Why I stopped being a perfectionist.

(don't let it ruin your life).

I started my journey of self-improvement and healing my heart because I was in too much pain, for waaaaay too long.

• I felt lost in life because I didn’t know who I was.
• I was so scared of failing because of the opinions of other people.
• I had a hard time feeling love for myself because of the way I grew up.
• I allowed people to disrespect me because I didn’t know how to set healthy boundaries.
• I kept attracting the same type of toxic relationships because I never learned what I healthy relationship is meant to look and feel like.

I was a young woman with low self-esteem and self-worth who was constantly doubting herself and desperate for the love, attention and approval of the external world.

Although that’s how I felt internally, I had found a way to mask this deep internal dynamic by compensating with a better image of myself externally.

I was a perfectionist.

Trying to do everything perfectly would give me a sense of control and safety.

That would limit the risk of failure, being criticised or rejected which is exactly what I wanted to avoid at any cost because it would reinforce the painful belief, I was holding about myself that

I am just not good enough.

As a perfectionist, I would

• Fear failure
• Procrastinate
• Feel very anxious
• Be highly critical
• Worry way too much
• Try to control everything
• Avoid conflict at any cost
• Only focus on the outcome
• Overthink about the smallest things
• Feel terrible about negative feedback
• Have unrealistic standards and expectations

The more I sit with this and observe the world and the past version of me, the more I realise how twisted, manipulative and deceitful being a perfectionist is.

If you are one, just know that this letter will trigger you.

I proudly remember saying at one of my job interviews that one of my “negative” traits was being a perfectionist.

Which was a way of saying:

“basically, I am a perfect person who will get the job perfectly done. If I ever make a mistake, it’s because of things that are not in my control, so you won’t be able to blame me for that.

This way of thinking is exactly what makes breaking the cycle of perfectionism so hard.

There is something every perfectionist is unwilling to accept at all costs, which is exactly what you have to be willing to look at if you want to stop being a perfectionist.

I will expose the hidden motivations of every perfectionist further in this letter.

Today, I don’t label myself as a perfectionist anymore and doing so has ironically significantly changed my life, my relationships and my self-worth for the better.

Perfectionism is a coping mechanism.

A coping mechanism is a conscious or unconscious process, adaptation or technique that someone adopts to avoid or escape pain, stress or negative emotions.

What every perfectionist is desperately trying to avoid, is to confront that deeply engrained belief of never being able to feel good enough.

Your self-worth is rooted in shame, hate and fear, and unfortunately, the standard of perfection you are holding yourself up to will constantly reflect that back to you.

You’ve found all kinds of ways to control yourself and beat yourself up or punish yourself when you fall below these high and (let’s be honest) unrealistic expectations.

Your need for control extends into the world and your relationships. You won’t like hearing this, but being a perfectionist is hard on you and hard on the people who are in a relationship with you.

• They struggle to connect with who you truly are
• They are annoyed by your inability to let go, relax and have fun
• They feel pressured by your need for control and perfection too
• They constantly feel judged through your energy, words and actions
• They don’t want to have to live up to the same expectations as you do
• They feel like they have to walk on eggshells when they are in your presence
• They feel helpless and frustrated because they don’t understand what you truly want and need

I feel you.

It’s painful to hear that all the effort, energy, stress and pressure you have put into trying to control everything are actually creating a lot of damage in all the areas of your life.

Don’t get me wrong.

People love you. But you are making loving you really hard for people.

And you are making life way more painful and stressful than it has to be.

Let’s dive into the mechanisms behind your need to do everything perfectly.

The mechanism of perfectionism. 

1. Low self-worth, shame + fear

There is a resistance and unwillingness inside of you to accept reality.

To accept yourself for who you are instead of how you would like to perceive yourself and be perceived by the world.

Somewhere in your childhood, you’ve learned through your environment that you were wrong or bad for having certain of your desires, behaviours, needs or emotions.

Being rejected and shamed for innocently expressing what is true about you is terribly painful, even more so for the little being you were, whose survival completely depended on its environment.

The main goal of every species on this planet is survival.

This means that we will do whatever it takes to guarantee that we can belong and be accepted by our environment because choosing the opposite would mean death.

This also means that we are very quick at identifying what hurts and is painful and come up with strategies and techniques that will help us avoid experiencing this pain again.

• You are wired to find a way to belong
• You are wired to avoid pain

As children, we will naturally and unconsciously find all kinds of strategies and techniques to respect these fundamental human characteristics.

The strategy you’ve adopted is perfectionism.

This usually happens in two cases:

The high-standard / high-expectations family

You come from a good family. Your parents earn well and have been successful throughout their careers.

They represent a symbol of excellence, achievement and discipline and naturally inspire admiration and respect.

In your family, failure is just not an option.

Your parents didn’t have to be vocal about what they expected of you for you to know what you had to do.

You knew that you couldn’t afford to fall below your parent’s standards without risking being rejected, punished or called out (which is exactly what you are wired to avoid).

Your parents served as a silent and discreet judge, always tracking your grades, your performances and achievements.

• How safe have you felt about sharing the most vulnerable parts of you with your parents?
• How validated did you feel when you expressed something you did or didn’t want to do?
• How welcoming were they when you shared your frustration, anger, fear or shame?

…that’s my point. You were unconsciously forced into perfectionism.

