Thanks to the Women’s Liberation Movement, we are now free: free to be “me”; free to be everything you ever wanted me to be; free to be more harried than ever before. Yippee! When old fashioned stay-at-home moms moved into the work force, we upped the ante on our likelihood for earlier deaths, more stress related diseases, anxiety and depression. The more liberated we become, the more some of us secretly long to put the “free me” back in prison as we modify Daisy Mae’s chant, “Put us back the way we was!”

Who is responsible for unlocking the doors to our log cabins so our barefoot and pregnant selves could fly? Women, to thine own selves, please observe: Sometimes we do get what we wish for. Sometimes what we wish for makes for more trouble. After waking at 5:00 am, cleaning house, sending kids off to baby sitter and school, donning our business suits for which we spent all Saturday shopping, going to work, coming home to make dinner, helping the kids with homework, supervising baths and bedtime, making obligatory phone calls, we sit down quietly to read a book. We read one word and promptly conk out on the sofa! Think about it: many of us consciously choose to impose these responsibilities on ourselves!

Due to down sizing and the push for higher production, “super moms” now strive to be “super workers” as well. This pressure has added new tensions to our already overcrowded lives. In modern lockups, we work indisputably beyond the standard forty hours. We take papers home with us and are unable to relax.

Not all of us choose to marry or have children. Forget the husband and kids, we still need to take care of ourselves, clean our houses, and pay the bills. Many of us give up friendships because we don’t have TIME! Secretaries and administrators, who make up one third of the women’s work force, hold the second most stressful jobs (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath, Department of Labor, 1978) so maybe a third of us deserve at least a nap at the end of the day.

Who Needs Guilt?

So much for the outside stuff. What underlies our motivation to win the be-all-things-to-all-people mission?” You guessed it! Guilt! We suffer from guilt more so than men. Historically, we were trained to take responsibility for our relationships. Therefore, if husband is not happy, it’s wife’s fault: Work a little harder, make a better dinner, scrub the floor yet another time, keep the kids out of his way and he’ll be happier. If boss is in a bad mood, it must be something we did or didn’t do.

Why is guilt such a problem for us? First we have to understand guilt’s function: Guilt is a self-serving emotion designed to make us suffer. Guilt is actually the fear we experience when we imagine what would happen if we acted on our wish to be aggressive. It's a feeling that we will, or have done something bad. Guilt is the inner parent that says you should be punished for a real or imagined wrong doing: when we say no, express anger, leave our children, make love, refuse to make love, don't call our mothers, act competitively, ask for what we want, receive what we ask for, spend money, eat too much and exercise too little.

Who Needs Anger?

As we buy the birthday cake instead of baking it, as we go to fast food restaurants for quick synthetic treats to be gobbled down by ourselves and our loved ones, as we stop inviting people to our houses for a quiet dinner party, we can truly say we have gone from the frying pan into the angry fire. We do get angry. Oh yes, blistering fury always accompanies our birthright to suffer. Because we are so angry, we must therefore be punished. Guilt patiently awaits us and sanctions our suffering.

We have been deemed the sorrowful worriers in our relationships with both men and women. Many of us run scared of other people’s anger. We fear rejection that could occur when we don’t do “the right thing.” The pressure is on to take care of everyone else and be perfect doing it. If we’re perfect, we guarantee love.

Who Needs Perfection?

As long as we’re perfect, we’ll be okay. We learned the importance of flawlessness soon after we were born. The following is an example of what I see in my psychotherapy office almost daily. The twenty year old college student to which I refer gave me permission to tell her story. Had she been in her fifties, she may have looked older and more sophisticated, but deep down, she could easily have coped the way this younger woman does:

Whenever Debra gets a "B" on her transcript, even though it's probably the only "B" out of an all "A" report card, she thinks to herself, "B' is for 'Bad." In her mind, one "B" constitutes a failure.

I proposed to this student the following hypothetical dialogue:

"Who are you?"
"I am the best."
"But that doesn't give me an idea of who you are. What do you like to do?"
"I like to be the best."
"What are you good at?"
"I'm good at being the best!"

