-_fawkes_-

Hi! Really good question, and one I really like talking about! So thanks for that. lol

I think that other professionals might answer this slightly differently, but this is the way that I contextualize perfectionism, and the way that I approach healing from it. I think of perfectionism as caused by something called complex trauma. What that means, essentially, is that it is (sometimes small) traumas that occur persistently over a long period of time. Typically what that means is that the person feels unsafe in relationships, or like their needs aren't being met by caregivers when they are growing up.

When we are young, we are completely dependent on our caregivers. In order for us to feel ok when we are little, we have to believe that anything our parents (or primary caregivers) do is on purpose, makes sense, and for the best. What that means when we have caregivers who are negligent or abusive is that we start to believe that, since they are always doing the right thing, we have somehow brought the abuse on ourselves. In other words, rather than believe that the caregivers are flawed, a young mind will believe that if s/he is just "good enough" then they will be treated better.

Young children also have something called "magical thinking". An example of this would be if we believed that if we stepped on a crack we would break our mother's back or however that little saying goes. So the child starts to associate unrelated things to being "good enough" or making the caregivers happy enough to treat them better or not get divorced or whatever. So the child can start to feel like they have to color in the lines perfectly or have no wrinkles in their clothes. It gives the child a sense of control.

If, when we start to grow, we don't question these beliefs (that are really defense mechanisms) we just sort of exist in accordance with them, which can manifest as an adult with perfectionism. That's part of how therapy can help. You start to explore, find, and question these belief systems.

Hope that is helpful!

Thank you for your question! This is a really important question, as I think a lot of people express perfectionism in ways that others perceive as lazy. There are a few things that immediately come to mind, and then I will address your question about coping with the perfectionism/criticism from others.

The first thing is mindfulness, and breaking the tasks down into smaller, more manageable pieces. If you are thinking something like, "I am going to clean my house today" about chores, it feels monumental, and can make you feel like it's hopeless for you to even try. If you start to define the tasks differently, such as, "Today, for some time between 2 and 4 PM I will give myself permission to make an effort towards the dishes," it might help you feel less pressure. There are other ways to do this as well, such as, "Every time I clean a dish to use it I will clean one more and put the second away." A different way to approach this is to use mindfulness and add something to the task that feels good to you. It is basically like asking yourself the question, "How can I make this icky task feel better?" Some ways that my clients find helpful are to put on music, take frequent breaks, or listen to a podcast while they do the task.

Coping with someone else's perfectionism when it is being expressed as criticism is so hard. The first thing I want to say is that it is important for us to identify to the person (gently, kindly, and as compassionately as possible) how they are affecting us and with what behaviors. Sometimes the other person will honestly not know that they are impacting you or what it is that they are doing. It is usually best to have this conversation when it is not an active problem (read: not in the middle of an argument or when either or you are already agitated). Ask them how you can respond to their behavior in a way that will help them feel supported, and will still make it clear that you don't like the way you're being treated. It takes some trial and error, and they are unlikely to have an immediate answer to this, but you can work together to find something that sounds good enough to try.

Does that answer your question?

That is so hard. Being vulnerable in front of others is a big deal and it can be absolutely paralyzing for people. I think the dynamic you're describing of telling others what you know is best and not being able to do it yourself is really common! I appreciate that you felt that you could let yourself be visible in this way, and I recognize that it took courage for you to post this.

What you are describing sounds to me like quintessential shame core stuff. When I'm talking about this I like to start with describing the difference between shame and guilt.

Imagine that two children steal a cookie. Both of them are caught. The first child says to himself, "I did a bad thing. I should not have stolen that cookie." The second child says to himself, "I am bad. I do bad things because I'm bad." The first child is feeling guilty about a specific behavior. The second child feels shame, which has been internalized and is now experienced as a flawed "self".

This can absolutely be healed. You do not always have to feel like this. It is, however, a really ingrained experience often due to childhood experiences, so typically it takes some consistent hard work over a substantial amount of time to be able to experience significant change.

