Little Miss Mini-Me Perfectionist

I used to think that perfectionism was made, not born.

Then I had my daughter.

She was a born perfectionist.

I know this to be true because she started doing perfectionist type things before she even had a vocabulary.

My earliest evidence of this was when she was approximately 4 months old.

We were introducing her to rice cereal and I saw her little eyes following my hand as I filled the spoon with cereal and sent it to her mouth.

She grabbed the spoon, attempted to get some of the rice cereal and direct it to her mouth.

This was a spectacular failure, of course because she had the hand-eye coordination and gross motor control on of a 4 month old infant.

She then scrunched her eyes shut and proceeded to scream with all her might.

Trying solid food for the first time, this was right
before she tried to do it by herself.  

The kid was pissed that she could not do this by herself and had no concept that this was beyond her current capabilities.  

You might think it is a bit of stretch to describe an infant as a perfectionist but I don't know what else to call someone who has unreasonably high expectations and is upset when they can't meet their expectations.  

I'd already been undoing my own perfectionist tendencies but when I saw that, I really doubled down. I didn't want to reinforce anything with my own behavior.

When she got older, my husband and I started coaching her on establishing reasonable expectations, learning from mistakes and not taking failure at a task to heart.

That might be a bit much for a toddler, but having been a perfectionist my entire life, I could see the writing on the wall.

We did much of our coaching via Legos because my daughter has always loved building with Legos.  She would have a vision of what she wanted to construct and set out to complete it.   

If everything went smoothly, then no problem.  

If not, then we would commence coaching.  She'd say things like "I can't ever get it right" or "I'm not good a this" or "This is too hard for me."  

We'd say things like "That's not true, you just made an amazing car yesterday" or "You are trying a new technique, it takes some time to learn" or "Trying something new is hard at first, it will get easier if you keep at it."  

We emphasized the importance of understanding that people are not immediately good at everything, that learning is not always smooth and easy, and mistakes just highlight where we need to learn more. 

We also spent a lot of time emphasizing that she learned and grew at a different rate than her friends, so comparing herself to their progress was not super helpful.

There were a lot of melt-downs, mostly on her part but occasionally me too.

It is incredibly frustrating when your child refuses to do something, say tying her shoes, believing they are incapable, when you know for a fact shoe tying is a skill she can learn.  

And, I am a very goal-directed person, so it is really, really, hard for me to re-route.  I just want to push her through it.  

So, per usual, I had to do my own personal growth.  

I don't know about you, but having a kid has pushed me to grow as a human more than any other endeavor, except possibly marriage!

So, I practiced patience, and if you ask my mother, she will tell you that is not my strong suit.

And I practiced patience some more, and if you ask the rest of my family they would concur with my mother.  

While I was practicing patience, we continued coaching our daughter.  Helping her learn that mistakes are a normal part of learning and managing her expectations seems to have paid off.

This was day 3 of riding lessons

She recently had two weeks of horseback riding lessons.  

Because it was an entirely new skill set, it was difficult for her.  She really struggled.

But rather than freaking out or quitting, which would have been her response a couple years ago, she used mistakes to direct her learning and was excited about making progress.  She was not focused on being perfect.    

It was such a joy to see.  

Perfectionism is hard to live with and the energy devoted to trying to be perfect is better used elsewhere.  

I'm excited to see her continued growth, which is one of my favorite parts of parenting. 

Also, I love horses, so I am not at all sad that she wants to continue with that activity! 

Firing My Inner Perfectionist

For many years perfectionism had a large command center in my psyche.

Everything was fueled by the desire to do everything right.  

I've been in "recovery" from perfectionism for about 20 years and it is fully a work in progress

Failure used to completely freak me out.  Not little mistakes like misspelling words in my notes, but, you know big ones like getting a B+ on a test when I expected to get an A. 

When I "should have" gotten an A. 

Me at the height of my perfectionism with
my approved dissertation proposal

If you are thinking that a B+ really isn't that big of deal, you'd be right.  But in my mind that was a big mistake and the potential consequences ranged from flunking the class to flunking out of school to being homeless.  

By the way, that type of thinking, where a small issue becomes a catastrophic failure, is called catastrophizing.  

I was an expert at catastrophizing.  

