Perfectionism?

[XL]

Anyone else deal with horrible perfectionism growing up? I see this in self, siblings and cousins. You'd get a total rage for seemingly minor things (I saw one extended family member rage at another adult for 15 minutes for losing their keys once).

I actually had a teacher give me a book on perfectionism once, and my mother stormed into her classroom and literally threw the book in her face and disenrolled me from the class.

I'm starting to become very defensive about criticism of minute things. "Sounds like you're really critical of my project here. Good thing it's my project, and it's not that important."

[Kwamina]

Hi XL!

Perfectionism is something I struggle with too. My mother loved fault-finding and was always sending the message that I did something wrong. Here are some examples:

-If the curtains weren't closed even before it started turning dark outside, she'd start raging.

-If the bathroom floor was still a little wet, she'd start raging. No matter how hard I tried to dry the floor, it was never good enough.

- If I left butter on a knife in the kitchen and didn't clean it she'd start raging

- If I would hang clothes to dry, she’d totally rearrange them because her way was always better of course.

- No matter how well I did in school she would always criticize me with statements like ":)on't you learn anything in school" or "You don't have to think you know everything". She'd never compliment me for any good grades, she'd just look at the thing I got the lowest grade for and totally focus on that.

I could go on like this for a while but I think I've made my point clear. No matter what I did or how well I did it, it was never good enough in the eyes of my mother. I now realize that she didn't like to see me doing well because that made her feel insecure, she felt threatened so she tried to bring me down. But it was not just that she felt threatened, I could also clearly sense her pleasure in hurting and controlling me. The irony is that while she was telling me how bad I was at everything, the reality was that she was scr*wing her life up in many ways. She probably knew this too but because she's totally incapable of managing her life, she took it out on me instead. My uBPD sis is exactly the same, messing up her own life and taking it out on people with whom she thinks she can get away with everything.

[XL]

How do you deal with it? Here's what I do:

- remind myself no one really notices or cares what anyone does. (It sounds pessimistic, but gives me permission to leave the house in dirty clothes once in a while.)

- I try to set to-do lists that decide when something is "done enough".

- Realize unfinished things are useless compared to a 95% good, yet finished thing

- I try not to be perfectionistic towards others. I don't cut down other people's efforts. I also realize people make mistakes and try to help get them fixed without embarrassing the other person.

- I do a lot of painfully boring routines. The house gets vacuumed for the same duration on the same day of the week, and that's enough.

[Kwamina]

That are some very good ways of dealing with perfectionism. Your first point is really important, when I look at myself I was made very self-conscious from a young age and this had hindered me ever since. The moment I walked outside I always felt and actually believed that all eyes were turned on me. When someone was looking at me I immediately assumed they were reacting negatively to me, now I’ve come to realize that it’s probably all in my head. I had internalized all the negative remarks and was looking down on myself. Even if someone is actually reacting negatively to me, I now realize that they don’t determine my worth so it doesn’t really matter what they think. I still struggle with this, but I am handling it much better than before.

Deciding when something is "done enough" has also greatly helped me. Before I would be like I have to do all these things today and have to do them perfectly. This only made things much harder for me, set me up to fail and sometimes even lead me to do nothing at all. Now I’m more relaxed and look at things differently. Doing half of the things is at least better than doing nothing at all and by doing half today I at least have made it easier for me tomorrow

Another thing I know now is that before you start doing something, certain tasks often seem very hard or even impossible, especially when you wanna do everything perfectly. This can lead you to procrastinate and keep thinking about how difficult the tasks are and at the same time you’re feeling guilty because you haven’t started yet. Now I tell myself don’t think about how difficult things might be, just start and handle the difficulties as they arise. More often than not things turn out to be a lot easier to handle than I anticipated and because I immediately started and didn’t procrastinate, I actually have more time to deliver a good job and often have time left to do other things as well. And even when things turn out to be really difficult, again because I started immediately and didn’t procrastinate, the chance of me delivering a good job has increased considerably.

