Paralyzing Perfectionism – Part 1

Looking at me, my work, and my home you'd laugh until your sides hurt at the thought that I was a perfectionist. Locust Boy raised an eyebrow at my statement, "I am a perfectionist." According to him, and most everyone a perfectionist stays neat in appearance, is very well organized, the house is spotless, they excel at work and in school, and has things done well before they need to be. These people, in my world, are not perfectionists...they are just high achievers and are quite successful. Yes, they may have some perfectionist traits but they are not limited in any way shape or form by their perfect ideals.

Take this article for instance. I'm writing it two days after it's supposed to be published. Why? Well, I wanted it perfect. This is the third completely new version. My first attempt I asked people to fill out a questionnaire about perfectionism, send it to me, and I'd write on a broad scope of how others and myself cope with perfectionism. You see, I didn't think my ideas on how perfectionists were, well, perfect. My computer crashed twice, losing all the emails and research I had conducted. So if you're reading this article expecting to see your questionnaire answers, I'm sorry.

The second version I wrote at 2 am in the abyss of depression. I gave examples of how I failed at everything I ever tried and in the end it boils down to perfectionism is caused by a severe lack of self-confidence. That is true, but it's not the whole story.

Yesterday I checked out Never Good Enough Freeing Yourself from the Chains of Perfectionism by Monica Ramirez Basco, Ph.D. Perhaps if I had an outsiders view of perfectionism I'd be able to write about it. I'm too close to the subject to do it justice. Turns out I'm closer than I thought.

Basco's cure for perfectionism lies in Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, which is what this whole Recovery through Spirituality topic is based upon. Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) basically works in staying conscious of your thoughts and changing them before they can cause harm. I know this is an over simplified explanation. If you catch yourself, you can heal yourself. And that's what recovery is all about.

And what self-help book worth reading doesn't come with a self-assessment quiz? This one does. It finds out your degree of perfectionism, what areas your perfectionism comes into play and if you're an Inwardly Focused Perfectionist (IFP) - you beat yourself up for "failing", you hold yourself to higher standards or an Externally Focused Perfectionist (EFP) - you hold others to standards of perfectionism, and rather do the work yourself because you know it'll get done right the first time. According to the book, if you score "higher than 91 suggest a level of perfectionism that could cause you serious problems." I scored a 102 out of 120. My IFP score is 39, and my EFP score is 36. Here's a list of the areas perfectionism is broken down into with my scores; the max score being 12 in any category.

Mistakes are to be avoided: 12 Confidence is low: 12 Self doubt: 12 Low trust of others: 12 General: 12 Rules and Structure: 10 Expectations are high: 10 Organization and neatness in the environment: 9 Details: 7 Appearance: 3

Now, let me go off onto a tangent. I never knew I had a perfectionist problem until I subscribed and read Marla Cilley, aka, The FLYLady. I just thought I was lazy, and a natural slob. Growing up, my mom never taught me how to clean house, cook, sew, knit, or much of anything else. As a grownup my house was a disaster, I didn't know one end of the knife from another, and I didn't know what ice cube trays were for. I had to teach myself how to cook, clean, sew and knit. Now, I'm a great cook and baker, cleaning I'm getting there, I'm still working on the sewing and I can knit pretty well. But keeping a clean house was one of those things my first husband and I couldn't manage. There were underlying issues with that too that have nothing to do with perfectionism. Suffice to say when I discovered FLYLady, read her essay's on perfectionism, I knew I was no longer alone, I had hope, and yes there was something wrong with me. I started her system telling my first husband, "House work done incorrectly still blesses the home." He hated FLYLady, that quote, and any attempt I made to make a garbage dump into a home. You see, a person that is crippled by perfectionism won't even start a project until they know that they can get it done all at once, it'll be perfect at the end of it, and if they're anything like me, avoid mistakes and criticism at all costs. My first husband bought me a tee-shirt he thought was funny and that embodied me. Well it did describe me but it wasn't funny. "Do nothing. Avoid criticism." I found this to be one of the most hurtful things he ever did.

I'm still following FLYLady, trying everyday to be better than the next, and my new husband hasn't really embraced FLYLady, but he is proud of me that I'm at least trying and tells me everyday I've made a wonderful home for him and Locust Boy.

But the question remains, are perfectionists born or bred? A little of both. If you hold any casual stock into astrology, my chart shows I have a natural tendency to please others, a strong desire to succeed, and even a hint of perfectionism. My mom took these natural traits (although she knew nothing of astrology) and exploited them, eventually turning me into the perfectionist that I am today.

My mom was a classic EFP; the kids, the animals and the house had to be absolutely perfect. You never saw any of her mistakes, and she had no regard to how much money she spent in order to be perfect. If I made a mistake, God help me. Even if I did do something perfect, say get a 100 percent on a test, that wasn't good enough; I could have scored higher. I didn't know how to score higher than 100 percent, especially if no extra credit was offered. I begged her to teach me how to knit when I was in my mid-teens. She waited until my first mistake and ripped the knitting from my hands forbidding from ever touching yarn and needles again. Same with sewing. Same with cooking. Nothing I did was good enough. Even the physical act of growing wasn't perfect - I was too tall, too big, and I started my womanly development sooner than most girls. She tried to get doctors to give me hormones to stop my growing. They, thankfully, refused.

Then enter my first husband. In his world, if I didn't do things just like him, I was wrong and never good enough. If he had no knowledge of the task I was doing, say Tole painting, it didn't matter; according to him I was doing it wrong and only he knew the right way.

My mom passed on and I left my first husband. You'd think I'd be free of perfectionism. Wrong. Those two tapes are so ingrained in my mental computer that my perfectionism is almost debilitating. It's through CBT, a drive to return to a natural, high achiever state without the procrastination, without the anger, and without the guilt if I fail.

I'm going to read the book Never Good Enough Freeing Yourself from the Chains of Perfectionism and use the tools and techniques in it to discover if I can really break these chains. Part 2 of this article will be my results. If you want to read up on my day-to-day progress with the book and FLYLady's system, please visit my blog. If you want to visit later, here's the url: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Kass...