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.