Is Trying To Be Perfect So Bad?
Perfectionism - a personality trait characterized by the following:
• Striving for flawlessness
• Setting high performance standards
• Critical self-evaluations. Feeling negative about one's self when standards aren't achieved.
• Fear that others are also evaluating you in a negative way
• Belief that you are only as good or as perfect as the most recent accomplishment
Result: The pursuit of the perfectionist ideal often triggers depression, feelings of failure and low self-esteem in part because the standards set can never be achieved. This creates an overall general sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life experiences. Being human involves the art of accepting imperfections and the inability to accept this leaves us with an unattainable standard and a strong sense of failure.
Success and Accomplishments:
Perfectionist standards don’t allow the feelings of success and accomplishment to contribute to a positive sense of self-worth or strengthen self-esteem. Instead it becomes a never ending process where more and more accomplishments are required to validate self-worth creating anxiety and depression because the standards are never met. These feelings rob life of enjoyment for a multitude of reasons. Perfectionism prevents people from showing who they are authentically for fear of being rejected or flaws being observed, it limits the ability to try new things because of the strong fear of failure, inhibiting growth that comes from new experiences, it creates a feedback loop that is negative and self-critical of one's self and others, all to chase an illusion that can never be captured. Perfectionism has no place in the recovery process and the use of the perfectionist ideal within the recovery process often drives people to quit the process and feel as if recovery isn't possible. Recovery and personal growth in life require the permission to try new things, experiences and allowance to make mistakes. To be human. Fear of failure will prevent you from ever having the opportunity to start or to continue to try. Use mistakes and failures as learning opportunities. Think about how the experience can educate and strengthen you as a person.
Ask yourself the following questions:
• Do I aim to be the best in everything I do? Am I my harshest critic? Beating myself up over anything that goes wrong?
• Do I find my pursuit of perfection is eliminating my ability to enjoy life? Feel inferior to others who appear smarter, more attractive and successful than I?
• Do I find myself procrastinating until there is time to do things perfectly or just right?
• Do I feel my standards for what I do couldn't be high enough? Get angry with myself when I make a mistake?
• Am I constantly trying to improve myself?
• Afraid of failure? Get upset when things don't go as planned? Defensive toward criticism with an all or nothing approach?
If you answered yes to more than a few, it might be time to think about what needs to change, what is the connection between perfectionism and your eating?
Think about:
• Defining compassion and grace and creating a plan for practicing it daily toward yourself and others. Define forgiveness. Identify areas where it needs to be applied to you.
• Look at identifying the origin around the reason/need to be perfect. Is therapy needed to heal the past hurt?
• Identify where these rules for perfection are in your life. Work, weight, appearance, family etc.
• Identify how comparing and judging play a part in the cycle and work to create a plan to increase awareness and begin to decrease use of comparison and judgement.
• Visualize a stop sign in your mind and every time you engage in negative self-talk visualize the stop sign and STOP the negative self-talk.
• Understand that you and your recovery are worth protecting and valuing - don't let it get bullied! Fight to quiet the negative noise and give yourself the freedom to be human.
Nancy Albus LPC, NCC, CEDS