Here is something that helps a TON with shame:

The first is mindfulness. I think mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword recently and I feel that it is losing some of it's meaning, so I'll define for you what I mean by mindfulness. I would describe mindfulness succinctly as moment to moment non-judgemental attention on the here and now. A good person to look up for mindfulness stuff is Jon Kabat-Zinn. If you read into what I said very closely, it is about accepting your right now (the good, bad and ugly) and moving your attention consciously from wandering to thoughts, memories, the past or the future, back into your visceral experience of the moment. I took a class called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction some time ago (MBSR) and one thing that the instructor said really stuck out to me. She said that we should think about our attention like a muscle. You wouldn't go to the gym and do one bicep curl and expect that your muscle should look different would you? Or you wouldn't try to curl 300# and then decide that since you couldn't do it you should give up, would you? In that way, we need to practice using our attention and directing it where we want it to be over and over again before we can start to notice a difference.

Here's how mindfulness helps: It teaches us to move from the critical thought (for example, "I messed that up," to just the feeling (hollow, collapsing sensation in the chest, twisting gut, tense shoulders). If we allow ourselves to feel the feelings and don't push them away or pretend they aren't there, some magic happens. First, we get to respond to the feelings instead of reacting reflexively. That means you are empowered to do things to get your needs met or support yourself in feeling better. Also, it helps us to stay out of our mind that is constantly running, which can be igniting and re-igniting the self deprecating feelings, so that we can breathe into the feelings and watch them dissipate over time.

Phew! There's so much more but that should be enough to get you started. Does it make sense to you how that would make a difference?

First I want to thank you for reaching out. The work you do is so incredibly important! I know from working with my teens how much of an impact their teachers have on their day to day experiences of themselves, so it makes my heart happy to see you working to help them be more comfortable.

One of the most important things I can say about helping someone through perfectionism is that they need the goal to be broken down into small, manageable pieces. When I think of a child throwing away an entire worksheet, I think of someone who is looking at the larger goal of "complete this assignment" or even "do well in school so I feel good enough". We want to work to re-define the goal for them so that it is more achievable.

That might look like giving that particular child the assignment in segments. If it's a worksheet, maybe it would be helpful to use a blank sheet of paper to cover every question but one?

It also might be helpful to talk to the student about how their body feels when they are starting to get frustrated. It's really common to miss body cues about our feelings, and if we don't catch the feelings in time, which the body cues help us to do, that is when we see impulsive behavior.

An example of this for younger children might be to talk about how you feel when you are REALLY frustrated, and then talk about the more subtle signals that you're starting to get frustrated. That's when we actually want to intervene. If you can support the student in understanding what the signals are in their own body (or maybe even "scripts" or things that run repeatedly through their heads when they're upset) that can help them learn to do something else instead of throw the work away (read: act out impulsively).

The something else can be stand up and walk to the other side of the room. Or ask me if you can go to the water fountain. Or do 10 jumping jacks outside of the classroom to let out the "frustrated" and then come back in ten minutes.

Essentially you are giving them an alternative behavior that is empowering for them, and works better for you.

Hope that helps!

There is absolutely a connection! Nice catch! Magical thinking is considered a "cognitive distortion" or an error in thinking that can be questioned through cognitive behavioral therapy, but it is developmentally appropriate for children. It is a way for us to feel empowered, or like we have some control over our circumstances, which can then help us to feel calmer and safer.

In OCD, the magical thinking manifests as us identifying the (C)ompulsion as something that can help remedy the (O)bsession, when in reality they are usually not linked at all, if they are linked it's a very loose connection, and all we end up really doing is spending a lot of time and energy holding ourselves accountable for something that doesn't positively affect our lives, and beating ourselves up for not doing it "properly" or well enough. (There's the perfectionism again!)

Part of why this is so painful for people, is since we know that the compulsion is not actually connected to the obsession (can't fix anything) doing the compulsion actually just feeds the beast, so to speak. When you do it you have a short period of relief. Then the feeling comes back (it wasn't fixed, after all). When the feeling comes back we unconsciously determine that we didn't do it "enough" or "well enough" and decide (or feel compelled) to do it MORE and BETTER. This is how compulsions can start out as thoroughly washing our hands before dinner and end up as washing our hands 17 times in a row 5 times a day.

I hope that helps!