This young woman lives with an insurmountable burden to be perfect. She has no self other than that which is measured against other people. She can't say, "I like to draw; I'm good at writing; I love to go to the movies; I want to be a scientist; I have a passion for gardening, etc."

She is the embodiment of perfection.

Well, maybe not, because she thinks she's fat. And as long as there is someone whom she views as thinner than she, then she is not the best. And her obsession will cause her to be in a frenzy until she is the thinnest. She will go to any length, be it vomiting, restricting food, or compulsive exercising, to reach an unattainable goal.

Perfection becomes a form of control. As long as we’re perfect, we can insure bad things won't happen to us. If we prepare a better dinner, maybe he won't go out drinking tonight; if we never make or admit a mistake, she won't seize upon our weakness and hurt us; only if we have perfect bodies, will others love us.

Who Needs Control?

Why must we be perfect? When we’re indefectible, we don’t need anyone. We don’t have to be vulnerable to the whims of others. Our ultimate goal is to maintain control. Because life is so difficult nowadays, we strive for control more than ever. It’s hard for us to admit we have no control and even harder to give up control when it’s clear we have none. When we do have control, we may fail to exert it. For example:

Judy tries to make her co-workers happy by taking on more work. When others fail to reciprocate, she is furious. She says people are “dumping on me.” Here is where anger and control become friends. Judy is angry at the people who don’t appreciate what she did for them even though they never asked her to do it! When she has the power to exert her influence with her boss, even though it’s very appropriate for her to assert her opinion, she may be afraid of coming on too strong and will therefore say nothing about it. Judy complains that no one helps her in the house. The family starts to pitch in but she may not be willing to give up control over how the house should be cleaned. She then criticizes and turns off potential helpers who, rather than contributing in the home, will knowingly endure her resultant wrath by choosing not to help, thereby protecting themselves from Judy’s severe criticism.

Who Needs To Be Beautiful?

Working in the home, at our jobs and in our relationships is not enough. We have to be beautiful besides. It takes hard work to be gorgeous. It’s even more difficult when we are pressured to “squeeze” into society’s unrealistic standards of a fit body. We are told we need to exercise so we can look like movie stars and if we aren’t pretty on the outside, then we must not be acceptable on the inside. To our already impossible schedules, we must add an aerobics class and a weekly trip to the weight control clinic.
To combat all of these external pressures to look good, we may resort to eating more comfort foods. Now we become fatter. Then we have to deal with the guilt, depression and rejection that accompany it.

Who Needs Stress?

We are stressed about being stressed. We know we’re in trouble. We’re supposed to be concerned about our emotional lives by taking it easy. But, everywhere we turn, they warn us we’ll die an early death if we don’t exercise our hearts. We can always find a little extra time in our day to exercise, right? With no exercise and worrying about heart attacks, we’re in danger of developing cancer or some other horrifying disease.

Even though once in awhile, we may yearn for a more retrograde life style, we would be giving up too much of what we value in our lives to ever go back. However, we simply must find a way to have our cake and eat it too. First, we must acknowledge our dilemma and learn how to maximize the benefits of our liberation while facing the reality of the costs of our freedom.

We need to ask ourselves how much control do we actually have in our lives and look for areas where we can allow others to give to us. We need to recognize that our loved ones are capable of managing their own lives without our incessant input.

Finding ways to increase the laughter in our lives is a must. Laughter is the most pleasant, exercise-free, non-invasive, permissive, physiologically sound way to feel better and maintain a positive attitude.

Imperfect Women Can Be Happy

The drive to be perfect, to be the all-knowing, in-control, liberated woman is a painful burden to bear. By definition, humans are human. Period. Therefore, to strive to be perfect is to deny our existence as human beings. We need to take risks by deliberately immersing ourselves in situations where we are bound to make mistakes, so we can "try on" and get used to the feelings of being human.

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What a joy for us to finally be liberated from our self-imposed prisons! Ah! Herein lies true liberation -- when we look inside ourselves for the key to unlocking our self-imposed chains.