires and leading a somatic embodiment practice to help you discover the ones that live inside you. Because once you know what they are… everything starts to make a little more sense.
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