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February 7 - February 18, 2025
Operating under an illness model of care doesn’t just carry powerful implications for the way we conceptualize perfectionism, it impacts the way we conceptualize every aspect of mental health.
Before we seek to understand, we seek to diagnose.
Perfectionism is a phenomenon, not a disorder.
The larger culture is more focused on dysfunctional iterations of perfectionism because the mental health industry is built on an illness model; we’re more focused on dysfunctional iterations of every psychological experience.
When you consciously or unconsciously harness the power of perfectionism to help you and heal you, that’s adaptive perfectionism. When you consciously or unconsciously harness the power of perfectionism to limit you and hurt you, that’s maladaptive perfectionism.
You need boundaries around any power, perfectionism included.
Where there are risk factors there are also protective factors:
Mitigating the risk factors and emphasizing the protective factors from an informed, emotionally aware place is what managing any aspect of your mental health looks like.
As a perfectionist, you have a lot of energy inside of you, more than you might know what to do with.
We feel righteously entitled to our defensive posture, so much so that we immediately feel comfortable rejecting the categorization out loud and in the moment to anyone who dares label us that way.
Meanwhile, we rarely defend ourselves out loud and in the moment (or even quietly, later) when someone needles us with a criticism or judgmental remark.
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.
You don’t earn your wholeness; you’re born with it.
On the day you were born, you were worthy of all the love, joy, freedom, connection, and dignity in the world simply because you were in it. All of that is still true.
The opposite of radical, these are basic starting points: you’re already whole. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not a tumbling barrel of weaknesses. You possess rich strengths, and you can use those strengths to lead your life in any direction you choose.
Healthy means safe; healthy means empowered; healthy means reflective of your authentic self. Healthy does not mean happy all the time.
Hedonic approaches to well-being seek to increase happiness and avoid pain, whereas eudaemonic approaches to well-being seek to increase meaningfulness.[17]
Perfectionists love working. Perfectionists love a challenge. Perfectionists want to contribute, create, and grow.
A lot of perfectionists think they’re driven by success when what they’re really driven by is the avoidance of failure—two very different animals.
When you’re driven to avoid failure, that’s called prevention-oriented motivation.
adaptive perfectionists play to win; they’re more likely to enjoy the process because their efforts are fueled by optimism and reward seeking.
Maladaptive perfectionists, on the other hand, play to not lose; they’re more likely to experience stress and worry because their efforts are fueled by fear.[21]
Maladaptive perfectionists are driven to avoid failure because maladaptive perfectionism is driven by shame avoidance.
When your entire goal is to win for the purpose of avoiding shame and then you win, it doesn’t feel good—it just feels like you weren’t critically injured.
You don’t heal by changing who you are; you heal by learning how to be yourself in the world.
people say they don’t know why they can’t sleep, what they usually mean is they’re not ready to explore the possible reasons out loud. Saying words out loud changes something.
We also don’t speak what we know out loud because while acknowledging the truth can be liberating, it’s almost always painful first.
Being “balanced” has become synonymous with being “healthy.” If you’re not a balanced woman, you’re not a healthy woman.
The more tasks you’re able to successfully balance, the more bandwidth you create to, drumroll . . . balance more tasks.
Women, as we’re rather aware of at this point, are conditioned to be chronically apologetic. After a 2010 study confirmed that women apologize more than men do, we began to notice the pattern of women cushioning requests and general statements with the word “sorry”: Sorry, can you
A woman who seeks power is “power hungry,” a man who seeks power is an “alpha male.” These narratives are boring and raggedy.
Taking on slightly more than she could handle had become a philosophy for her.
Perfectionists reliably choose to operate over their equilibriums. For perfectionists, the risk of being underwhelmed is much scarier than the risk of being overwhelmed.
Even when perfectionists achieve deep satisfaction upon the completion of a goal, they always notice areas that could technically be improved upon.
Adaptive perfectionists are connected to their self-worth.
Maladaptive perfectionists do not feel whole or secure. They feel broken, and they operate from a mindset of deficit. Their striving is driven by the need to compensate, to fix what’s broken, and to try to offer substitutes for or try to hide what’s missing.
When you’re disconnected from your self-worth, you think your ability to feel joy is won through goal attainment.
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.”
Parisian perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionism looks like people-pleasing at the expense of pleasing oneself.
When your self-worth isn’t on the line, it becomes easier to take risks.
When you’re disconnected from your self-worth, you’re fixated on control.
You need something to happen in a certain way to feel relief.
If you want to be a leader in your field, in your family, in your community, in the world, you need to learn how to be powerful, not controlling.
Control encourages restriction; power encourages freedom. Control is petty; power is generous. Control micromanages; power inspires. Control manipulates; power influences.
When you’re present, your life now is not dictated by that of your past; it’s dictated by possibility.
Being present invites relief from living in a world where what’s missing and wrong relentlessly eclipses what’s good and already there.
When people say that everything you need is already inside you, they’re talking about the power of your singular presence.
Enacting power looks like putting boundaries around the people and things that make it harder for you to believe in your worth and stay present.
past is over, it may as well have been eight thousand years ago, and the future is not something you can control—choose presence.
