At the end of my senior year in college, I was fast and furiously writing a speech. As president of my class, I’d have to take the stage at graduation and deliver a commencement speech to a crowd of 6,000. I wasn’t daunted much by the task – public speaking was and is a comfortable place for me – but what I was daunted by was trying to deliver a message that would ensure I was unilaterally accepted and praised. Something that pleased the whole audience. Something that ensured I’d side-step any chance of rejection.

I’d fine-tuned my third draft and took the speech to the only person I intended to share it with before the big day: the English professor I’d developed a wonderful, supportive, life-changing teacher-student relationship with. And I was proud; I really expected he’d rave about what I’d written.

He finished reading, setting down the 8-page document, and looked at me with unexpected seriousness.

“Katie, this is a fine piece of work, but what I really need to talk to you about is your perfectionism. It’s going to ruin your life. You need to see it and start to change it, or it’ll consume you,” he told me.

Stunned, slightly indignant and tumbling, I stared, open-mouthed, as he laid out the dark side of all of the traits and accomplishments I’d developed, honed and attained during my college career. The ones that had elicited accolades and generated much of my self-worth.

Near-perfect grade point averages, a major and two minors, leadership positions…he reduced all of it to its troubling core: if I continued to balance my identity, my personal value, my worth, on these things, I’d drive myself into the ground. I had become magnificently and dangerously successful at loving myself completely and utterly conditionally. That is: I was only good or worthy or lovable, per my own standards, if I was perfect (or darn near it) and making other people happy.

I don’t remember my speech. I don’t remember a word I wrote or said. I don’t remember if the audience adored me or politely tolerated me that graduation day. But I do remember that meeting in my professor’s office, days before my adult life was to begin. I remember the chair I sat in, the look on his face, the tick of the clock, the way my hands trembled upon hearing something that completely up-ended my reality. I remember only the details related to his emphatic message. The rest of it is gone.

It was a message that I could only hear from him. It was a message that changed, maybe saved, my life. Looking back, I notice the grace with which he intervened in my life, and the courage it must have taken him to lay himself across my railroad tracks. He was willing to risk me reacting with irrational, indignant ego; he was willing to risk that my unconsciousness, my fragile sense of self, could lead me to destroy his and my relationship. He was brave and so loving. And to have the kind of intimacy – the kind that only exists when it’s entirely safe to be vulnerable – was something that today I regard as special, remarkable and uncommon.

I took what he said to heart and to my credit, reacted with self-awareness, curiosity and willingness. And he was, I soon uncovered for myself and on my own terms, unequivocally correct.

I’ve spent years being mindful of this tendency I have – to love myself conditionally, to put myself through unnecessary rigors and to sharply judge my worth. I consider that I am consciously aware of this and always working on it to be my professor’s lasting legacy in my life. What a gift…that he could say it…that I could hear it.

And I know I’m not alone. So many of us are conditioned this way. I see it with my clients every day. I see it in the coaching and healing work I do with people as they unpack their childhoods and unearth unconscious beliefs. It’s frightening how common it is to love oneself conditionally. It’s been passed down through the generations, it seems.

And so, in the spirit of my dear professor, I’ll share this:

It’s not your fault that you’ve been loved conditionally; that somewhere along the line, you were trained and conditioned to operate this way. However, it is your responsibility to stop internalizing it and to find a healthier way of relating to yourself. It is your responsibility to stop a cycle and a pattern of conditional and punitive self-love with earnest, patient and steadfast unconditional self-love. It’s your responsibility to notice and practice, correcting and forgiving yourself when you veer off course.

It’s a journey, I know. A lifelong one. But being aware and willing to make conscious, healthy choices is half the battle.

I will forever be grateful to Dr. Bulger for giving me the gift of awareness. Divine intervention for this (mostly ????) former-perfectionist, for sure.