To protect against potential failure, I studied obsessively.  Studying is an important part of education but neglecting other aspects of life to study isn't really good for one's physical or mental health.

It was not a coincidence that I was also severely depressed and had panic attacks when I was in college.

I eventually settled down with the studying but the perfectionist stuff followed around elsewhere.

You know, thinking I needed to have a perfectly clean house, always be caught up on my paperwork, never forget anything, & ____________ (fill in the blank).  

Once I realized it wasn't just an issue with being an over-achieving student, it was an issue for my entire life, I had to come up with a new strategy.

So, I fired my inner perfectionist.  

I thanked her for pushing me through school and for the fear of failure that fueled me for a long time, but there are better ways to be motivated.

For a while, I had to fire her every week because she liked to come back to consult.  

Eventually I was able to develop a set of beliefs that made my psyche a hostile environment for her.  It was very hard for her to maintain much of a foothold, much less an entire command center!

I adopted the approach that everything is a work in progress.  If something isn't quite right, well, that's okay because I'm not actually done with it yet.  

Unless there is an external deadline, I just work on things as I am able.  I am done when I am done. 

If I have an external deadline, as long as I meet the basic requirements, it is good enough.  I had to test this a bunch of times before I was comfortable with it.

I'd put a reasonable amount of time and energy into a report for work, rather than totally obsessing.  Then I would turn it in and wait.  My inner perfectionist would freak out, insisting something bad would happen because it wasn't perfect.  

Precisely nothing would happen, and I would tell her to shut up.

Or I would invite friends over when my house wasn't perfectly clean. My inner perfectionist would scream that my friends would be uncomfortable, or hate my house or hate me or whatever catastrophizing she could invent.  

Again, precisely nothing would happen, and I would tell her to shut up.

Enough times and she did actually shut up. 

On the rare instances where something needed to be adjusted or fixed, nothing horrible happened.

So, I could still tell my inner perfectionist to shut up!

Then I realized that failure simply shines a light on areas that I lack information or need to improve my skills.  

This can be fixed, unlike failure, which presents itself as permanent.  

I recognized the vast majority of the mistakes I make have zero significance for my future, my relationships or my well-being. 

Kona is part of my anti-perfectionism and is cute too!

Also, I got a St. Bernard.  I'm not kidding.  Kona has so much hair and general mess that having a perfectly clean house is not possible.  Since it is not possible, I'm not even tempted to try!
These changes released me from the constant nagging created by my inner perfectionist.  

Occasionally, she still likes to show up and start issuing commands.  

Some days it is more of a fight than other days.  Some days it is a knock down, drag out fight.  

But I go back to what I've learned- tell to her shut up and escort her to the door.  

A Short Story About Plumbing

A short story about our plumbing: Not long after moving in our home 5 1/2 years ago, the plumbing backed up and flooded part of the downstairs. 

Plumber showed up- "probably tree roots, blah, blah blah. Use this stuff." We paid $$$. 

Plumbing backed up again, this time some other explanation,"blah blah blah." $$$. 

Backed up again. "Blah blah blah" $$$. 

The new, fully functional drain pipe.

My husband, Aaron tries to fix it himself but the drain snake isn't long enough. 

Plumber, "blah, blah, blah," $$$. 

Aaron decides enough is enough and buys an 80 FOOT drain snake. Clears the drain himself several times. 

Eventually surmises that the drain snake is clearing a blockage so far down the pipe that it is in the city's pipe. 

Call out the city- they decide, "Nope, it your problem." 

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

Had the city out a few more times. 

Had a few more plumbers. 

One plumber tells us the main drain pipe out of the house has a sag that is causing everything to back up. It will cost approximately $5000 to fix. 

This was last summer. We were way too overwhelmed with the symptoms Lyme Disease & treatment to deal with it. So we procrastinated. 

When he felt well enough a few weeks ago, Aaron started to dig out the pipe. We were planning on getting it done and trying to figure out how to do it inexpensively. We weren't sure how to meet those two goals, recognizing that Aaron operates at about 50% capacity most of the time. 

This morning- 71 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, the city rang the door bell and informed us that we couldn't use our water because they were fixing their part of the sewer system. 

THE PART THEY HAVE SAID ALL ALONG WASN'T BROKEN AND INSISTED THAT IT WAS OUR PROBLEM!! Turns out their part (a concrete pipe) WAS TOTALLY CRUSHED so of course stuff eventually built up and backed up into the downstairs of our house. 

