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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.
To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.
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The Treasures of Darkness
posted 6:06:40am Feb. 06, 2012 | read full post » |
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Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
Meet others on the journey in
Therese’s community group
Ask Therese to be your friend
Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
posted June 10, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Thank you for the post of today – it opened up my eyes and mind in looking at my perfectionism and what it has cost me – I never thought perfectionism could be so powerful – but in examining my situation that exists today (stressed, overwhelmed, off the beam & depressed again-still) I know I better get back to the basics and start dealing with it – I have been backsliding in all areas of my life for two years and find that my blankness/numbness is partly due to my discounting any good in my life or anything that I do somehow (God’s help) manage to accomplish. I can’t seem to PLAY at all these days and the self-absorbtion and self-defeating thoughts are too much to bear at times…..I am so glad I read this today, it was enlightening-thank you again – day at a time!
posted June 10, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Thank you so much for your writings. I discovered your Beyond Blue writings a few weeks ago, and you are helping me. I read your article about a personal toolkit, and I made one for myself. I just read “Perfectionism-Are you a Success Slave”. I see myself in you, your honesty about these issues, helps me to know that I am not the only one, and that I am not crazy:) Thanks, Renee
posted June 10, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Therese: Try not to be so hard on yourself . . I know how you feel, though, and it’s hard when we have done something to hurt or disappoint our children when we become too wrapped up in trying to heal ourselves. I’m afraid that my son is also going to be like me – worried and depressed in his young life. I’ve been told that I just need to be watchful of his emotions and try to show by example the positive coping skills I’ve learned (NOT!). I just wonder if I should be getting him to a counselor or if that would make the situation worse.
Anyway, I love your blog and I tell everyone I know that deals with depression about it.
Hang in there!!
posted June 10, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Therese- Another very insightful message…Thank You! My mirror has just turned 13. She is a perfectionist just like her mother (me). My challenge is to figure out how to avoid having her creativity crushed. She is incredibly happy when she lets herself go in creative/artistic endeavors. I remember being that way, too, but it vanished somewhere along the way. Maybe in my quest to spare her this loss, I’ll see a glimpse of my own creative side still lurking around in there? My husband and son are the happy-go-lucky ones in our family and I am so thankful that they model play so well for us!
posted June 10, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Therese:
but I’m willing to go along with that in the spirit of the thread.
Perfectionist? Who, me? ;-P
I have no idea if this post is going to be comforting or truly disheartening. It will be a bit rambling, and thus not perfect
I think Marano’s piece was an absolutely fabulous article (and I certainly see how/why, given your situation with David, you are trying to learn its lessons). Yet I disagree somewhat with the premise.
Marano says that perfectionism is made, not created — usually by overdemanding parents. My father, as you know, styled himself as the kinder, gentler version of the Great Santini, so I qualify.
Yet my perfectionism is intensely, and I mean INTENSELY, associated with anxiety. And anxiety is a mood disorder, which is mostly (not entirely, but mostly) genetic/inherited.
Therese, your recollections of your parents are genuine and loving. If they pushed you too hard, it’s either something you haven’t chosen to share or something so horrific that you haven’t faced it even in yourself. And given your rigorous self-honesty, I doubt that’s the case.
And while my Dad was quite the tinpot dictator, my mother (for all her own flaws) was most certainly not a perfectionist, and urging me sometimes against my Dad’s wishes to have fun and relax. So why did I internalize the one message and not the other?
And why are you a perfectionist if you were not (to my knowledge) abusively pushed by your parents?
And why is David a perfectionist if neither you nor Eric is overly pushing him (as opposed the loving guidance all kids need)?
It is, I suspect, because there is at least a manifestation of perfectionism that is inherent rather than created by environment.
That’s why I said this might be depressing rather than enlightening. Because not only have you not been unfairly pushing David, but in fact, it seems much the other way around — when David’s perfectionism causes him to lose his temper (as young kids do, and I certainly did), you fret that you’re not doing enough to support and love him.
(Of course, if you would look in your own mirror as opposed to your son’s, I know you would realize nothing could be further from the truth.)
But that, of course, means that David’s perfectionism might be at least partially genetic. Which means it could, as you worry (maybe rightly in this case), be an early manifestation of a mood disorder.
I’m not a parent, so take my perspective for the $0.02 it’s worth. But I do have depression. If David does have an incipient mood disorder, nothing you can do will keep it from coming out. All you can do is love him and support him.
Just as I know to my marrow you are doing, despite your understandable fears and wholly unnecessary Chris Farley-style “I’m such an IDIOT!” self-flagellation.
posted June 12, 2008 at 11:23 am
I just joined, and started to read the beautiful inspirations from Beliefnet today, and I know that I am hooked.Being a foster parent of kids with mental disorders, and myself being treated for depression, I can truly relate. Everyday I beat myself up thinking am I doing the right thing, or am I doing enough for these kids.Your feedback and comments have made take a long look at my life, and inside myself. I just need to relax and feel grateful that I have been given the opportunity to make a difference in someone elses life, and know that just being there for them in a good positive way will, and should be enough. Thanks for giving me the insight to relax.
posted June 13, 2008 at 12:44 am
First time visitor doing a late night internet search for comfort and information. My 18 year old son just finished his first year of college and has just been diagnosed with depression. He went from a popular honor graduate all-state scholar/athlete to a sullen, sad, withdrawn young man. He seems to have such anger just under the surface. He now takes Lexapro and sees a therapist. My husband and I met with her yesterday, were told how concerned she was for our son as he doesn’t seem to care whether he lives or dies (although she doesn’t feel that he would harm himself). I have a STRONG family history of perfectionism, depression and anxiety, and even a suicide. I feel completely helpless and unsure how to support amd protect him. I read everything that I can get my hands on, ask questions, but still feel ill-equipped to help him, and I have a doctorate in special education (but not in parenting). We would have looked like a poster family for traditional values and our children have been extremely high achievers.We disciplined with love and not with anger or violence, but I am afraid that we created an environment of subtle pressure that has created perfectionists completely out of touch with their own emotions. I want advice from real experts…people living with depression or helping those who are. Thanks for any help in advance…
posted March 3, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Hello. And Bye.