Unlearning perfectionism

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Did anyone see amelius doing the tasks?

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Jokes aside, I think we all are and aren't imposters, in different areas of life.

Superb article. One thing though, it's difficult to reconciliate job markets / interview tests with not being a perfectionnist to an extent. Hopefully not a crippling but a mature for of skillfulness.

Or being required to do something really important, but failing and suffering/seeing bad things happen in part because they or someone they depended on was unprepared (even if knowing how to be prepared, or being prepared was not really realistic in the circumstance).

It can come from something as simple as the family losing their income and having serious problems due to economic issues, to a parent dying, or a major childhood illness, death of a friend, etc.

Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call it ‘perfectionism’ has saved my ass many times, because it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or get out of the situation successfully.

Many, many people I have known over the years have not been so lucky.

Pretty sure it never hit a pathological point though, which something like OCD definitely is.

The way to turn it into a better coping skill is to evaluate where it is and is not helpful - it’s almost certainly has not always been wasted effort, though for folks in particularly bad places, maybe it has. CBT has a really useful ‘Worry Worksheet’ which can help walk people through and reality test things like this, which can help tease it apart.

Prioritizing self care is also key, as when it is a problem it’s usually because other important things aren’t getting addressed (like rest, or positive social interactions) because someone is hyper focusing on perfecting one specific thing, and necessarily unable to tackle the other things that are important to be functional. This leads to a spiral of less and less ability to be functional, which rightfully will trigger anxiety and the maladaptive behavior even more. Hopefully the person is able to snap out of it, or environmental/external factors stop it, but that doesn’t always happen.

If someone was in a situation where they ended up in a unexpectedly bad situation or emergency as a kid, this is probably one of the better ‘bad coping skill’ ways of handling it.

Other, even less helpful but common coping skills for that kind of trauma include:

- pretending that the problem is not or could never actually be a problem (delusion)

- avoiding any reminders of the problem (avoidance)

- attacking others as the cause of the problem, when they aren’t (deflection, finger pointing)

- making the problem someone else’s problem in a destructive way (usually using manipulation, gaslighting, abuse)

And many more.