Perfectionism

 Outline:

  • What Perfectionism Looks Like 
  • What Perfectionism is About 
  • Addressing Perfectionism 
  • Practical Tools  


What Perfectionism Looks Like 

  • “Black-and-white” thinking: Things must be just right. 
  • “Unless something is right, it is all wrong.” 
  • An “All or nothing” attitude. 
  • No mistakes or failures allowed/accepted. 
  • No compromises. 
  • Type “A” personality. 
  • No flexibility. 
  • Self-imposed expectations. 


What Perfectionism is About 

  • Need for control coming from a deep fear of not having control/power over one’s life. 
  • Desire to feel competent and/or powerful. 
  • Insecurity deep down. 
  • Need to live up to expectations, for fear of being a failure or disappointment.  
  • Fear of losing the affirmation/validation/acceptance for having done well in the past. 
  • Fear that one is a failure/inadequate/not good enough. 
  • Fighting against low self-worth/self-confidence. 


Addressing Perfectionism 

  • Find its source: When did perfectionism first develop in one’s life? 
  • Sometimes, our parents inadvertently gave us the message that we have to be perfect when they could’ve done better to help us with realistic expectations. Please see the first paragraph of this blog post: Set Specific Expectations
  • Grieve the cause(s) of what contributed to our perfectionism. 
  • Choose to forgive the people who contributed to the development of our perfectionism. 
  • Find one’s worth in a relationship with God, our Maker, Who made us as His Masterpiece to reflect Himself in us. 
  • God made us in His own image. 
  • God is proud of His creation – us. 
  • God is pleased with us. 
  • Each of us is made to reflect God’s unique glory. 
  • God gives us worth. 
  • God finds us worthy to die for us on the cross to redeem us back into a relationship with Him. 
  • We are worthy because God gives us worth. 
  • God desires community – for us to join Him in the Triune Community of God. See Blog post on Invitation to Join God's Community
  • God desires our companionship and relationship. 


Practical Tools 

  • Remember that none of us is perfect – only God is. Things are usually not “black or white.” Rather, our lives are filled with a range of successes and failures, the ups and downs.  
  • It would be helpful for us to go to God’s word to see how He views us. When we face failures and frustrations, seek how God views them, and replace our views and assessments of ourselves with God’s view of us and of our experiences.  
  • Choose to embrace God’s view and truth about us and of our experiences. We cannot surprise God with our failures, as He saw every one of our failures even before we took our first breath (Psalm 139). 
  • Identify the sources of how we developed into perfectionism: 
  • What’s your earliest memory of an interaction between just your Mom with you (without anyone else being around)? 
  • How old were you? 
  • How did you feel in that interaction? 
  • Was that interaction/feeling/dynamic a typical one for you with her? 
  • What emotional message did you obtain from that interaction about how your Mom viewed/thought of you? 
  • Similarly, what was your earliest memory of the same set of questions above between just you and your Dad? 
  • The answers to the above questions can possibly give us a clue as to whether we picked up the message that we had to be perfect for/from our parents.  
  • By the way, these answers can also help us to sense what “core beliefs” we might have formed about life.  
  • Grieve the initial cause(s) of perfectionism. Stages of Grief:  
  1. Shock and Denial. 
  2. Anger. 
  3. Bargaining.  
  4. Depression (There are two components to this depression: Missing what we used to have; and relief that we no longer have to deal with the negative aspects of what was lost).  
  5. Acceptance. 

  • Choose to forgive the people who contributed to our perfectionism. See blog post on Forgiveness. 
  • Spend time in God’s loving presence to receive His approval and pleasure. 
  • Actively fight against our negative self-talk. See blog post on Tackling Negative Self-Talk. 
  • Embrace the concept of “Being good enough is enough.” 

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