Cathy's blog

Perfectionism has been on my mind a lot lately. Having the feeling of *no control* tends to do that to me.

That’s my trigger: when things start *happening to me*, I tend to go into control-modus.

And so I’ve noticed more and more social media posts about perfectionism catch my eye. (don’t think about the pink elephant 😅)

It also seems like all of a sudden more of my clients are suffering from their perfectionism as well. I used to tell them that perfectionism is *just* a defense mechanism.

But that’s not helpful...

I’ve seen the struggle on their faces once too many. My clients believe that they ARE perfectionists. It’s their identity. It’s in their DNA, it’s who they are at their core.

And besides: their perfectionism is what got them here, what made them successful.

And then I come in telling them it’s something outdated? No longer serving them?

If they weren’t so polite, or if we were doing this face-to-face instead of via Zoom - I’m not sure I would be safe 😉

That’s how I’ve realized: the way we talk about perfectionism is not always helping us. We either defend it with every fiber of our being - like a mama tiger protecting her little cubs - or we try to approach it rationally, and in doing so, inadvertently reduce it to something we should be ashamed of.

Maybe we’re trying to say too many things, with just one word?

Because part of our perfectionism is good: it’s our eye for detail, it’s the capacity to find just the right color, to do something flawless, to get it *just so*. That’s the part we want to keep, the part we fiercely protect.

It’s helpful perfectionism. It makes us happy and successful.

But sometimes we go into overdrive: we grow tired, overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out - because we want to do everything 200% (on a good day 😉). Because we can no longer turn ourselves *off*. We want to keep everything under control, we get angry at others for *messing up* (doing only 100%)... we are frustrated with ourselves for being human - and therefore imperfect by design.

That’s unhelpful perfectionism.

So we have to get honest with ourselves. Part of our perfectionism is helpful, part of it is not.

And learn to recognize which is which by asking “how does it make me feel”?

So we can embrace what’s helpful... and let go of what’s not.