Battling Perfectionism

I think of myself as a recovering perfectionist. The clearest insight I had about this came when I was seeing a therapist two years ago (back when I could afford the luxury of mental health) and told her that I struggled with perfectionism, but not really, because actually I wasn’t doing anything well enough to qualify as a perfectionist.

Wait, she said. So what you’re telling me is you would be a perfectionist if you could just do things a little more perfectly?

Well… yes.

Yeah, that still counts as perfectionism.

Because I was going through my actions as if there were a level of perfection that it was possible to achieve. Because I was comparing myself to mythical people (or the real people around me who I was remaking in my head as more perfect beings) and finding myself lacking. Because I was beating myself up all the time for not doing things the right way, the better way, the more thorough way, the more organized way. The perfect way.

So that Perfectionism -- damn, is she a tricky beast. She invades your thinking without you even realizing it. One day you’re taking notes at a company meeting, the next day you’re hunched at your computer taking an extra thirty minutes to get the font right so people can read it, the next day you’re taking an extra hour to organize everyone’s action items at the top of the notes even though nobody reads them (of course there’s a nice dose of Martyr / Victim Complex that always seems to crop up alongside Perfectionism. They’re sort of like that mean girl in elementary school and her super sweet best friend).

(Wait, except Peppermint Patty isn’t really a perfectionist, is she? Well, you get the idea.)

Anyway, in my epic struggles to not let Perfectionism boss me around, I have found a few techniques helpful:

• Leaping into things before I’m fully prepared -- leaping past that urge to be “prepared enough” (which is impossible) by jumping in when I know that I am in fact not fully prepared. A sort of “fuck you” to perfectionism.

• Laughing at the things I have done perfectly and not taking their supposed perfection seriously. As in: look at these amazing gleaming golden NOTES I took at the company meeting. Aren’t they perfect? Aren’t they an incredible shining example of what notes should be?

• Admitting right away when I don’t know how to do something or think I may have done it wrong. In effect, thwarting that perfectionist desire to know everything and hide all failure by being openly, publicly honest about my mistakes and what I don’t know.

• Remembering that a completed imperfect task matters more than a task that comes in late because I needed to know more, prepare more, edit more, etc.

Caveat: one undesired outcome of these techniques is that I sometimes overcompensate and use this as an excuse to NOT PREPARE. Which is not the same thing at all, and only gives the Inner Perfectionist fodder for telling me what an incompetent, lazy, unbaked fool I am. No: the trick is to prepare -- to take things seriously -- but to also leap in no matter what when leaping is called for.

I must admit, though, there is one aspect of Perfectionism I haven’t yet figured out how to handle, and that is other perfectionists.

Again I turn to Peanuts for inspiration. Of course Peppermint Patty isn't the Perfectionist, it's freaking LUCY! Watch, she's basically my Inner Perfectionist in cartoon form, and Charlie Brown is her poor misguided Martyr / Victim aka my SENSITIVE SOUL:

In the same way that recovering alcoholics find the company of practicing alcoholics to be the most challenging, and in the same way that recovering alcoholics can’t expect other people to change their drinking habits -- I have to figure out how to interact with people who display perfectionist tendencies, without giving in to perfectionism myself and without expecting them to change.

Because maybe they don’t have a problem with perfectionism. Maybe it works for them. I imagine that some people take great comfort and pride in their drive for perfection. In fact a lot of things in this world would not exist were it not for perfectionists. So I’m not knocking it. But for me it’s toxic.

So what I need to figure out is how to tolerate other people’s desire for attaining perfection, without letting it trigger my own toxic desires. It’s pretty tricky. Maybe I need to find the equivalent of AA for Perfectionists.

Hello. My name is Faith Helma, and I am a perfectionist. It’s been three days since I gave in to a desire to be perfect. (Ok, fine: three hours) (Ok you got me, I am actually obsessively editing this post RIGHT NOW. Fine, I’ll just post it.)

There you go.