Happy Monday and welcome to your mental Health mini. This week's guest is Doctor Margaret Rutherford, and we are talking perfectly hidden depression. One of the problems with perfectionism is that most people view their perfectionism as a strength, and it is in many
ways. And there's constructive perfectionism for sure, but there's destructive perfectionism or what I've begun calling perfectly hidden depression, which can be very dangerous because what can happen to someone, you know, the trauma that causes this camouflage to be warn mostly happened very early in life when you grew up in a family where there was abuse or neglect.
And obviously you weren't allowed to talk about it or express it. If you grew up in a family that just wouldn't allow you sad feelings, don't. If you're sad, if you're angry, get go to your room. Maybe you grew up in a family where your parents were alcoholic and you had to take care of your younger siblings. So you, you became a pseudo adult. Maybe you grew up in a very high achieving family and you learned that you're not supposed to struggle or show struggle.
You're just supposed to exceed expectations. The point is that when you Don this camouflage at first, even when you're 3456, you kind of know what you're doing. I mean, even little kids, I'm, I'm not supposed to cry. And yet what happens is it seeps underground. It seeps into your unconscious mind where you actually are not even aware you're doing it. It didn't occur to me that maybe my gut had been trying to say something to me, but it's like,
yes, I'm hiding perfect. And I'm I'm very committed to hiding perfectly. And and I've spent years making sure that no one knew my struggles, that I didn't make mistakes, that I didn't let my vulnerabilities show because it's fueled by fear and shame. There's this inner voice of shame. You know, you don't really belong where you are. You're doing the wrong thing if you admit that you're tired or you're sad or you're angry or you're scared you're doing something wrong.
You know, you're showing something and you'll lose everything. And so it has gone from a conscious process into an unconscious process. I think this inner voice of shame that, you know, you try to perhaps discard or not listen to, but it is highly critical and highly shaming. If you're somebody who always takes the responsibility, if you need a lot of control, you're sort of a hidden warrior, a secret warrior.
If you believe that you are being selfish, if you talk about your own needs and that you are, you know, always counting your blessings. I, I have so much. I shouldn't, you know, I shouldn't do this. If you live your life by absolutes, I must, I ought to. If no one knows you, you know, these people make great friends, but nobody really knows them. Those are the kinds of things you want to kind of assess on the spectrum of perfectly hidden
depression. So the model I have for a healing strategy is that first it's consciousness. You've got to understand that it's a problem and recognize and become more mindful of how it's governing you. You also have to look at the difficulty in actually committing to the change. That kind of commitment to allow yourself to be vulnerable is really part of the work. The third thing is pretty classic CBT is to look at the
absolutes. Generally, you're following the rules that you were taught as a child or that you learned the hard way. As they say that I must do this, I cannot be this, I cannot look like this. So you begin to look at those, but going deeper than that, you don't just look at the rules, you look at the beliefs underneath them. For example, I grew up in a family that would say, don't tell anybody you had panic
disorder. They would say, you know, if that's your problem, you, you must keep it private. And so by breaking that rule, I also had to address the belief of that rule is that if you have a mental illness or if you are struggling mentally or emotionally, you'll be rejected. People will think less of you. That's the belief. The fourth stage is called connection, and the system I use is what's called the trauma timeline.
And you literally go back with compassion and you begin to acknowledge the things in your life that were good and the things that were troubling and abusive or neglectful or whatever they were. And you do this timeline from the time you were a young child to whatever time you want to. And what you can begin to see is the pattern. You know, I probably wouldn't have done what I did at 14 or 17 or 27 if I hadn't had this happen to me when I was four.
And if your trauma is severe, you should not do this work by yourself. You need a therapist. But the last one is change. I've been a therapist for 30 years, and I've watched a lot of AHA moments that are very powerful. And you can see a change in there body, you can see a change in their mind and in their heart and in their very soul. What gives you hope is behavior
change. When you see your life, your choices, your behavior changing, your thought patterns changing that, then you can say, wow, I'm really very hopeful about this. This is going to be a much better life and I think if there is a concept or if there is a way of being that is the antidote for this trauma based perfectionism or perfectly hidden depression, it is self acceptance. You recognize that your strengths do not define you any more than your vulnerabilities do.