Perfectionism Rehab: Dispatches From a Detoxing Perfectionist
“It’s really fucking hard to tolerate
uncertainty, disruption, and change in all aspects of one’s life at once when
you don’t even know who you are and who you are supposed to be. And when SO much
is going on, it’s too big to fear. Fear is specific. It is outward in the fact
of a threat. When you fear something you have the opportunity to move away from
it. Anxiety is different. With anxiety, you don’t know what the fuck to do,
because it’s all internal. There is no specific threat.”
—Faith G. Harper, This is Your Brain on Anxiety: What Happens and What Helps
A few months ago, I read Rosie O’Donnell’s 2007 memoir Celebrity Detox, which peaked my interest after finishing Ladies Who Punch—an inside look of the daytime talk show The View. Celebrity Detox was published a few months after the end of Rosie’s infamously troubled one-season run as the moderator of The View and discusses how, after the end of her own daytime talk show in 2002, she began a four-year break from the spotlight and celebrity life before joining The View in 2006. She explains how she came to view fame as a drug—one that not only did she believe would solve all of her problems, but one that O’Donnell became highly addicted to. She laments that it was her own difficulty with returning to the spotlight, therefore her addiction, that led to problems backstage on The View, because she could not bring herself to be a part of something and not make it the best it can be (in other words, control freaks can’t just stop being control freaks). She writes about how when Barbara Walters asked her to join The View, she was willing to do anything Barbara asked her to because she saw her as a mother figure whom she needed to please. She writes about how she agreed to join the show without knowing whether or not she could return to fame. Rosie’s plight of being a control freak by nature who became addicted to her creation resonated with me and it got me thinking—if fame can be thought of like a drug, can perfectionism be thought of like a drug?
I wonder if perfectionism should have a rehab, if there should be such thing as Perfectionists Anonymous (PA). I think there should be. I’ll start. Hi, my name is Jeffrey and I’m obsessed with being perfect and I’m obsessed with getting it right. It took me a very long time to figure out that my tendency to want everything to be perfect was in fact a compulsion and a genuine issue that had begun to affect every aspect of my life. And when I finally felt strong enough to ask myself why that was, this was what I could come up with: since I was so scared of uncertainty and the resulting anxiety that caused me, my solution was to make everything in my life perfect. My grades? Perfect. My appearance? Perfect. My hair? Perfect. My sleep schedule? Perfect. Every single thing in my entire life at any given moment? PERFECT. Everything had to be perfect, or I couldn’t sleep at night. Everything had to be perfect, because otherwise I’m not worth it. Everything had to be perfect, because if it’s not, who am I? That’s when I realized that being a perfectionist was not just a preference I started to lean into as I got older—I’ve been like this since I was a child.
I’ve learned through therapy and research that kids who grow up not fitting in often become anxious adults who are preoccupied with pleasing people (think Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed). At the same time, I believe that being an introvert also contributes to this idea. Introverts like myself are also often highly sensitive people. Sensitive people, therefore, will be vulnerable and susceptible to other people’s judgment. I know now that the adults in my life were just trying their best when I was younger to “bring me out of my shell” and trying to teach me about all that life has to offer. I just think that a lot of them never realized that even the phrase “all that life has to offer” still makes me anxious. I’m an introvert, dammit! I’m not interested in the outside world; it scares me. I like books and movies and music and other solitary activities that involve living in someone else’s head or imagination, since I often spend most of my time in my own head or imagination. But I’ve also learned that the amount of time I spent refusing to grow up and the amount of time I spent inside my own head—especially once my headspace became less than pleasant—was to my own detriment, and that’s when I finally realized what adults meant by “bringing me out of my shell.” I just had to get there myself.
However, I didn’t always have this enlightened outlook. It’s very recent. Before now, my automatic response to someone else’s judgment or advice—especially when it was that of an authority figure or an adult whose judgment I generally trusted—was to internalize the feeling that who I am in this moment is not enough. Being introverted and quiet is all good and dandy but it won’t help get you a job (not true, by the way)? Well, I am introverted and quiet, and you’re saying that it would be better if I wasn’t like that so opportunities don’t pass me by? Well then, I’m not enough. Why are you staying home by yourself on Saturday night instead of going out with friends? It didn’t matter that this happens to be my preference. Guess it looks like I am, once again, not enough. It’s important to note that, sometimes, these judgments didn’t necessarily always come from the mouths of others. They came from my own voices in my head that had been created by the fact that I’ve never really fit in anywhere, and that created a great deal of anxiety. But most importantly, as these voices started to get louder and louder as I got older, my solution was to be perfect. All the time. If I was perfect, nobody would ask questions I didn’t want to answer. If I was perfect, nobody would judge me. If I was perfect, I wouldn’t judge me and I would finally feel comfortable with myself. But that never happened. It was a colossal waste of time.
