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Unmasking with the Values Based Integration Process

“Perfection”

I struggled with the word perfect for years and years and years. It felt like this impossible state that I had to somehow already have achieved with a password, able body and infinite bank account I didn’t have.

That is, until one day I was talking to my sister-in-law, who has her Ph.D. in Old English. She explained to me that in the middle ages, the word ‘perfect’ meant whole, or mature. For example, when you finished your seven year apprenticeship and presented your masterpiece before the guild it wasn’t expected to be flawless, but to demonstrate that your understand the whole of your craft and that you had become mature in your capacity and were ready to join the guild. If that was the case, then your masterpiece was perfect.

We’ve come up with a very different meaning for this word over the years, and I don’t know about you, but the flawlessness thing? I just can’t make that work. But mature? Even whole? I might not have arrived yet, but I can see the progress I make year on year as I keep on becoming mature. And that leaves me with a sense of hope and possibility and agency – the ability to think that I can make changes in my life!

So my question to you is this – what would it mean if perfection didn’t mean flawless? And what would this change?

#perfection #perfect #personalcoach #lifecoaching #lifecoach

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Posted by:

Heather Morgan

2 responses to ““Perfection””

  1. theoriginalhippiesoldier Avatar
    theoriginalhippiesoldier

    I really like this perspective on “perfection” and I think I will try to keep it in mind from now on. As women, I believe we are more culturally beholden to strive toward other’s expectations of “perfection,” but it is just such an impossible task. As much as we may be aware of that, we often still try to uphold the perception of perfection. I am so grateful to the shifts in culture over the past few years;; the normalization of and appreciation for all body types. Unfortunately, I am very aware that women’s bodies and perceptions of beauty are faddish. What is beautiful today may change tomorrow. Though the trend towards health and wellness has been going strong since early 2000, I worry for the future. Politics and international relations have been taking an isolationist and conservative tilt. I worry what the impact of close-minded leaders will be.

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    1. Heather Morgan Avatar
      Heather Morgan

      Your connection between perfection of body and isolation in politics makes me think of a conversation I had last night with someone about the desire for perfection of ideas or values and the way this desire only ever seems to historically lead to splintering in relationships and brittleness of ideas. It is interesting to think of our understanding of perfection – not maturity but complete removal of anything less than flawlessness – as being an underlying cause for the political polarization we’re dealing with right now.

      Thank you for making me think!

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About the program

In 2017 I was newly self-diagnosed with atypical autism, struggling with burnout, and striking out when it came to therapists who could address the issues I was facing. At the same time, I was building skills around life coaching, shame reduction, and trauma-informed therapy for work. Gradually I realized that what I needed – an embodied, autonomous, agency-driven coaching approach to unmasking – was not something I was going to find “out there”, but something I was going to need to create if I wanted to recover my life. This was the moment the Values Based Integration Process was born.

Having developed the program for myself – and having seen the incredible results it brought in my own life – I began to use it with coaching clients. The results were out of this world!

After conversations with Dr. Devon Price, the technique was featured in his book Unmasking Autism. With it, came interest in the technique and the decision was made to begin training coaches and therapists to help make this toolkit more readily available.

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