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Perfectionism: Friend or Foe? by Jan Mitchell
Is perfectionism healthy or unhealthy? Serving you or destroying you? Helpful or harmful in your life?
There are three types of perfectionism: healthy, unhealthy and chronically unhealthy. Are you one or are you a combination of several types?
The healthy perfectionist has an inner drive that compels you to do your best. The unhealthy perfectionist is driven to do things perfectly by unseen inner fears from your past. The chronically unhealthy perfectionist procrastinates knowing it won’t be good enough. Emotional pain stops you from doing anything.
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A healthy perfectionist has internal feelings of pleasure, and gains satisfaction from doing your best. You have high self confidence. You enjoy seeing the process through and have good feelings of doing every detail well. You look forward to a new challenge, expects to handle it well and have few concerns about it. This positive experience benefits your life. It is often highly motivating and the driving force to high achievement. You are able to learn from mistakes and laugh at yourself and at life.
An unhealthy perfectionist feels pressured to do everything right. Nothing is good enough. Everything must be perfect, yet never is due to unrealistically high standards. You have medium to low self confidence, judge yourself externally through other peoples eyes and accept other peoples standards in your life. This causes problems, stress and anxiety. You may see things as black and white, good or bad. You may believe there is only one right way to do things. Unconsciously you may need to feel in control at all times to protect yourself emotionally. You may do a great job, be a workaholic or have incomplete projects. You are constantly watching for an unexpected problem so you can be ready or so as not disappoint others. You may avoid things because you fear not being perfect. You often carry secrets that cause you shame.
Highly critical your own small mistakes, you take them as proof that you are still not up to par. You may judge other peoples errors harshly and can be hard on relationships because others have to be perfect too. You is always pushing yourself (and maybe others), trying to measure up and this causes you tremendous stress.
The chronically unhealthy perfectionist fears mistakes, failure or disappointing others so much that it leads to procrastination, poor performance or much wasted time and energy. You probably feel stressed most of the time or get stressed faster than other people.
You lives with other peoples ‘shoulds and can’ts and judgments’. You often feel you has lost yourself or that you do not know who ‘You’ are. You struggle with low self confidence, feel unworthy and have many secrets of your failures.
You worry about things you have said or done, or the things you didn’t say or do. You are oversensitive to what other people say and do. You take criticism personally. You may never start a project or may have many projects that are incomplete. Negative self talk like “What’s the use” or “I can’t do that” or “I’ll never be good enough,” run though your mind stopping you from starting. You have hidden unfulfilled wishes and dreams that you probably never verbalize or expect to realize. All of this pressure causes stress, depression and anxiety throughout you life.
Perfectionist at work may mean that you do a really great job. High standards can be great in certain places. It also may mean that a project is never finished or you stress yourself by putting in long hours, taking on too much or never letting a project go or finish. These traits cause more stress or problems than pleasure.
Perfectionist in relationships or at home may mean that no one else can do something because it won’t measure up to your high standards or no one can walk on your carpet once you have vacuumed or that what others do is wrong. Perfectionism may destroy your relationships because the other person has to be unrealistically perfect or you drop them.
Where did perfectionism come from?
Perfectionism often runs in families and can be genetic.
Unhealthy perfectionism could be genetic or learned from an authoritarian attitude of parents or caregivers who gave attention or love conditionally only. They had extremely high expectations and were constantly criticizing the child to measure up or do better. An unhealthy perfectionist has learned early in life that other people valued her because of how much she achieved and she learned to value herself only with other's approval. Fear of failure, disapproval or making mistakes are her nightmares!
As a child she learned that other peoples standards were more important than their own standards, thoughts or feelings. She unconsciously feels unaccepted and continues through her life trying to gain approval.
In chronically dysfunctional homes the child learned she could never please. You didn’t receive attention or love in a healthy way. You stopped trying a long time ago. You often struggle with depression, anxiety, under-achievement, procrastination, fear of failure and never set yourself goals or go for you dreams. You hide your true self from the world, have many ‘cover up behaviors’ so no one will notice you imperfections. You feel alone and have a horde of secret ‘failures’ that no one can know about. You often feel embarrassed or shameful.
I personally grew up in a chronically unhealthy home and struggled with chronically unhealthy perfectionism.