It’s also important to note that being perfect didn’t feel like an unnatural or unhealthy response to stress for me, because for as long as I can remember, it was pretty much always my solution to stress or anxiety (the difference was, however, periods of stress and anxiety weren’t as intense or frequent when I was younger). I think it’s just that my internal response to stress and anxiety, as an anal-retentive control freak, was to be perfect because I loved the feeling of satisfaction that being perfect brought me. Hell, I still love that feeling. Being perfect and making everything perfect gives me such a rush, and always has. Picture when Monica Geller said she got an erection at the thought of filing, color-coding, and then using her shredder—same exact thing, just more serious and a tad more unhealthy. So because I loved and lived for the sense of satisfaction that being perfect brought me, I think it became my default setting for fighting off anxiety and uncertainty. I just hadn’t yet learned that no matter how hard I tried, every aspect of life will never be perfect, or that no matter how hard I tried, it won’t change the fact that life in itself is uncertain. So as I got more anxious, the harder I tried to make sure everything was perfect. And, as you can probably predict, that didn’t end well.
But trying to be perfect wasn’t just a result of the so-called rush of satisfaction I would get from it. As I mentioned, being perfect also took up a large portion of my self-worth. When I was younger, there were specific periods of time where I didn’t have a lot of friends at school. Because kids who eat lunch alone or who are just known for not having any friends are generally looked down upon and ostracized, I once again did not feel like enough. But I very quickly learned that there was a way to make up for not feeling like enough socially—by being perfect in every other aspect of life. And since I lived for the rush of satisfaction I would get from being perfect, I very soon started to live for the rush of satisfaction I would get in the form of praise from an authority figure. That way, it didn’t matter in the eyes of the teacher if I “wasn’t enough” in terms of having friends and being popular, because they knew I was a perfect student (which I totally wasn’t, just so you know). Not fitting in socially as a teenager created an intense need to prove my worth and validity some other way, and since I was already grappling with not feeling like enough, my default reaction to that stress and anxiety was to be perfect. To be worthy of the oxygen I breathe.
In college, I had a friend who was also obsessed with perfection (a friend who, looking back, was quite a toxic friend). She put so much effort into her schoolwork—she would always strive for one-hundred percent, no matter what the assignment, and actively told people that she believed anything below a ninety was a bad grade. I used to always raise an eyebrow at how she made getting nineties on every assignment look flawlessly easy, because as much as I was deeply struggling with my own issues in this area, I still knew deep down that no one is flawless and no one can get nineties on every assignment without a great deal of time and effort. One time, I legitimately had to talk her off a ledge because a particular teacher whom everyone disliked gave her a seventy-five on an essay. Eventually I lost my patience and told her to snap out of it—as much as I too was obsessed with perfection, I’ve always been able to accept the grade that I’ve been given, one way or another. She could not. She reacted angrily and told me, “You don’t understand. School is all I have.” But she was wrong. That was something I very much understood and that’s the way I felt, especially in college. I too believed that school was all I had. School and being a student made up the entirety of my self-worth, because the thought of what was to come after school and being a student was so uncertain to me that I did literally anything to avoid confronting it. Evidently, my solution to that stress and anxiety was—once again—to be perfect. Because if it’s not perfect, what’s the point? Why bother? Who am I? What else do I have? When I did eventually start to realize that there’s no way to be perfect in everything, that life is imperfect and uncertain, I believe that the come-down from the high I had sustained on the drug that is perfectionism was what led me into my period of depression.
