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January 18 - January 29, 2025
Part of the urging to stamp out perfectionism in women arises because perfectionism is a powerful energy.
Like every kind of power (the power of wealth, words, beauty, love, etc.), perfectionism—if you don’t understand how to harness it correctly—will corrupt your life. Perfectionism makes an excellent servant and a terrible master; let’s also be honest about that. Can we just say it?
Lucky for you, the deepest, most powerful parts of who you are never abandon you. Whatever you did to
numb out or downplay or otherwise mute the powerful energy inside you that you didn’t know what to do with, I did it, too.
Perfectionists are intelligent people who understand that everything can’t work out perfectly all the time. What they sometimes have trouble with is understanding why they still feel so disappointed by imperfection in the face of that intellectual concession. What they sometimes wonder about is why they feel so compelled to endlessly strive. What they’re sometimes confused by is what they’re striving for in the first place. What they often question is why they can’t just enjoy relaxing “like a normal person.” What they want to know is who they are outside of what they accomplish.
We all sway in our readiness to step into our power—you’re allowed to sway, too. It’s okay to need more time or flatly refuse to grow.
What if your perfectionism exists to help you?
Classic perfectionists are highly reliable, consistent, and detail-oriented, and they add stability to their environment. Left unchecked, they struggle to adapt to spontaneity or a change in routine, and they can experience difficulty connecting meaningfully with others. Parisian perfectionists possess a live-wire understanding of the power of interpersonal connection and hold a strong capacity for empathy. Left unchecked, their desire to connect to others can metastasize into toxic people-pleasing.
Perfectionists are people who consistently notice the difference between an ideal and a reality, and who strive to maintain a high degree of personal accountability. This results in the perfectionist experiencing, more often than not, a compulsion to bridge the gulf between reality and an ideal themselves.
“I need something to be different about this moment before I can be satisfied.”
no one can hide their suffering better than the highly functioning person.
as reliable in their darkest hour as they are in their brightest; just because they can always show up, that doesn’t mean they’re invincible or that they feel strong on the inside.
it’s in beginning and returning to the endeavor while accepting that it can’t be superficially perfect. To
The problem for these perfectionists is that starting a process taints it—now that it’s real, it can no longer be perfect. If something is perfect to them, it exists only in past memory or future ideal.
perfectionists assume that if they had more energy or discipline, they’d be able to execute, which is not the case. Procrastinator perfectionists have plenty of discipline and aren’t lazy at all. What they don’t have is acceptance. Acceptance that now is the only time anyone ever starts anything, and that starting now means you’re taking something that’s perfect in your mind
and bringing it into the real world, where it is bound to change. Procrastinator perfectionists feel a sense of loss around starting that other types of perfectionists don’t encounter. Avoiding loss is perhaps the most natural emotional reflex there is, hence why the habit of hesitation is so powerful for this type.
It’s not mere talent that rises to the top, it’s persistence. While change does always involve loss, not changing involves a much deeper loss.
We need messy perfectionists in the world; they are the champions of possibility. They effortlessly push through the anxiety of a new beginning.
I remember thinking how difficult that must be, to have your heart flooded with pure optimism and then sink like a stone. Not just once but repeatedly.
Renowned psychologist Dr. Alfred Adler described this unhealthy relationship to perfectionism: “All present life appears to him only a preparation.”[1]
Joy holds tremendous power. It is impossible to live joyfully without your joy benefiting the world.
Perfectionism is experienced in a visceral way, as a deep and integral part of selfhood, as opposed to something external that you encounter. Perfectionists never stop noticing the gulf between reality and the ideal, and they never stop longing to actively bridge the gap.
Illness models are also based on atomism, which supports the idea that the source of what’s wrong can be traced down to one thing. Wellness models, conversely, are based on holism (the opposite of atomism). Holistic care is the idea that each aspect of self (your social environment, work life, genetic predispositions, etc.) is interconnected within an indivisible whole. When you approach your health holistically, you’re not just trying to find one wrong thing and fix it, you’re working to strengthen each part of yourself so that you can become healthier overall.
You need boundaries around any power, perfectionism included. Maladaptive perfectionism will ruin your entire life, then have the nerve to charge you a destruction fee, with interest.
Where eradication fails, integration succeeds.
