How to deal with crippling perfectionism?

January 9, 2020 12:42 PM

I have always struggled with being hard on myself and holding my work to a high standard. Instead of celebrating upon finishing a gruelling project, I mostly feel sick to my stomach since I just know there are glaring, embarrassing mistakes which will come to light. Now that I am further along in my career, this only seems to get worse and become more crippling. I need some advice on how to deal.

It seems every time I finish some work and submit it, I don't feel any relief but instead I feel a wave of crushing anxiety come over me as I lose the ability to rectify any more errors. And I seem to have a pattern of finding gaping errors in work I have done just as I can no longer do anything about them. I already work so hard to prevent this possibility and it happens every time resulting in me feeling totally incompetent, sad and frustrated. I know, to err is human... but, those of you who operate similar to me mentally, what do you do to move on with your life instead of dwelling on your own incompetency? I know, deep down, life goes on and it is no big deal, almost certainly no one will even find the sorts of errors I am talking about.

posted by csjc to Grab Bag (12 answers total)

Hey I’m in therapy for this! And of course, “go to therapy” is not helpful when you’re asking here for more specific ideas so I won’t do that to you. Instead, I’ll share a few things I’ve worked on and learned while in therapy:

First, can you interrupt the dwelling with a big “STOP!” in your mind, or say it out loud if you can? It’s helpful with practice to recognize when you’re doing this and mark it when it does. Even if you can’t stop, can you decide to go ahead and freak out about your own imagined incompetence for a set time only, like 5 minutes?

Whose voice is it you’re hearing when you panic? I hear my dad’s, telling me that I never finish anything correctly. Realizing this helped me ask: was he really helping me by telling me this? Was he actually infallible? Of course not — his parenting sucked, obviously! Who has taught you these patterns and what are you trying to get by being perfect?

That leads me to radical acceptance: you can’t be perfect. It sucks. You’ve gotta accept that, until you do, nothing can change. I just picked up Radical Compassion by Tara Branch, I haven’t started yet but a friend who suffers in a similar way has and says it’s been really helpful.

These errors: you say no one will likely notice them, so I’m curious what are you worried someone would think of you if they did? What would you think of someone if you discovered similar errors? Are you as judgmental about others as you are to yourself? I sure am, I expect perfection from people, too, so I’ve worked on interrupting that judgement when it happens and asking why I find minor errors to be the most important thing about someone. Who died because of these errors? Who was injured? The answer is basically always no one.

These are inconsequential errors regardless of who makes them. Am I focusing on them because I’m too scared to focus on what does matter? Am I scared that my overall life is a waste? What can I do to feel more useful? Volunteering has helped me a lot. It turns out not getting paid has helped me stop feeling as though my only worth is monetary. I also reluctantly have taken up hobbies that I’m bad at, like physical exercise, watercolor and knitting where the results of me not being good at are, again..nonexistent.

It also helps to start keeping track of everything you do right. It sounds cheesy. It’s uncomfortable. But your mind is going overboard categorizing your fuck-ups and you’re likely not recognizing what you do right, and it takes practice to start doing it. You might find, as I have, that cutting out social media is wildly helpful for quieting the comparison part of your brain to make this easier.

Hopefully some of my process and my questioning helps you!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 1:01 PM on January 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

When you hand work in and someone thanks you or compliments you, try to let the first words out of your mouth start with “Thank you …”. Yes, I know your inner critic's already orated hours of damaging words to you internally, but if someone has thanked you, take time to listen and respond to the real person. Other people can't hear your inner critic (yay!) and they don't want to, either. It's kinder to everyone to lead off with thanks.

Secondly, do art. Learn something (like calligraphy or playing banjo) that even if you devoted your whole life to it, you'd never completely master it. The first few months will be crap: but it's okay to be crap as a beginner. After a little while, show people what you do: preferably not in a big display, but maybe just with a real person nearby. They will find something to respond to in what you're doing. And you'll get better, and more of the response will be positive. Your inner critic will seem less and less of an authority, less powerful with time.

Over the last couple of years I've been quietly coaching a young relative who suffers from perfection issues. Their first attempts at calligraphy were - we both now agree - crap, but they can see where they've come from and take more satisfaction in what they do now. I'm no great shakes at lettering, and my young relative is way better than I'll ever be — but I'm glad I was able to start them on a process that they enjoy. They've also found a place where their inner critic can't boss them around so much.
posted by scruss at 2:25 PM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

I seem to have a pattern of finding gaping errors in work I have done just as I can no longer do anything about them

Hmm, if you actually are consistently finding genuine "gaping errors" (by which I mean actual errors, as opposed to things you simply wish you could tweak or improve) in your work after you turn it in, I can see why you would be anxious. The anxiety is not irrational in this case.

A couple of suggestions to help minimize errors:

Wait a day, if possible, between finishing your work and handing it in. Then you will be able to proofread with fresher eyes.

Ask a trusted coworker or friend to proofread for you.