I'm guessing they won't be paying for us to remodel the downstairs bathroom. 

The story could stop here... I could just marinate in irritation that we dealt with the problem for 5 1/2 years and were about spend a ton of money on something that wouldn't fix the problem.

Or...

I can reframe, which is often called "Looking on the bright side." 

I prefer to use the term reframe because sometimes people get irritated when you tell them to look on the bright side.

So, the reframe for this situation that this is one time procrastination paid off and we don't have to scrape together $5000!

Cue celebration!  Now the time and energy we would have to devote to this problem can be devoted to something else.

Hopefully, that means we will finally build a tree house for my daughter, which is another thing that has been pending for 5 1/2 years!  

Now I can marinate in relief and excitement, which is so much better!

$11.00 an Hour?!

"$11.00 an hour?!"

This is what I said to myself in shock and horror after I finished calculating how much I made per hour.

Because I own my own practice as a licensed clinical psychologist, I am not an employee and I don't have a consistent salary.  So, I had to do math to figure out my average income per hour. I charge the same no matter what but the reimbursement varies based on a bunch a factors that are too boring to discuss in detail here!

The $11.00 per hour discovery sent me into a huge career crisis. I really expected that my bottom line would be better.

Me and the guy who balances the checkbook.

I was horribly disappointed and was in a huge funk all day long.

When my husband got home from work, I told him about my shocking discovery.

He looked at me like a deer in the headlights.

He has a work flow for these situations- situations where I am really confident and he knows I am way, way off base.

His first step is cringe, inwardly, because he doesn't want to alarm me, especially when I am already upset.

His second step is to identify the problem while also complimenting me.

In this instance it looked something like "I appreciate your work on this and you are very cute, but that can't possibly be true."

I can get indignant and generally I insist that I am right.  I'm also a pretty confident person and sometimes this backfires.  In this instance, I was relieved because, $11.00 an hour with a doctorate is absurd.

If I insist I am right, he tries steps 1 (deer in headlights) and 2 (identify problem and provide compliment) again.

Then usually I am ready to hear his input.  My husband explains his understanding of the situation, in this case where I went wrong with the math.

Usually I argue a few minutes (or more but I don't want to admit that, shhhh!) and he tries again.

(I'd like to take a minute here to express my thanks to the Universe that my husband is so patient!)

Eventually I can see the situation more clearly. And over time I have learned I have some persistent blind spots.

Math for example.  Despite doing poorly in nearly every math class and never, ever being able to balance a checkbook, I always assume my calculations are correct.

And then I make assumptions accordingly, which is why I had a career crisis.

I know I am bad at math, yet I frequently assume that my numbers are correct.  This, by the way, is the definition of insanity.  Doing the same thing over and over, expecting the outcome to be different.

I have finally learned to ask myself  "does this seem reasonable?" when I get some ridiculous number. Because this is the definition of good mental health, when you constantly run into the same problem, figure out different behaviors!

Don't get me wrong, confidence is a good thing. The answer isn't becoming insecure about myself in general. 

The answer is to pay attention to the feedback you are getting from the larger world.

Every action has a reaction. This is true of physics and this is true of behavior.

If I consistently screw up math it makes sense to change my behavior.  With math it is to be skeptical of my answers and ask for someone to go over my numbers.  (And also to brush up on multiplication tables! No, that's a lie, actually learn my multiplication tables!)

If I experience the same problem over and over in different contexts, that doesn't mean there is something wrong with everyone around me.  It means I am doing something to elicit a consistent pattern of responses from those around me.

I once knew a medical doctor that had the exact same complaint about every medical practice he had worked at. I don't remember the complaint, but he had worked at four or five medical practices across two states. The only consistent factor was him. This suggests that it was his behavior that was the problem, not the medical practices.

There are exceptions to this rule, I am sure, but it works as a good basic guideline.*

We all have blind spots and we can identify those blind spots when we take time to process the feedback we get from life, be that a calculator or loved one!


*individuals in abusive relationships need to ensure that the feed back they are getting in genuinely from many sources, not just their partner because abusive partners engage in gaslighting, which seeks to make the victim question their grasp on reality in all areas.  More information is available here.