As I started to become an adult, however, I began to realize that the praise I craved and thrived on from authority figures in school is not something that I was going to continue to find in adulthood. And if I did find it in adulthood, it wasn’t the kind of praise that would make all the work I’ve done and all the time spent trying to be perfect feel worth it. And that’s when I realized that I have to make myself feel worth it. I have to learn to have faith in myself and be a better advocate for myself, and once I learned how to do that, maybe any praise I would receive from anyone for any reason would actually feel genuine for me. I had to learn how to stop measuring my self-worth on the opinions of others. I also had to learn to create healthy boundaries with people so that I wouldn’t automatically overextend myself for the sake of feeling worthy. Since my default reaction to stress and anxiety had become being perfect, I would throw personal reservations out the window if it meant being seen as perfect in the eyes of someone else. Now I realize that not only is trying to be perfect exhausting, but having no boundaries with people when it comes to favors, advice, or other commitments becomes even more exhausting. I keep the meme below on hand to remind me to put myself first—because if history is any indication, I definitely haven’t put myself first.
—Faith G. Harper, This is Your Brain on Anxiety: What Happens and What Helps
A few months ago, I read Rosie O’Donnell’s 2007 memoir Celebrity Detox, which peaked my interest after finishing Ladies Who Punch—an inside look of the daytime talk show The View. Celebrity Detox was published a few months after the end of Rosie’s infamously troubled one-season run as the moderator of The View and discusses how, after the end of her own daytime talk show in 2002, she began a four-year break from the spotlight and celebrity life before joining The View in 2006. She explains how she came to view fame as a drug—one that not only did she believe would solve all of her problems, but one that O’Donnell became highly addicted to. She laments that it was her own difficulty with returning to the spotlight, therefore her addiction, that led to problems backstage on The View, because she could not bring herself to be a part of something and not make it the best it can be (in other words, control freaks can’t just stop being control freaks). She writes about how when Barbara Walters asked her to join The View, she was willing to do anything Barbara asked her to because she saw her as a mother figure whom she needed to please. She writes about how she agreed to join the show without knowing whether or not she could return to fame. Rosie’s plight of being a control freak by nature who became addicted to her creation resonated with me and it got me thinking—if fame can be thought of like a drug, can perfectionism be thought of like a drug?
I wonder if perfectionism should have a rehab, if there should be such thing as Perfectionists Anonymous (PA). I think there should be. I’ll start. Hi, my name is Jeffrey and I’m obsessed with being perfect and I’m obsessed with getting it right. It took me a very long time to figure out that my tendency to want everything to be perfect was in fact a compulsion and a genuine issue that had begun to affect every aspect of my life. And when I finally felt strong enough to ask myself why that was, this was what I could come up with: since I was so scared of uncertainty and the resulting anxiety that caused me, my solution was to make everything in my life perfect. My grades? Perfect. My appearance? Perfect. My hair? Perfect. My sleep schedule? Perfect. Every single thing in my entire life at any given moment? PERFECT. Everything had to be perfect, or I couldn’t sleep at night. Everything had to be perfect, because otherwise I’m not worth it. Everything had to be perfect, because if it’s not, who am I? That’s when I realized that being a perfectionist was not just a preference I started to lean into as I got older—I’ve been like this since I was a child.
I’ve learned through therapy and research that kids who grow up not fitting in often become anxious adults who are preoccupied with pleasing people (think Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed). At the same time, I believe that being an introvert also contributes to this idea. Introverts like myself are also often highly sensitive people. Sensitive people, therefore, will be vulnerable and susceptible to other people’s judgment. I know now that the adults in my life were just trying their best when I was younger to “bring me out of my shell” and trying to teach me about all that life has to offer. I just think that a lot of them never realized that even the phrase “all that life has to offer” still makes me anxious. I’m an introvert, dammit! I’m not interested in the outside world; it scares me. I like books and movies and music and other solitary activities that involve living in someone else’s head or imagination, since I often spend most of my time in my own head or imagination. But I’ve also learned that the amount of time I spent refusing to grow up and the amount of time I spent inside my own head—especially once my headspace became less than pleasant—was to my own detriment, and that’s when I finally realized what adults meant by “bringing me out of my shell.” I just had to get there myself.
