Recently I realized that I “suffer” from perfectionism. I always knew that I tended towards perfectionism. I used to think it was a convenient weakness, one that you could use when asked about your weaknesses during employment interviews because it meant that you would work harder to get it done right. After I got sick with depression I saw myself as a failed perfectionist, someone with high standards that could never achieve them. This made me so sad and discouraged.
Perfectionism is more than the need to do something perfectly. It involves:
- the fear of failure because maybe it proves that you are not good enough or defective
- the fear of making a mistake because then you aren’t a perfect performer
- the fear of doing something the wrong way because then it means you don’t know what the right way is and not knowing how to do something shows how incompetent you are
The underlying paradigm is that there is some greater authority that dictates right vs wrong, that there is a universal hierarchy that ascends to perfection, and that we are under constant scrutiny and judgement. For example:
- Avoiding telling your extended family about personal failures because then they will rank you amongst the other family members based on who is successful and who isn’t
- Experiencing performance anxiety because your boss keeps track of your productivity and you fear losing your job because of ineptitude
- Becoming a know it all because if you don’t know something or worse, say something erroneous, people will think you are stupid and that would be humiliating
Perfectionism is so insidious that it distorts your thinking, behaviour and it creates obsessions. Encountering activities where there is no one right way to do something makes the perfectionist very uncomfortable because then how do you know what to do? The perfectionist only does things the right way or the best way. Taken to its extreme, the perfectionist will analyse and research all the possible variations to find one way with some edge. Whether it be, faster, brighter, prettier, cheaper, tastier, most popular it doesn’t matter, as long as in their mind it is the better way, righter way.
While people are out there enjoying the fruits of life, the perfectionist puts off that enjoyment until they can find the best way to enjoy. They obsessively research, plan, organize, count, measure, hunt and gather everything they need to achieve this perfection. Finally, if you can’t do it perfectly, then why bother doing it at all becomes the attitude.
I noticed all these thinking and behaviour patterns tonight as I was attempting to make a traditional dish. My mom gave me her recipe 10 times but, first, she didn’t write it down so now I had to rely on memory, what if I forgot a step or get the wrong ingredient or get the proportions wrong? Which leads me to the next problem with her recipe, she refuses to give me the amounts of the ingredients because according to my grandma, you are just supposed to go by taste. Without clear guidelines how do I know if I’m getting the recipe right or the best taste?
I went online trying to find THE recipe, and to my dismay, there were so many variations how could I pick the best one? Well, who has the most authority? I looked for a website that maybe was the most official or widely recognized as an authority but I couldn’t find one. I went online and asked my friends and family for their recipes because I thought that maybe their seal of approval might make me more comfortable with the recipe. One gave me a link to some random website, while another told me to ask my mom or google it. How come nobody understands that I need the best recipe I can get and that I’m having a hard time finding one?
I told my mom of what a hard time I was having and she was shocked at how difficult I was making this. I explained my difficulties with the recipe she gave me, I blamed my brain for not grasping this orally handed down recipe so she had pity on me and finally wrote it down for me. Still no measurements but I guess it’s progress. And I haven’t even gone into all the detail (drama) of which is the best order to do the steps in the recipe or now that I know the ingredients, how do you choose the best ingredients…. This is the story of my life, an insider’s view into my obsessive, difficult, not fun way of doing things.
Making new connections 