And now you’ve built all this life on these standards and this image of this perfect human who feels terrible about everything that feels imperfect about yourself and ashamed for desiring anything else that isn’t aligned with the expectations your close environment has for you.

The low-standard / high-expectations family

You come from a difficult family.

Financial problems or limitations, addictions and abuse in some cases, stressful environment with little to no emotional stability and support.

In this case, the pressure and huge expectations come from below instead of above like in the previous case.

Your parents made you feel responsible for some of the difficulties they are facing and haven’t failed to remind you how much they sacrificed so you can be in a better position than they are.

This is a form of emotional manipulation called guilt-tripping.

You were forced into a corner where you didn’t have any other choice than to do things perfectly.

Since you felt responsible for your family’s difficult situation you also felt that you were responsible for saving everyone.

And you could only do that by making sure you try your hardest to never fail or disappoint your parents.

Today, you might have realised that although you achieved your parent’s expectations, it’s still not good enough and you can’t seem to find a way to make them truly proud of you.

In both cases, you grew up hating and feeling very ashamed about the aspects of you that didn’t want to or couldn’t meet the standards and expectations your family had for you.

Your sense of worth is very fragile and changes according to how close or far you are to meeting all these expectations.

This is reflected in your work environment, in your friendships, in your performances and in the way you talk to yourself.

• When your boss gives you positive feedback, you feel amazing about yourself.
• When your friend makes a negative comment, you feel terrible.
• When you have a bad training day, you beat yourself up and feel weak.
• When you make a mistake, you want to punish yourself and feel ashamed.

This mechanism works in a self-correcting way. The voice in your head that criticises everything and everyone, the one that holds you back before you even try, the one that wants to punish you every time you make a mistake, this voice, is not your own voice.

It’s the collection of voices from your past environment that you integrated (as a survival mechanism to avoid being rejected and hurt) and who are now policing each of your actions, decisions, emotions, successes and failures.

The initial goal of this mechanism was to ensure your survival as you grew up. Today, you are an adult who isn’t dependent on your parents anymore but is still functioning with the mechanisms you needed in your childhood.

The mechanism of perfectionism was a way to cope with the demands of your environment. Most people don’t invest time in doing personal work to understand, heal, and let go of the mechanisms they’ve adopted in their childhood. What saved you as a child is now ruining your life as an adult.

2. Over-promising / under-delivering.

For the next couple of days, I want you to observe the way you present yourself to the world. If you are honest about it and willing to look at what you do and listen to what you say, you will notice that you constantly embellish yourself (over-promising).

You also accept more work than you can handle and take on more responsibilities than what you feel confident with (over-promising), which is putting you in a dangerous position.

Anxiety, high stress and this underlying pressure are part of your daily life because you constantly try to meet these standards you’ve accustomed everyone to expect of you.

You now might understand a bit better why you struggle so hard to relax, let go and just have fun ;)

The perfect image you portray to the world and have come to accept as true for yourself are all ways you are trying to compensate for the low level of worth you have about yourself.

3. Over-expecting / feeling underappreciated.

A bit earlier in this letter, we spoke about your resistance to accepting reality. This is not only true when it comes to the way you present yourself to the world, it is also true regarding what you expect from the world.

Just because you would do this or that for someone else, you expect them to do the same for you.

Disappointment is part of every of your relationships because you expect everyone else to work, think and feel the same way you do.

Most of the time, you don’t even communicate your expectations, so the person who is in a relationship with you can’t even understand why you feel upset, frustrated or disappointed in the first place.

You have high hopes because you desperately want someone to show you how much they love and appreciate you and that can only be done if they meet you at the exact same standard and expectations you have for yourself (little side note: this is you repeating the same cycle from your childhood, but now you have the parent role).

If it’s not the way you want – it’s just not good enough.

This obviously rarely happens, which leaves you feeling unappreciated, unimportant and unworthy, which then triggers this deep wound of low self-worth.

Accepting reality is terribly painful for so many reasons. Because reality is not “just” one thing.

Reality is bliss.

- It’s lies.

- It’s fear.

- It’s love.

- It’s pain.

- It’s light.

- It’s beauty.

- It’s growth.

- It’s darkness.

And so much more.

You are here to be human and a human is way more than “just” perfect. A human lies. A human makes mistakes. A human disappoints. A human has bad breath and pimples. A human can be scared, ashamed, jealous. A human can also do things very well sometimes.  

That is what you are. A simple human who has done and been all these beautiful and ugly things. And guess what, you are still worthy of love regardless.

Break the perfectionist cycle.

This letter is getting quite long.

Unfortunately, I won’t be sharing my tools and techniques with you today. I’ve come to realise that Perfectionism is a mechanism so many people suffer from, and I decided to dedicate a part of the Self-Love course to the healing process of perfectionism.

You can have access to it through the course or wait for the next letter (which will be sent out in 2 weeks) where I will be sharing parts of this healing process with you.

Until then, I invite you to try out the observation technique from Point 2 and to start questioning the voices that judge and criticize you in your head. It will be our starting point before we dive a level deeper in the next letter.

And already help you realise how destructive this coping mechanism is to your health, your relationships and your life.

And hopefully, encourage you to make your journey towards healing your heart, your main priority in the next couple of months.

I will see you in the next letter,

Until then, take care.

Oli.