The Darker Side of Perfectionism
As I scroll social media on my phone, I see it all the time – “Love yourself!” “Self-care is not selfish!” Nobody’s Perfect!” To me, these messages are for others. Not because I’m against them in any way. Rather, it’s because I don’t feel capable of applying those things to myself. I want to love myself the way I am; I really do. And I create plans for better-self care, but can’t follow through. I don’t want to be perfect. But, according to my brain, I have no other option. I’m a perfectionist, but not the kind that strives for excellence and feels proud when they achieve it. No, the version of perfectionism that has worked its way into every aspect of my life does not lead to pride and satisfaction with my work. I don’t strive for excellence; I push myself to the limit to avoid failure at all costs.
The term “clinical perfectionism” has been used to describe this unhealthy construct.
For a fuller picture of what clinical perfectionism is and to see my citations, check out my article about clinical perfectionism on The Mighty. But here’s a quick overview. “Normal” perfectionism often involves attention to detail, putting in extra effort, and a healthy dose of overachieving. This leads to feelings of pride in your work when it comes out exactly the way you wanted.
I’ve been deemed a perfectionist by some. But what others don’t realize is that my form of perfectionism isn’t about working hard to achieve excellence. No, I push myself to the edge because I’m terrified of failure.
What is clinical perfectionism like?
For me, clinical perfectionism is triple and quadruple checking things to prevent even the most minor, fixable mistakes. I don’t care if a mistake is fixable or not a big deal. In my head, any mistake is unacceptable. Self-criticism plays in my head on a loop – my thoughts telling me how I should have done better, known better, or tried harder. Sometimes I will procrastinate or even avoid starting a project like this very blog post because I don’t believe I can do it perfectly and avoid failure.
On the occasions where I do meet my astronomical standards, I only feel like I’ve done well if I receive praise from others. I require proof of success because I cannot give that to myself. But even then, within a matter of hours to a few days, I’ve convinced myself that it wasn’t actually all that good or that my standards were too low. My head echoes with, “you should have done better.”
I can trace at least a portion of my clinical perfectionism to the fear of one thing.
The fear of rejection and abandonment pushes me to the edge. I need everyone to like me and I feel that if I fail at anything, people will leave me. I put everyone else ahead of me, if I make the list at all. I’m easily embarrassed when I make a mistake or misstep, even when I’m alone. Working hard is how I prove that I am not a failure, that I have value, but I struggle to believe that about myself. Most of the time, loving myself doesn’t seem possible for me, though it is for others. I’m afraid of working towards valuing myself because I think all I will discover is that I’m not worth it.
Clinical perfectionism has been chipping away at me for years.
There are times where I want to crawl under my desk, hugging my knees to my chest, and cry as I come undone. At this point, everything I do induces some level of anxiety. It becomes frenetic, electric, lighting my nerves on fire. Nothing I do seems to satiate it. Because of all of this tension coiled tightly like a spring, I often struggle to focus on things, get lost in the echoing emptiness of my mind, and battle restlessness in my thoughts.
It’s also influenced my mental illnesses. In schizoaffective disorder, it triggers hallucinations of people talking about me and judging me. Obsessive-compulsive disorder devours the fuel provided by my perfectionism, producing obsessions over details in projects and my own failures. It feeds my depressed thoughts. It even played a leading role in the development of an eating disorder in college that still whispers quietly in my ears sometimes.
But there is a spark in this darkness.
Even though I’ve made only a small amount of progress in reversing this life or death fear of failure and urgent need to be absolutely perfect to prevent it, at least we know it’s there. This type of perfectionism has been living inside of me and pulling my strings like I’m a puppet for years, but it’s only been within the last year or two that we’ve been able to identify it in therapy. We still haven’t uncovered every part of it, but it’s now at the forefront of our work in therapy.
It takes great restraint, but sometimes I am able to force myself to leave things with only a double check, despite how my mind frets that I will miss something if I do not check a third and fourth time. Has it made a difference? I’m not really sure, at least not yet. But it’s something. This is going to be a long and hard battle, so, for now, I’ll take this tiny win.
I wish I had a positive takeaway for you, but right now I’m still a work in progress.
I don’t know how to learn to love myself, but I want to try. The idea of putting self-care first still makes me uncomfortable, but I can recognize that I need to start doing so. And I’m working on trusting that a mistake will not burn my world to the ground. I know I’m not perfect. But I’m starting to see that maybe that’s a good thing.
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