The Insidious Nature of perfectionism

If you identify as a Type A person or a high achiever in any way, then you may have also identified as a perfectionist at some point in your life.  Perfectionism shows up in a lot of different forms, some of which are more obvious and easy to recognize.  For example, if a student has a panic attack and calls themself a failure because they got a 95% instead of 100% on an exam, many of us can likely identify that as perfectionism.  

And yet other forms of perfectionism are harder to notice. For example, have you ever been asked to bring a dish to a potluck? If so, what choices did you make around this? Did you spend hours online researching recipes, trying to figure out what everyone might like, or spend hours in the kitchen making an incredibly complicated dish? Or did you give yourself permission to make something easy that you've made a hundred times? Or even give yourself permission to buy something from the store that was already pre-made? If you've ever fallen into option A, then you may have some perfectionistic tendencies.  The sad part about this though is that many of us view option A as the only option, with anything less than that being selfish or lazy. Suddenly a simple decision around a potluck turns into a moral failing as a person.

Lazy has become one of my most disliked words the longer I’ve worked as a therapist.  It’s technically an adjective, with the definition being “averse or disinclined to work”, and yet many of the individuals I see calling themselves lazy are incredibly hard-working, doing more than is probably good for their mental, or even physical, health.  It becomes a personality label to judge themselves by, or a standard to hold themselves to, and yet that word destroys self-confidence and paralyzes people, preventing them from engaging in values-based action.  It has become an equivalent of the word failure. Furthermore, it ignores the feelings that the person is experiencing underneath the behavior that they are calling lazy. When people are engaging in “lazy” behavior, it is often because they are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, burned out, exhausted, etc. However, instead of listening to and honoring those feelings, we ignore them or push through them at the cost of our well-being, all with the goal of avoiding seeing ourselves as lazy. 

We don’t come out of the womb being perfectionistic and using these words.  We learn this language through family, friends, colleagues, social media, and society, and unfortunately for women in particular, there is the message that we should be able to do it all and have a smile on our faces. If we can’t, then something is inherently wrong with us.  And many of us, even inadvertently and unintentionally, perpetuate these messages.  Every time I hear that a school has a bake sale and that there is a “home-made” requirement, I inwardly cringe.  Our lack of compassion for ourselves sometimes translates into lack of compassion for others as well.

Even more insidiously, perfectionism can show up without more obvious, harsh language, which can make it even more difficult to identify.  For example, have you ever told yourself that you needed to clean the bathroom, and then felt guilty when you didn't do it? That's perfectionism. Letting go of perfectionism means asking yourself whether cleaning the bathroom is really more important than the exhaustion that you are feeling and the rest that you need in that moment, and allowing yourself to take the rest that you need.  It's not dropping or ignoring your responsibilities. It's tuning in to how you're doing to determine when to take care of those responsibilities, and how to go about them in a way that minimizes the negative impact on you. It means maybe hiring a cleaner if you have the privilege to be able to do that. Or maybe taking care of the cleaning after you have given yourself permission to take a short nap to recuperate from your day. It is giving yourself the same amount of attention that you're giving to your to-do list.  
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Half the battle to lessening perfectionism is catching it in the first place. Therefore, if this is something that you are trying to work on, try to be more mindful of the language that you are using towards yourself. If you wouldn't tell a close friend that they are a failure for bringing something pre-made to a potluck, then it is also too harsh to be saying to yourself. And then think about what you would say to a friend. For most of us, this might sound something like, “Good for you for letting yourself off the hook.” Or, “That was a really great idea, I wish I had thought of that.”  We all deserve to be a little kinder to ourselves.