I was watching an interview with Caroline Myss last night and something she said struck me. And a whole bunch of childhood memories came flooding in.
She said:
“Perfectionism is just another disguise for fear. The fear of criticism.”
Wow.
It was a ‘Wow’ moment for me because I have strived for perfection my entire life. I just didn’t recognise why I was doing it.
But when I heard Caroline say those words, it all made sense.
You see, I grew up in a highly critical household. No matter what I did, whether it was good or bad, I was criticised for it.
If I misbehaved, I would be lectured about how poor my behaviour had been. If I did reasonably well in something, such as got good grades, I’d be lectured about how I should have done better.
Nothing I did was good enough.
Now, this is not about blame or resentment. I know, without a shadow of doubt, that my parents did what they thought was right. They wanted the very best for me. They believed that they were helping me build a character that was always in pursuit of improvement and not to simply settle for mediocrity. This was their method of teaching me to do better. This is how they were taught. And it worked for them. They didn’t know any other way.
Of course, the use of criticism didn’t end on my 18th birthday. The parent-child dynamic continued on until they passed away. And even now, I still have their words in my head – it’s just that their voices have been replaced with my own.
But when I heard Caroline’s interview, the penny dropped.
It’s all about the motive behind the perfectionism.
Wanting to grow, to develop, and to improve are admirable goals for all of us. However, when we strive to better ourselves, it should be to better ourselves, not as an avoidance technique of criticism.
When we strive to do better in order to avoid criticism, then there is some internal work to be done on our “I’m enough-ness”.
Let’s face it, there will always be people who will always find something to criticise you about.
You can’t actually avoid criticism. Sometime, somewhere, someone will find something to criticise you about. It’s inevitable.
Even when you do everything right, for someone else, it will be wrong.
It therefore stands to reason that using perfectionism as a means to avoid criticism is a futile exercise.
For me, over the years I’ve become less of a perfectionist. I think that I’ve unconsciously known and recognised that perfection is impossible to achieve and that I can’t, and won’t try to make all people like me or to like what I do. And I’ve let it go in most areas in my life.
But the pull of perfectionism is still there to some degree. And it’s not there solely as a goal to better myself. I now clearly recognise the other motivating factor – to protect myself from criticism.
I guess I have more work to do.
What about you?
