Perfectionism: When expectations always feel unattainable

Do you struggle with feeling proud of your accomplishments? Or finally reach your end goal just to start a new one? Perfectionism can cause a tough cycle of shame, guilt, and procrastination, causing you to feel like no matter how hard you try, it is never quite good enough. But where does it come from and how can we fix it?

Perfectionism can be the result of growing up in an environment where your successes were not celebrated, when your shortcomings or mistakes were criticized, where your ideas and dreams were not heard and encouraged. It can also show up if you felt you had to fight with your siblings for attention and love from your parents. Perfectionism develops as a protective mechanism; to survive through helping us to meet our needs of connection and belonging. Connection is a very important part of being human, so when this is threatened, our survival responses take over. In this case, our needs of connection and belonging become tied to the value we provide and the mistakes that we don’t make.

Perfectionism can also be very real for neurodivergent folks (speaking as one myself). This is because of the expectations that are imposed on neurodivergents to “just do better”, or “try harder.” Once you are forced into a box for too long, you eventually stop blaming the box for being too small and blame yourself for being too large. Its a tale as old as time- self blame gives us a sense of control and perfectionism becomes the coping response to being an imperfect being.

The way I work with perfectionism in therapy is with one of 2 ways: Internal Family Systems or Exposure work. With Internal Family Systems, we unpack the root cause of your perfectionism and help this part of you to feel safe enough to take a step back from having to protect you in this way. With Exposure work, we gently practice being imperfect and use distress tolerance skills to sit with emotions that arise; reprogramming the brain to learn to feel safe in the face of shame, disappointment, and insecurity. Perfectionism can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have too.