Hi everyone, welcome back today I’m going to talk about my struggle with perfectionism and how it fuels my anxiety. If you haven’t yet read my last post you can find it here
What is Perfectionism?
To me perfectionism is that everything I do must be at a high or flawless standard, it often comes with a critical evaluation of my performance and that evaluation tends to be negative. I’ve noticed my need to be perfect in various aspects of my life, from personal relationships to work. It is a good thing to strive for excellence but for me I go above and beyond. The standards that I set for myself are unrealistic and no matter what I do I always see the imperfections.
How Perfectionism Triggers Anxiety:
Perfectionism impacts my anxiety in a couple different ways. For one before I even start something I’m usually already anxious because I start to think about all the things that could go wrong. For the most part I won’t even start because the idea of it not being perfect is enough to keep me from starting. At work my job is mostly project based. I have deadlines I need to meet and my anxiety is heightened before submitting my work. I know that my work is good, it’ll fulfill the requirements that were being looked for but it usually doesn’t fulfill my own requirements. Even when something should be seen as an accomplishment for me its overshadowed by the imperfections.
Personal Experience:
A major issue I’ve had in the past and still have to an extent is cleaning my room. When I clean my room, I usually do it all at once. Its not always easy because my room is fairly big and I have a lot of stuff. For the most part I put off cleaning my room well past when I should have done it. The issue stems from my perfectionism, I need to do the entire room at once or I’ll be thinking about the parts I didn’t do until I get around to it. Its basically procrastinating but I procrastinate because I have to be perfect. If I can’t do a good job now it’s not worth starting.
Perfectionism is in my personal life as well. I struggle to open up to people because opening up would leave me vulnerable and admitting that I’m not perfect. I do this with my family and friends a lot. I’d rather stay quiet and pretend like everything is fine. I know now that its unhealthy to do that and you can’t keep everything bottled in forever. For me its embarrassment, if I open up the other person may judge me for my imperfections. As I continue in therapy, I’m learning that these thoughts are just thoughts and if they don’t say something negative why dwell on what they may be thinking. I’m learning to try to redirect my thinking to be more positive and that being perfect is impossible.
Coping Mechanism:
Pros and Cons List
My therapist asked me to create a pros and cons of being perfect. Below was what I wrote.
Pros:
- My work and what I do is at a very high level
- Everything can’t just be good it needs to look good too
Cons:
- My work isn’t usually that good due to being anxious
- I usually won’t start something because I don’t feel like I’m ready
- If it isn’t good I see it as a failure
- My accomplishments are overshadowed by my failures
- I don’t share with others because I don’t feel worthy
What did I learn when I wrote these things out? Well for one there’s more cons to being perfect, it is telling me that being perfect isn’t as great as I think it is. I also noticed that every con was my own inability to see past the perfectionism.
Happy Memory
A second exercise I was asked to do was to think of a happy memory I have. I thought of one and I was asked to describe it. As I described it to the therapist, she asked me about irrelevant things or so I thought. The memory I had described was a dinner I had when I was in Barcelona. I described the food, the scenery, the company. The therapist asked me about the weather, I told her that we were there during a heat wave and it was uncomfortable. She asked me why I didn’t mention that part, at first, I didn’t have an answer but then she asked was the heat something that wasn’t great. Did you forget that part because it would have made your happy memory imperfect? It dawned on me then that my happy memory was a selective memory, there were parts of that dinner that weren’t great but I chose to see past all of that and focus on what I enjoyed most. My happy memory wasn’t perfect – I chose to make it perfect but in reality, there were parts of that dinner that weren’t ideal. That really stuck with me, I’m choosing to forget about the imperfections but even in something I deem happy it wasn’t perfect. If my happy memory isn’t perfect than maybe other areas of my life don’t need to be either.
Balancing Standards:
I’ve tried to take what I did in therapy to help cope with perfectionism and apply it to my everyday life. Its tough especially right now since I just started this but I’m seeing improvements. They aren’t drastic but overtime I think it’ll be night and day difference from where I was at. One of the things I’ve tried to focus on is at work. I want to still be submitting work at a high standard but I also know that the scope of the project is a lower standard than my own. I tried this week to deliberately meet the required ask and leave it at that. Honestly, I don’t feel any different, feedback was pretty much the same I would have received had I gone all out. The report I built does exactly what it needs to do and I can move on to working on something else.
I tried this at home as well. I told myself I wanted to lose ten pounds doing some cardio and eating better. When I was younger I used to be an elite athlete and I’ve been a bit unhappy with how I’ve let myself go in the last year or two. At first, I was nervous because ten pounds can be tough if you aren’t eating properly and putting in the work. I know myself and I’ll brush it off and I won’t lose that weight, and eventually I’ll feel bad that I couldn’t stick to it. My choice was I would ease into it; I started limiting how much snacks I was having between meals and I increased the amount of water I was having every day. Once I got used to that, I started focusing on my meals and eating reasonable portions. Finally, I added in the cardio and with that as well I increased it by five minutes a day until I was happy with the amount of cardio I was getting in. It was tough at first because I kept thinking I’m only doing a portion; this won’t help me. But over time I started adding everything together and now I’m done about six pounds and I feel like I could probably keep this up.
Thank you for reading about my struggle with perfectionism. If you’re like me and unsure what to do, try some of my coping mechanisms. If you have other coping strategies, please let me know and I’ll give it a shot and let everyone know if it helped me.