Some time ago, I backed a Kickstarter “Space: The Inner-Voice Exploration Kit.”

Based on Parts Work therapy, the kit includes 80 cards representing the positive and negative voices within you, as well as a prompt deck to help you work with the voices.

And during the distribution phase, they sent out cards to keep you going while you waited.

Early in August, the card was “The Overachiever.”

The Overachiever

The front of the overachiever card features a woman sitting at a desk, with books, papers and a coffee cup on the desk in front of her. Behind her, hundreds of notes pinned to the wall.

And as you might guess it struck a chord with me because my desk looked substantially the same.

According to the text on the rear;

The Overachiever wants to be the best.
They need to be productive, successful, and avoid failure, so they keep themselves busy and committed.
The Overachiever wants to seem like they have everything under control and rarely asks for help, otherwise, they risk their bulletproof image. The Overachiever suffers from perfectionism, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and anxiety.
The stress of constantly striving to reach an almost impossible goal, coupled with the ever present fear of failure, causes The Overachiever’s lack of self-care.

The text cuts a little too.

And my friend Katie will start laughing as soon as she reads it, because she knows I would rather die than ask for help.

Interpretation

The card is a dark one; it doesn’t represent a voice who uplifts you, but one who tries to protect you.

I, like many writers, sit in a small bomb crater of research. And I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one whose desk is covered in post-its.

The act of creating can be difficult:

• have I chosen the right words?
• how will people feel when they read them?
• will they like them?

Most in the creative arts fields struggle with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and anxiety. Our own version of the black as midnight dog that pursues all our dreams.

It gets worse the more our careers progress, and many creatives have turned to drinks and drugs to soothe the pain. Many have died from overdoses.

I acknowledge I struggle with these emotions too. Just looking at how tired the poor woman looks, makes me think something needs to change.

Not to mention I was doing a course, and of all the things I remember, possibly the worst…

If nothing else changes, it will take me 296 years to achieve my income goal

So quite plainly, I need to make some changes.

Taking care of myself

A while back I compared your body to a car, concluding you needed to take care of and maintain it, as well as “drive” it responsibly.

More recently, I wrote about proper self care; eating, exercising and sleeping well, controlling thoughts and emotions, and feeding your soul.

But since then, I’ve had a stroke, and need to carefully guard my brain. Minimising cognitive load through activities like wearing black clothes, writing tasks on a to-do list, and minimising background distractions.

Which turns out to be a bit more self-care.

I believe I need to slow down, and now all I can hear is that Matthew Wilder song, Break my Stride.

Which actually isn’t such a bad song to get stuck in your head.

And I definitely have laundry to do.

Do overachievers try to hard? Do they run too fast?

Is taking better care of myself more likely to be by slowing down?