If possible, say to the person to whom you are delivering the work "here is my latest draft, please let me know if any changes are needed." I have never had a boss react poorly to this, but I suppose whether or not this is acceptable practice may vary.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:44 PM on January 9, 2020

Repeated mantra: "It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better."

I made an off-handed-to-me comment in coversation and in an almost quiet, sad voice a close friend of mine said to me, "Wow you really are hard on yourself, aren't you?"

For a brief moment I was speechless. Stunned that I had heard the words before countless times and brushed it off but for some reason they resonated with me and I felt really sad for myself. As they say, make sure the voice in your head is nice to you. If you wouldn't talk to a dear friend or loved one that way, why do you do it to yourself?

Wherever your particular brand of perfectionism is coming from, know that who you are and what you do is good enough. You are good enough.
posted by VyanSelei at 2:56 PM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

Something that helped me with my crippling perfectionism is a reframe. Instead of striving for perfection (which is impossible) I began striving for excellence. It doesn’t get much better than excellent, and it’s very attainable through hard work and diligence. So instead of striving for perfection, start striving for excellence.
posted by katypickle at 4:23 PM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am like this. I had a boss who watched me agonize, and he said, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." And sometimes: "the perfect is the enemy of the done." Our office made mistakes sometimes, and I would panic, but you know, 99% of the time, it was absolutely fine, even if it was my fault. People understand, solutions are created, things can be fixed. If I didn't realize that, I honestly would never be able to work.

I also sometimes realize that my perfectionism is really arrogance. I think I should be able to do everything perfectly, but of course I genuinely understand when other people make mistakes. Do I think I'm better than them? Sometimes I worry I do -- that's the logical explanation. Thinking that I'm not better than any other human has been freeing.
posted by caoimhe at 5:21 PM on January 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

I struggle with this too.

What sometimes helps me is puttting myself in other people's shoes. When I discover an error in something I've done, I ask myself, "What would I think if someone else had made this error in their work?"

Usually the answer is that I wouldn't think it was a big deal. Which reassures me that other people probably don't think my mistake is a big deal.

On the other hand, if I would think the mistake was serious if someone else made it, well, then, clearly I need some kind of system to catch these kinds of mistakes, and I channel my embarrassment into coming up with a plan to prevent a similar mistake in the future.
posted by mekily at 5:45 PM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

It helps me to flip my perspective to the end-user and how my work will be used by them. I aim to care as much, but *not more*, than the people who benefit from my work.

For example, I deliver monthly reports which are mostly necessary for bureaucratic/general oversight reasons and the people who receive them either file them away without reading or else give them just a cursory glance. I’ve professionalised the format of these reports, reflected on what information *needs* to be there, and I always proofread them. These reports could be even better, but it doesn’t benefit anyone to make them better. In fact, I’m not sure anyone would notice. So any effort beyond that is a bad use of my time. If people have questions, they can reach out but this has happened once in 12 months. This is as much as this particular product matters to others, so I draw the line there.
posted by mkdirusername at 6:58 PM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

One question I keep in mind is, is it better than nothing? We hire people to do work because the work needs to be done - the forecast needs to be estimated, the inventory needs to be counted, the tool needs to be programmed, the brochures need to get written. Did you count the inventory *so badly* that it would be better if they had just put big __ marks in that space? Are your brochures all going to have to be scrapped, files and copy thrown out? Did the program you wrote accomplish some piece of the goal that makes it an improvement over what was there before? You can work on raising your bar over "better than nothing" but that's the flat out alternative - so even if you only solved 60% of the problem, that's a 60% solution that is entirely due to your work.
posted by Lady Li at 7:18 PM on January 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Brene Brown has written some good stuff on shame and perfectionism.
posted by Grandysaur at 10:03 PM on January 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's a variant of "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" but one thing my old boss used to say when I wasn't happy with how I'd done a piece of work was "who else would have done it better?" but not in the abstract "does there exist a person that could have done it better" but "given the constraints on the team we have, who could have done a better job than you?". When I thought about it that way, I usually realised that if I hadn't been available, it would have been done worse than I did it or not at all.
posted by crocomancer at 2:23 AM on January 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Something that's helped me with this is setting myself up with somewhat regular, VERY low-stakes opportunities to fail or make mistakes. Trying new, one-off things is a good way to do this: making a food I've never made before (with no external pressure of serving it to friends or anything), going to a new place (even just a new-to-me cafe or restaurant or library etc), attending a drop-in session of a new fitness class, etc. The peanut butter fudge I made that one time came out terribly and I learned that tai-chi is QUITE challenging for me but it doesn't matter because there are no stakes! Nobody else was expecting to try the fudge and nobody at tai-chi knew me and I never had to go back! I think of this as exposure therapy and - along with actual therapy and meds - it's helped attenuate my perfectionist tendencies.
posted by fiddler at 11:50 AM on January 10, 2020 [3 favorites]