I never tried because I knew it was not possible for me to achieve. I was defective. I did well at some things but only because I felt had to for other people, my boss, friend, husband, children. Other peoples standards ruled my life. I performed very well at work because that was what I was supposed to do. I felt no pleasure from doing well only anxiety and depression. I always tried to measure up and I always knew I never would. I only heard criticism. I never hear praise, I missed it completely. Or I didn’t believe it thinking that this person wanted something from me.
Unhealthy perfectionism is based on a fear of failure or not being good enough. The external standards of other peoples values run your life, instead of your own internal standards. What other people think is more important than your own opinion, values or intuition.
Questions to ask yourself are:
Do you enjoy doing the best that you can? Does it bring you pleasure or pain? Is it worth it to you?
In what life areas does it add to your life?
Where or when does it stress you or not work?
Where do you feel you are asking to much of yourself?
Where do you feel you have to push harder, go faster, and be better than others?
Where or by whom, do you dread being caught looking or doing less than perfect? Do you have to have the perfect career, partner, haircut, makeup, home and furnishing, relationships, party, kids or school marks.
Does perfection work for you in your life? If perfection is bring you more pain and less pleasure, than it’s time to get a handle on it, make some changes so your life is more manageable and balanced.
Solutions To Change Old Patterns Of Perfectionism:
There are several key patterns that an unhealthy perfectionist needs to change. Focus on the making the following changes yourself, with a friend or a Therapist. (For limiting beliefs a Therapist will quickly guide you to reprogram them to positive beliefs and behaviors)
Key #1: Realize that unhealthy perfectionism is harming you. It is a fear based illusion of the Ego and is not your ‘Real Self’ or real state of being. Your real self is confident, happy, balance, loving and enjoying life. When you become aware that the world won’t come to an end because you are not perfect, it takes the pressure off of you so you can enjoy doing things and living by your own standards.
Key #2: Deal with fear of failure, the all or nothing thinking of having to be perfect, the limiting beliefs such as ‘I’m not good enough’ and the negative thinking’. (Of course you don’t want to make mistakes, but expecting yourself to be perfect all of the time is self abuse.) Ask yourself, ‘What am I afraid of? What's wrong with making mistakes? What is the worst thing that could happen?’ Realize that mistakes are part of learning and growing. (Change limiting beliefs with a therapist for best results)
Key #3: Find positive support that teaches you to appreciate the small positive changes in your life.
Key #4: Enjoy the journey. Focus on doing the task or activity well and enjoy the doing or the process. Practice being more in the moment. Begin to get satisfaction from simple accomplishments. Even stop when you make a mistake and reframe it by asking, “What is good about this?” or “What can I learn from this?”
Key #5: Learn to deal with criticism in a healthy positive way. Criticism is not a personal attach. Dealing constructively with criticism means being aware of what is the other person’s ‘stuff’, what is yours, and checking if there is anything constructive you can learn from the experience. Then learning the lesson and letting it go. You have the right to make mistakes. I doubt if it was intentional and even if it was, is it true?
Key #7: Learn to make wiser choices and decisions.
Key #8: Learn to trust yourself and feel confident with a supportive inner voice. Accept your strengths. Appreciating yourself and using your strengths. Living your strengths, who you are, what is important to you, your values, goals and dreams.
Key #9: Learn to evaluate and work on weaknesses (or things you don’t know about) in healthier ways, depending on what they are and how important they are to you and your life.
Key #10: Build balance in your life, discover your priorities and learn to rate success by your personal standards? Each of us can excel in our personal life, relationships, career, goals and dreams. I believe in stretching for great results, to do more, be more or have more of all of the wonderful abundance in life.
Key #11: Learn how to build achievable goals and get support to reach them. Make sure the are achievable. Start with some easy ones. Don’t expect to eat the whole elephant in one meal. As you set a goal, ask yourself “What will you need to do to achieve that goal?” Is it worth it to you? Is it important enough for you to do what it will take to achieve it? (If it means giving up things or people that are very important to you, then it’s time to re-evaluate. Is the goal based on other people standards? You may need to look at your personal vales and rearrange some of the priorities in your life to fit. You may find that some things are not worth it you and that others are.) If it is then ‘Ask yourself what stops you from reaching your goal?’ Deal with what stops you and you’ll achieve it.
Perfection in our North American culture is growing. It can be a wonderful and enjoyable pursuit or it can harm you. Which is it for you?
Have a wonderful month.
Take care
Jan Mitchell – Master NLP Therapist
1-403-225-2973 or www.expanding-minds.com
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