(it’s cool…it’s just a part of The Heroine’s Journey…YOU are right on schedule)

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Many women don’t realize that perfectionism is often a symptom rather than a personality trait.

The constant need to achieve, produce, prove yourself, get things right, stay productive, and keep everyone happy can feel normal because our culture rewards it.

But underneath perfectionism is often something deeper: a disconnection from your own needs, desires, intuition, and inner knowing.

In the Heroine’s Journey, this stage is called Identification with the Masculine.

What does perfectionism mean in the Heroine’s Journey? Perfectionism is often a sign that a woman has become overly identified with achievement, productivity, responsibility, and external validation. While these qualities can create success, they can also disconnect her from intuition, rest, pleasure, creativity, and inner wisdom.

What Is Identification With the Masculine?

If you want to have:

1. A deep connected relationship with yourself
2. Deep connected relationships with others
3. And are available to understand yourself in some fresh new ways (that are NOT about blame or shame)…

You need to understand how feminine and masculine energy shows up in you — both the light and shadow aspects of each.

I wrote about one of the stages (Separation from the Feminine) on an earlier blog – you can read all about it here. 

The next stage is Identification with the Masculine.

This stage can play out in so many different ways…again through both the LIGHT aspect of identifying with the masculine (being directive, applying yourself to tasks, driving yourself to excel) as well as SHADOW aspects (perfectionism, “it” never being good enough, muting your sensual feminine self).

Signs You May Be Over-Identifying With Achievement

Do you see yourself in any of these examples of Identifying with the Masculine?

• You get along better with men than women.

• You are the woman who tends to take the lead, ‘get ahead’ in life and you greatly value productivity. You may be a high-achieving woman who feels most comfortable accomplishing rather than receiving.

• You have few hobbies because rest, creativity, play, or pleasure often feel less important than productivity.

• You aren’t one to go to a knitting circle and grab your journal and watercolors when you have some free time because truly you’d rather spend your time getting things done to relieve yourself of stress rather than engage in anything else.

• You had a father who nourished your talent or intellect, maybe who told you that you could ‘do anything’ and you went on to do just that.

• Your father did not take an interest in you, was absent or abusive so you looked for approval through masculine allies such as teachers, coaches, boyfriends or husbands

• You secretly want to be rescued by a man, a system or a circumstance. 🫣

• You allow your father’s or husband’s perspective about your life to eclipse your own desires. You do what they want you to do…and then resent them for it.

• You work in your family’s company and live under a shadow where you feel unable to really be yourself because you just can’t without rocking the boat. You play the role and it’s mostly fine – but it doesn’t feel fully like your own life.

• You’ve neutralized your sexuality so as not to be a threat to other women or your career.

• Vulnerability is not your jam. You’re the one that other people lean on. You can’t remember the last time that you asked for help.

• You recognize that your need for achievement or ambition has been projected on to your children…you see it but aren’t sure what to do about it.

• You bleed yourself dry emotionally, physically and spiritually by taking care of, quite literally, everyone and everything else before yourself.

• You are a perfectionist, or a recovering perfectionist, and your self-worth has often been tied to achievement, performance, or being needed.

If you see yourself in one or more of the above statements in an aspect of your life right now or if one or more resonate with you from a different time in life (I can totally relate to several listed about during roughly the ages of 22-42 🙃) then you’ve been in the stage of Identifying with the Masculine.

Reconnecting With Your Feminine Energy

This is not bad or wrong…and no, I’m not diagnosing you with anything. 😉

I’m giving you a little flag that says, “You Are Here”.

Because when you know where you are, you can more easily identify the landscape of that terrain and also just might be able to peek over the horizon to see what comes next.

One of the first steps in balancing the feminine and masculine within yourself is learning how to reconnect with yourself as a woman. Opening up to play, inner passion and nourishment in the relationship with yourself helps support an inner growth. Start here.