However, I didn’t always have this enlightened outlook. It’s very recent. Before now, my automatic response to someone else’s judgment or advice—especially when it was that of an authority figure or an adult whose judgment I generally trusted—was to internalize the feeling that who I am in this moment is not enough. Being introverted and quiet is all good and dandy but it won’t help get you a job (not true, by the way)? Well, I am introverted and quiet, and you’re saying that it would be better if I wasn’t like that so opportunities don’t pass me by? Well then, I’m not enough. Why are you staying home by yourself on Saturday night instead of going out with friends? It didn’t matter that this happens to be my preference. Guess it looks like I am, once again, not enough. It’s important to note that, sometimes, these judgments didn’t necessarily always come from the mouths of others. They came from my own voices in my head that had been created by the fact that I’ve never really fit in anywhere, and that created a great deal of anxiety. But most importantly, as these voices started to get louder and louder as I got older, my solution was to be perfect. All the time. If I was perfect, nobody would ask questions I didn’t want to answer. If I was perfect, nobody would judge me. If I was perfect, I wouldn’t judge me and I would finally feel comfortable with myself. But that never happened. It was a colossal waste of time.
It’s also important to note that being perfect didn’t feel like an unnatural or unhealthy response to stress for me, because for as long as I can remember, it was pretty much always my solution to stress or anxiety (the difference was, however, periods of stress and anxiety weren’t as intense or frequent when I was younger). I think it’s just that my internal response to stress and anxiety, as an anal-retentive control freak, was to be perfect because I loved the feeling of satisfaction that being perfect brought me. Hell, I still love that feeling. Being perfect and making everything perfect gives me such a rush, and always has. Picture when Monica Geller said she got an erection at the thought of filing, color-coding, and then using her shredder—same exact thing, just more serious and a tad more unhealthy. So because I loved and lived for the sense of satisfaction that being perfect brought me, I think it became my default setting for fighting off anxiety and uncertainty. I just hadn’t yet learned that no matter how hard I tried, every aspect of life will never be perfect, or that no matter how hard I tried, it won’t change the fact that life in itself is uncertain. So as I got more anxious, the harder I tried to make sure everything was perfect. And, as you can probably predict, that didn’t end well.
But trying to be perfect wasn’t just a result of the so-called rush of satisfaction I would get from it. As I mentioned, being perfect also took up a large portion of my self-worth. When I was younger, there were specific periods of time where I didn’t have a lot of friends at school. Because kids who eat lunch alone or who are just known for not having any friends are generally looked down upon and ostracized, I once again did not feel like enough. But I very quickly learned that there was a way to make up for not feeling like enough socially—by being perfect in every other aspect of life. And since I lived for the rush of satisfaction I would get from being perfect, I very soon started to live for the rush of satisfaction I would get in the form of praise from an authority figure. That way, it didn’t matter in the eyes of the teacher if I “wasn’t enough” in terms of having friends and being popular, because they knew I was a perfect student (which I totally wasn’t, just so you know). Not fitting in socially as a teenager created an intense need to prove my worth and validity some other way, and since I was already grappling with not feeling like enough, my default reaction to that stress and anxiety was to be perfect. To be worthy of the oxygen I breathe.
In college, I had a friend who was also obsessed with perfection (a friend who, looking back, was quite a toxic friend). She put so much effort into her schoolwork—she would always strive for one-hundred percent, no matter what the assignment, and actively told people that she believed anything below a ninety was a bad grade. I used to always raise an eyebrow at how she made getting nineties on every assignment look flawlessly easy, because as much as I was deeply struggling with my own issues in this area, I still knew deep down that no one is flawless and no one can get nineties on every assignment without a great deal of time and effort. One time, I legitimately had to talk her off a ledge because a particular teacher whom everyone disliked gave her a seventy-five on an essay. Eventually I lost my patience and told her to snap out of it—as much as I too was obsessed with perfection, I’ve always been able to accept the grade that I’ve been given, one way or another. She could not. She reacted angrily and told me, “You don’t understand. School is all I have.” But she was wrong. That was something I very much understood and that’s the way I felt, especially in college. I too believed that school was all I had. School and being a student made up the entirety of my self-worth, because the thought of what was to come after school and being a student was so uncertain to me that I did literally anything to avoid confronting it. Evidently, my solution to that stress and anxiety was—once again—to be perfect. Because if it’s not perfect, what’s the point? Why bother? Who am I? What else do I have? When I did eventually start to realize that there’s no way to be perfect in everything, that life is imperfect and uncertain, I believe that the come-down from the high I had sustained on the drug that is perfectionism was what led me into my period of depression.
