That’s because you didn’t understand it as a power and a gift, you didn’t respect it, you tried to deny it, and you reduced it to a proclivity for tidiness and punctuality, though real perfectionism has little to do with either. The more you pushed your perfectionism away, the harder it pushed back. You couldn’t get rid of your perfectionism if you tried (and try you did) because it’s a fundamental component of who you are.