Perfectionism is strongly related to wanting to control the outcome. I’ve kinda let that go now and am focusing more on the process. I can’t control the outcome but I can control what I put into the process. I just do my very best and then no matter the outcome, I can be more at peace because I’ve done all I can do.

[XL]

I just finished a little project that some relatives cut down as being "wrong", yet it received several compliments from the general public. It was stupid though, I put off releasing it for a month after one negative remark.

Stuff like this reassures me that I shouldn't be listening to these people anymore.

[Babysteps]

I am a complete and utter perfectionist when it comes to the stuff I do. I didn't catch onto this until I had my second round of learning disabilities diagnosis my senior year. I also started realizing it my senior year because I would have close friends in classes, and they would tell me how I'm acting like a perfectionist. The school psychologist said that my perfectionism most likely came from me going undiagnosed with with my learning disabilities so long, which led me to either adapting myself or failing school. I adapted and ended up in advance classes, even though I was undiagnosed.

What I realize now is the other factors that contributed: my uBPDmom. Always dodging bullets with her. Plus, she would always pick out my flaws. It made me want to change myself for the better, and I did. I kept constantly changing my bad habits-which were not that bad at all-either to please my mom or to avoid her rages. Still, I was never good enough. I also realized that both my schools and my family thought I was lazy when I wasn't doing well. It is the only explanation since all the doctors my mom took me to when I was younger insisted that I was fine and had no learning disabilities. Truly, I was doing work beyond imaginable to the point where they can't prove my condition because you need to have display of struggle in order to be properly diagnosed.

This caused me to feel that I'm being lazy when I do not do a perfect job (with a lot of things). Over the years, I've gotten better on certain activities. I don't beat myself up if I do poor on an assignment, since that's in the past and I can only focus on the future. The problem is when I do the actual assignments, and I want to make it as perfect as possible, beyond the effort it should take to do well on it. It drives me crazy. I don't know where the limitations on what is trying too hard. I could be answering a question on a test and be adding too much information because I'm paranoid I'm not getting everything down the way it is.

[Clearmind]

XL, I only just responded to your other thread about Mom and your feelings of her crying. This thread and that thread may be related. Do you see how the two could be interrelated?

Anyone else deal with horrible perfectionism growing up? Absolutely!

As children, we didn’t understand the cause we just saw the behaviour and we felt responsible. Some of us were raged at for perceived imperfections. Imperfections are absolutely normal however they triggered our BPD parents….projection! We strive to be that little bit more perfect each time.

As adults our inner critic replays those childhood events over and over. The good thing is that you recognize its an area for you to work on.

That “I should be perfect” needs to be turned into “I would like to be perfect however I know it’s impossible to be like that every time”.

These faulty beliefs “I should be perfect” are instilled in our childhood – when we recognize it we need to work to turn it around. Remind yourself in this moment of the things you have done well and that you are proud of. This one event, of perceived failure does not define you as a person my friend! It is one event that has triggered a deep seated faulty belief.

Collect that data on your other accomplishments – it will in time negate that negative thought of you feeling you are not good enough.

[XL]

It's a little different. I feel like I need to be beyond reproach.

I know a wave of criticism will come. I know people will mock my efforts. The only way to deal with that is to make sure my final product is 150% beyond my own standard. It's defensive position, like I'm building a preemptive argument as to why my work is sound and their critique is just worthless crapping on efforts.

I actually had a lot of nasty academy teachers that didn't help with this. "You're a target, you need to be beyond reproach when you leave my studio, you need to be 150% better than your audience." Like those nasty cooking shows, or crappy singing show judges. I put up with too much of that right after I was reeling from breaking free of my mother.

I'm trying to get to a point of releasing stuff that's 90% good, and being like ":)on't buy it if you don't like it, I had fun making it."

[XL]

Um, I guess I don't have problems with self worth. I'm doing it as an arrogant final slam to inevitable critics.  My perfectionism has a touch of malice to it, not low self esteem.

I need to step back sometimes and remind myself I'm not that great, and all eyes aren't on me, and that the joy is in the process and not the final defense of my work.