Perfectionism: Are You a Success Slave?

I spent an hour last week telling my therapist that I wasn't a perfectionist, and that David's disabling perfectionism had nothing to do with my behavior.

That's partially true.

I'm not a perfectionist in that I'm a slob. My house is trashed. I can barely find matching socks in the morning, much less apply make-up. (In fact, I put lipstick on so infrequently that when I do, Katherine asks me, "Are you going to your wedding?") I rush through the grocery store and forget half the items, and I don't read half of the flyers that come back in the kids' school bags.

These statements of perfectionism by Randy Frost, a professor at Smith College, interviewed by "Psychology Today's" Hara Estroff Marano, don't all apply to me:

* "If someone does a task at work or school better than me, then I feel like I failed the whole task." (Okay, that one does.)

* "Other people seem to accept lower standards from themselves than I do." (Maybe that one, too)

* "My parents want me to be the best at everything."

* "As a child, I was punished for doing things imperfectly."

* "I tend to get behind in my work because I repeat things over and over."

* "Neatness is very important to me."

But I must be a tad perfectionistic, because I'm still feeling badly about dropping off David this morning in his navy blue and white uniform the SECOND morning in two weeks on an out-of-uniform today. As he lined up with the other kindergarteners, he started bawling in the line, saying, "Why didn't you read the newsletter, mom?"

Ouch. That hurt. And it still hurts. Even after I ran home and fetched his favorite basketball shorts and shirt and dropped them off at the school office with a note to be delivered to his teacher. That was seven hours ago, and I'm still feeling crummy.

That's my kind of perfectionism. Mistakes aren't aloud. I'm supposed to memorize the bloody newsletter—down to every reading test, pizza party, and pay-a-buck-for-cystic-fibrosis-and-dress-out-of-uniform-day.

Perfectionism will drive a normal person into madness. If you're already depressed or suffer from anxiety, perfectionism will drive you into a dangerous despair. Explains Hara Estroff Marano in her "Psychology Today" article:

If ever there was a blueprint for breeding psychological distress, [perfectionism is] it. Perfectionism seeps into the psyche and creates a pervasive personality style. It keeps people from engaging in challenging experiences; they don't get to discover what they truly like or to create their own identities. Perfectionism reduces playfulness and the assimilation of knowledge; if you're always focused on your own performance and on defending yourself, you can't focus on learning a task. Here's the cosmic thigh-slapper: Because it lowers the ability to take risks, perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation—exactly what's not adaptive in the global marketplace.

Yet, it does more. It is a steady source of negative emotions; rather than reaching toward something positive, those in its grip are focused on the very thing they most want to avoid—negative evaluation. Perfectionism, then, is an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation—reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.

According to my very wise college professor, play is the way we restore our minds, bodies, and souls—play with others (chilling out with pals at a baseball game? Having coffee with a girlfriend?), and play with ourselves (becoming comfortable in our own company DOING NOTHING). We need to get into the sandbox a little as adults and build a castle or dump a bucket on a so-called friend.

I'm having a hard time playing lately. The desire is there, but the time isn't. I don't know how to relax and be unproductive without feeling guilty about all the blog posts I should be writing, the laundry sitting on our bedroom floor that needs to be washed, the portraits taken last summer that I haven't yet framed.

My discipline and self-direction—two traits that assist me in practicing my twelve steps of recovery—can also be a liability. And now that I have an (almost) seven-year-old mirror walking around with me, reminding me of what perfectionism looks like in a kindergartener, I'm wondering how much my pursuit of perfection—my efforts toward the imaginary blue ribbon—are teaching my kids about what life's about.

Hara Estroff Marano writes:

You could say that perfectionism is a crime against humanity. Adaptability is the characteristic that enables the species to survive—and if there's one thing perfectionism does, it rigidifies behavior. It constricts people just when the fast-moving world requires more flexibility and comfort with ambiguity than ever. It turns people into success slaves.

Yikes. A success slave? Is that what I am?

David certainly is. He hasn't even been in this world for seven years, and yet he is burdened by perfectionism: after eating all of his vegetables at lunch, he'll jump on our stationary bike to burn off the calories; he freaks when his homework isn't done absolutely perfectly, and he pulls out his reading assignments as soon as we get home; and if Katherine accidentally doodles on his tear-out sheets, we're all in for an hour of torture.

He can have fun. It's magical when he does. Because that smile of his is contagious. But it's much more difficult for him to relax and laugh than it is for his younger sister blessed with Eric's chemistry.

I suppose I'm going to have to learn how to break out of my own chains of perfectionism in order to help David with his. Perhaps Katherine and Eric, the more playful minds of the house, can teach my boy and me exactly how we go about relaxing at the beach with a novel (and not another self-help book!), to laugh at our mistakes ("I can't believe I sent you to school in your uniform again, ha ha!"), and to become much more adaptable in nature.

Related Posts by Category