As I started to become an adult, however, I began to realize that the praise I craved and thrived on from authority figures in school is not something that I was going to continue to find in adulthood. And if I did find it in adulthood, it wasn’t the kind of praise that would make all the work I’ve done and all the time spent trying to be perfect feel worth it. And that’s when I realized that I have to make myself feel worth it. I have to learn to have faith in myself and be a better advocate for myself, and once I learned how to do that, maybe any praise I would receive from anyone for any reason would actually feel genuine for me. I had to learn how to stop measuring my self-worth on the opinions of others. I also had to learn to create healthy boundaries with people so that I wouldn’t automatically overextend myself for the sake of feeling worthy. Since my default reaction to stress and anxiety had become being perfect, I would throw personal reservations out the window if it meant being seen as perfect in the eyes of someone else. Now I realize that not only is trying to be perfect exhausting, but having no boundaries with people when it comes to favors, advice, or other commitments becomes even more exhausting. I keep the meme below on hand to remind me to put myself first—because if history is any indication, I definitely haven’t put myself first.
Since detoxing from what can only be described as a perfectionism overdose, I began to find some of the clarity I had been longing for. What else do I have outside of school and being a student? Lots of things. Be nicer to yourself and have some faith in yourself for once, you dumb bitch! (See? I’m still a work in progress.) Do I still want things to be perfect so I don’t feel the depths of uncertainty today? Of course. I always will. Do I still deal with feeling anxious because something isn’t perfect and if only I could make it perfect, everything would be fine? Oh hell yes. I’ll probably feel like that for the rest of my life. Perfectionism can be a part of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and OCD is a reaction to anxiety. It’s important to stress that my need for perfection was in fact a compulsion—not a preference. For so long I was lost in not taking my anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder seriously because of the stigma—the one that genuinely prevents people from seeking proper treatment. The acronym OCD is used as an adjective, noun, or verb in everyday conversation, and it was those improper and toxic uses of the term that prevented me, for a very long time, from accepting that I struggle with it. So I might always prefer that everything be done a certain way and therefore meet my standards of perfection if at all possible, but I’ve been able to let go of the compulsion to do things a certain way and therefore meet my standards of perfection. At least I’ve been able to let go of it on most days. I’m not perfect. I’m a human, and I’m allowed to have bad days.
Just like Rosie O’Donnell returning to the spotlight of fame on The View and wondering if she would be able to do it, I often struggle with returning to the environment where my perfectionism has flourished most: school. I don’t remember what it was like to be in school and not go into a mode where I am constantly on guard, prepared for anything, and going to achieve the highest possible grade. But since being able to unlearn those compulsions and tendencies, I’ve learned that I just can’t bring myself to care about school in the same way that I used to. If I were to say that sentence out loud to someone who has not read this essay, they would probably make presumptions that I’m done with working hard in school. And you know what? I AM. I’ve learned that “working hard in school” is just not healthy for me, and probably never has been. Yes, I am still a university student and most likely will be for the next few years, but I can no longer allow myself to give school the amount of weight that my default setting—perfectionism—is used to.
Nothing in life should be allowed to carry the amount of weight that I’ve given to school in the past. So when I say I’m done with working hard in school, it means that I’m done with the places that my brain takes me when I work hard in school. It means I’ve had to re-adapt and find new work habits that work for me and don’t make me as anxious. It means I will change my schedule and be okay with taking less credits if it means I don’t get chest pains from anxiety. I’m done letting school rule my life the way that I’ve let it in the past, quite literally destroying my mental health in the process. It means that I refuse to knuckle under certain teachers who judge you if you don’t print the readings and bring them to class like they’ve asked—I’m not seventeen anymore and I don’t need you to instill “good work habits” in me. We’ve seen how my brain reacts to someone else’s judgment, and I refuse to let that continue. My reaction to someone else’s judgment was to be perfect, and I’m off that drug. I’m sober. Get it away from me. I will prioritize my mental health before anything else now, which is a true sign of growth. I just can’t do it anymore—it being someone else’s version of perfect. I’m enough as I am. Please exit stage left, with the rest of my demons.
“Take your time rejoining the world and remember what relaxed feels like. You’re allowed to feel that way! ”
—Faith G. Harper, This is Your Brain on Anxiety
(Recommended listening for this essay: “Sad Forever” by Lauv, “The Way I Feel” by Keane, and “No More Suckers” by Marina)
Follow It's Not That Deep on Instagram — @areyouthereanxiety — and listen to my playlist of mental health songs on Spotify and Apple Music
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