How Olympian Gracie Gold finally stopped striving for perfection

I felt very uncomfortable in ice rinks for a very long time

And that's as someone who spent their whole life in an ice rink. I had sort of that burned out gifted kid syndrome going on

When skating started to not go as well, I didn't know if that's what I wanted to do anymore

I felt emotionally and mentally checked out. I describe it as a snow globe

and I can see the rest of the world, but I can't hear it

I can't be part of it. I feel people tapping on the glass, shaking it

Gracie, wake up. I just stood there in the snow globe, unable to reach what I felt like was the rest of the world

I was frozen. I just felt frozen and how I perceived myself

which was this out-of-shape, worthless loser. even as a toddler i was always very intense perfectionism is this double-edged sword where

it has a lot of gifts that can be used for good or if they're reflected and where you can just

destroy you i was always told that i was really talented but to me i started to internalize that

as anything short of the highest functioning all the time felt like a disappointment

I wanted things to be perfect. I wanted things to be in the 99th percentile

and everything had to be there all the time. My perfectionism became crippling I guess in some ways it was the impossible goal of trying to please everybody all the time

My whole existence was trying to be this most perfect version and really what everyone else wanted

I became this skating superstar and was on the top of podiums and traveling the world

and all over headlines. I found myself all the way at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia

I valued my self-worth on my productivity and also what I could do for others and how could I please others

It doesn't matter what I want to skate to, what am I going to look good skating to, what do other people think I should skate to

It didn't really start with I. It was more what can I do for other people

Looking back, I can see my favorite way to cope with that was by managing how little I ate and how much I exercised

It gave me this delusion of control and gave me confidence when I was lacking in other areas

In the world of skating, it matters what you do, but it's also an aesthetic sport, so it matters what you look like

I had struggled previously with overexercising and under-eating. It really started after the World Championships with what I perceived at the time to be the most soul-crushing defeat of all time

and I really had trouble rallying from that loss. It was the first time in my life I felt like I couldn't get back to myself

Which was this need to be perfect and yet the Barbie and the Grace Kelly

and I just was this chronic loser that couldn do anything right My relationship with both food and exercise had really hit quite a low point I felt that I didn have a grip on it at all In my depressive episode it had swung the other way to binge eating and really not working out

I felt that there wasn't a place for me in a rink, in a gym

I didn't even know if I had a place in life anymore. The meltdown happened because I felt that I had just really lost my grip

on everything from my home life to my friendships to my career

One of the officials told me that they were just so sad to see me out there like that

and I just had lost all self-respect for myself. And something within that triggered me to have what I've called a nuclear meltdown

At that point, I almost was too depressed and too apathetic to really even feel anxiety

What did I care about anything? With the suicidal ideation I was struggling with, it's not that I had a plan or anything

but I thought there is a solution to all my problems. I told people exactly what I thought of them and for how long I had thought of them like that

For better or worse, it was so shocking that it landed me in a treatment facility and ultimately saved my life

I thought, oh, I shouldn't be here. I don't belong here. But of course, the fact that I was willing

to just sign up and go to a treatment facility because if I didn't like it, I could kill myself

is probably indicative that I definitely should have been there It changed my life It saved my life For the first time in a long time I felt seen and I felt heard And that was a really powerful experience I assume that everything that I

doing is wrong all the time and that everything has to be perfect to make up for the fact that

it's me. So to deliver myself, who I was as a person and what I'd done with my life to this

group of people and just simply have them not really care was really healing and altered my

perception that not everybody lives in this state of fight or flight when it comes to the details

and the perfectionist and it's okay if some things are just okay. My whole existence was trying to be this most perfect version and really what everyone else

wanted. So actually I had to meet myself and find myself and I had to understand who I was

because I was constantly looking at myself from the lens of others. I was like living in my own

body and in my own mind for a change. I had finally ruined the perception, broken the facade

of this perfect Grace Kelly Barbie doll, ice princess. I had fully shattered that whole facade

and that I was ready to be myself and come clean about my life and what I was struggling with

After that, I could go anywhere and do anything and be anyone

So I felt that I finally just broke that glass that I'd been hiding behind for quite a long time