As long as you’re playing small, that energy rattles inside you and makes you ache. Stop cursing the ache and become curious about why it’s there. If you’re a perfectionist, you want more of something. What is it? Why do you want that? How do you imagine getting what you want will make you feel? Perfectionism invites a deep, unending exploration of who you are and what you most desire from this life.
Something considered perfect is that which is completely done; it exists in a state of completion, wholeness, perfection. When we describe something as perfect, what we’re saying is that there’s nothing we could add to it to make it better. Nothing more is needed because you can’t add to something that’s already whole.
You’re not flawless—none of us are—but you are whole, you are complete, and you are perfect. We so effortlessly acknowledge perfection in children, nature, our best friends—but we deny perfection in ourselves as grown women because what would happen if we didn’t need to add anything to ourselves?
That we don’t have to fix anything to be
What if all you need is enough openness to see yourself from a different perspective? What if you don’t need steady correction, you just need steady connection? These are not rhetorical questions.
Healthy means safe; healthy means empowered; healthy means reflective of your authentic self. Healthy does not mean happy all the time.
Perfectionists are bored by hedonism. Perfectionists love working. Perfectionists love a challenge. Perfectionists want to contribute, create, and grow.
Boldness, authenticity, an endless drive you don’t even have to try to cultivate, the confidence to fail, learn, and grow as you saturate your life with more and more meaning and improve yourself and the world around you—that’s perfectionism.
The stakes are higher when you say something out loud because the truth becomes clearer to you. We also don’t speak what we know out loud because while acknowledging the truth can be liberating, it’s almost always painful first.
Do whatever you like—work out, read, join a club, stare out the window, invest in yourself and your career . . . do absolutely anything you want! Just be ready when everyone wakes up.
We hand women the boulder of balance, remind them that it’s impossibly heavy and that’s what makes them superheroes, and then parrot-preach self-care at them: “Balance and self-care, balance and self-care, balance and self-care.” Yes, thank you. I heard you.
In the words of iconic feminist writer Dr. Phyllis Chesler, “How bizarre, how familiar.”
There’s a reason you’ve never once heard a man refer to himself as a “recovering perfectionist”—because men aren’t taught that they need to “recover” from their perfectionism. Men are taught to integrate their perfectionistic strivings,
the word perfectionist has quietly risen to regulate ambition and power. As with all implicit messaging, we not only unconsciously hear it, we unconsciously internalize it.
You are allowed to want more and get it. Wanting more is healthy. Your desires are real and important, and they do not have to make sense to anyone other than you.
Because balance doesn’t exist, you’re either operating under or over your energetic equilibrium. In other words, you’re in the realm of being either underwhelmed or overwhelmed. Perfectionists reliably choose to operate over their equilibriums. For perfectionists, the risk of being underwhelmed is much scarier than the risk of being overwhelmed.
You don’t achieve liberation through control; you achieve liberation through acceptance.
When people say, “You’re enough,” they’re referring to your self-worth. They’re saying, “Hey you, you don’t need to do anything to deserve immediate access to love, freedom, dignity, joy, and connection. The ‘admission fee’ is paid for by your presence. You simply being here is enough.” Adaptive perfectionists are connected to their self-worth. When you know you’re already whole and complete (i.e., perfect) as you are, you’re operating from a mindset of abundance. You already have what you need, and you feel secure. For adaptive perfectionists, striving towards an ideal is a celebratory
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sentence: You don’t earn your way to joy. Joy is a birthright. So is love, freedom, dignity, and connection. As the inimitable James Baldwin said, “Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is wear it.”
For Parisian perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionism looks like people-pleasing at the expense of pleasing oneself.
achieving goals doesn’t just fail to bring some perfectionists satisfaction; often, achieving their goals makes perfectionists feel worse.[12] Why in the world would anyone feel worse after getting exactly what they want, even after exceeding their goals? Because the experience of winning forces you to realize that there are no substitutes for self-worth or presence. Not one.
Connection is the source of all growth and healing. Connection is a need. In the absence of healthy connections, we become dysfunctional.
You don’t heal yourself by hurting yourself.
Taking accountability involves openly recognizing how your behavior impacted everyone involved, acknowledging that you could’ve made a different choice, apologizing to those who were harmed, doing what you can to fix the problem, making a pledge to improve, and creating a plan to uphold that improvement.[4]
First of all, it’s not difficult to create pain and make yourself feel like shit, so you’re not proving anything. Do you know how easily I could derail my entire life? I could do it in nine minutes flat with my eyes shut and no Wi-Fi.
