Perfectionism
A dear friend and fellow therapist spoke on the topic of perfectionism lately, and I’ve been thinking about it often these days as I get ready to open my own practice. Starting a business and embracing the idea of working for yourself is a lot of fun in some ways—and anything but fun in many other ways. For me, it’s been a real exercise in leaning into the unknown, and surrendering control, both of which are NOT easy things for a recovering perfectionist to do!
Signs of obsessive perfectionism might include things like, taking longer to do a task than you know you need (due to all of the double-checking and second-guessing you’re doing), asking for every opinion you can get (to be able to make the *absolute best decision*), and ruminating—constantly worrying and obsessing over your work/choices/decisions, during and after the fact. Of course there are many more—these are some that just stand out to me today.
That list above? That used to be me. Honestly, sometimes it still IS me; perfectionism is a tough tendency to kick! But these days, I’m thankful I have such a different relationship to my perfectionism. I used to get frustrated with myself when I noticed my perfectionist thoughts and tendencies coming up—often to the point of tears, to the point of giving up in a torrent of self-doubt, defeat and overwhelm. Now, when I see these thoughts and tendencies coming up for me, I become mindful of them, I name them and welcome them with curiosity and compassion—and I try to do the thing I’m afraid to do anyway, knowing that it will not be perfect because perfection is an illusion, just like control (I’ll be writing another post about this in the future). I try to make the difficult phone call. I publish the vulnerable post. I accidentally say the awkward, non-perfect thing I didn’t want to say, and I try to laugh and shrug and move on—because that’s all we can do.
It took me a lot of time, support and practice to get here—but I’m so glad I did. If you struggle with obsessive and perfectionist tendencies at times, I hope you can offer some compassion to yourself and know that it’s possible to have a different relationship with perfectionism in the future, if that’s a goal for you.