3 Keys To Conquer Perfectionism – Dare To Be Yourself

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are” – Kierkegaard.

14.08.24

Damn… this quote hits hard.

I was thinking about the structure of this new article and this quote suddenly appeared and really moved something within me. In this one sentence, Kierkegaard summarizes exactly what happens when we’re plagued by perfectionism.

We’re afraid of fully being ourselves and constantly suppress our souls, which leads to this feeling of despair. I’ll begin by exploring the origins of perfectionism and then I’ll share 3 keys that helped me and my clients conquer it.

The Origins of Perfectionism

Pete Walker in his book about CPTSD From Surviving To Thriving explores perfectionism as a trauma response from having experienced toxic shame. Consequently, we feel like there’s something inherently wrong with us, and perfectionism becomes a coping strategy to compensate for these feelings of inferiority.

In my experience as a therapist, this is spot on but I’d like to bring a bit more nuance to that, so I’ll borrow a few ideas from Jungian Psychology and Transactional Analysis to present you a more or less complete synthesis.

When our ego-complex is formed, it comes with a rooted desire for positive regard and appreciation, this is not only an emotional need but a biological one. We’re wired to bond with our caregivers and to do so, we unconsciously seek to match their expectations about us to receive love, validation, nurturing, and protection.

These expectations can also be understood in terms of a script, from an early age we receive a set of rules, guidelines, and ideals that must be followed. If we fulfill this script, we’re praised and if we don’t, we’re shunned and feel like a fuck up.

Over time, the presence of the mother or father isn’t required anymore and the script becomes internalized, in Jungian Psychology we call that the mother and father complex. Many people can even hear this set of rules and guidelines in their parents’ voices inside their heads.

The main problem is that these expectations are often against our true desires, needs, and authentic personalities. Furthermore, we learn to interpret and react to the world through their lenses, and most importantly, we judge ourselves based on their values and experiences.

We inherit a map that wasn’t designed by us and unconsciously replicate all of their patterns around work, relationships, and how to deal with our own emotions. Moreover, this script often comes with fears, limitations, and judgments that hinder the development of our personalities.

Addiction To Perfection

We never develop a healthy ego and because we learned that there are all of these conditions to be fully loved and accepted, we’re primed to have an external sense of self-worth, and we unconsciously believe that if we somehow become perfect, we’ll finally receive their love.

I don’t want to reduce everything to the mother and father complex as these feelings of shame and inadequacy can also be amplified by experiences such as bullying, comparison between siblings, emotional neglect, cultural standards, environments that foster competition, and also by individual tendencies of our personalities.

That said, all of these experiences tend to happen while we’re still maturing psychologically and our egos aren’t strong enough to differentiate between someone’s projections upon us and who we truly are.

Because we need to maintain a bond with our caregivers, we tend to internalize all of this shame and start to believe that we’re the problem, instead of realizing that they might be wrong for placing all of this upon us.

To compensate for this shame-based identity, we tend to develop an immaculate persona and over-identify with everything that we do. If we’re less than perfect, we’re plagued by feelings of inferiority and a hostile inner dialogue.

Pete Walker also discusses an interesting idea, salvation fantasies, something I’m definitely guilty of. This basically means that we usually elect a certain practice or habit that we must execute with absolute perfection otherwise, we feel like we might die, haha.

I remember being absolutely obsessed with my diet a few years ago, I had to eat clean all of the time and would feel absolutely defeated if I cheated. This provides an illusory sense of control and as long as you’re doing everything right you feel worthy, it’s almost as if this could redeem you. However, when you’re enmeshed with it, you don’t realize how compulsive and destructive it actually is.

I believe I covered everything important regarding the origins of perfectionism, if you’d like a deeper exploration, I suggest reading my series The Unorthodox Roadmap For Trauma Healing as well as the third chapter of my book PISTIS, as the final solution to this matter involves individuating from your parents.

Conquering Perfectionism

Time to explore a step-by-step to conquer perfectionism. In his book about CPTSD, Pete Walker provides a few solutions to deal with and shrink the inner critic. They’re all based on adjusting your inner monologue as well as using affirmations and visualizations.

I know that these tools work really well for some people, however, they never worked for me. I clearly see the value in transforming our inner monologue and disidentifying from the inner critique but I just feel like I’m gaslighting myself when I use affirmations.

That said, I’ll go over the 3 keys that helped me: Presence, Obsession, and Flow.

Presence

One of the main problems of trauma is that we disconnect from our bodies and keeping things only on an intellectual level only enhances this split. That’s why I believe we should engage our bodies to transcend the level of the mind.

That said the first thing that ever helped me was going to the gym and relearning to be connected with my body. I used to pack an extra 25kg and my appearance was a major source of shame for me, I hated when I looked myself in the mirror.

However, the experience of taking care of myself and giving me the love I needed completely transformed my self-image. Not only that, I slowly learned to be present and fully connected to my senses and what I was doing. For the first time, my mind was silent and the inner critique started vanishing.

Short-after, I also started meditating and doing various breathing exercises and over time, I learned to control my mind and detach from destructive thoughts. Yoga exercises that train focus and attention are also extremely potent. For instance, last week we were training to breathe from one nostril and exhale from the other one.

Here’s a simple exercise:

Close your eyes and focus on breathing through your right nostril and when you exhale you focus on the air passing through your left one. Now, you invert the process. Focus on breathing from your left nostril and exhaling from the right one.

Do that for a few minutes and I guarantee you’ll feel more present and at peace. I strongly encourage you to find a good teacher as it allows you to receive instant feedback, be out of control, and enter the flow state more easily.

Obsession

The second layer of conquering perfectionism is related to work and the impostor syndrome, I wrote an article about it last week that you can check later, so I’ll expand on a few ideas.

One of the effects of having a childish mentality is that we never want to commit to anything and there’s this illusion that we must be perfect at everything without dedicating ourselves to it. If we’re not immediately good at it in the first few tries, we drop it entirely.

One of the reasons for this is that when we’re seeking perfection, we identify with our productions and derive our sense of self-worth from the results we get, one of the main dynamics behind procrastination. The problem is that we never allow ourselves to learn and have unrealistic expectations.

However, this also becomes an excuse to avoid doing the hard work as many people develop an arrogant persona and believe that they’re beyond the human experience. Having to work hard for something is beneath them and they prefer their childish illusions.

Naively, many people believe that they will integrate their shadow by filling out shadow work prompts and being completely passive about it. However, it’s only when we fully commit to exploring our potential and developing a pristine work ethic that we begin seeing real value in ourselves.

All of the parts that we’re repressed due to the inner critique exist in potential inside us and it’s our duty to explore them and bring them to life. We must give our blood and energy for them to emerge and become an integral part of our personalities.

Shadow integration requires movement. For instance, if you have always wanted to sing or play guitar but never did because your parents didn’t allow you to, it’s pointless to journal about it. You have to develop your creativity by doing music.

If you always wanted to pursue a career but never did because you were afraid of judgment, well, you simply have to explore this possibility. It’s up to us to set new standards and craft our own values. it’s up to us to stop allowing fear and shame to dictate our entire lives. We must dare to be ourselves.

I cover the shadow integration process in-depth in Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual

Flow

The final dimension to conquer perfectionism involves the flow state and unlocking intrinsic motivation. People who are prone to perfectionism have an external sense of self-worth and tend to be motivated by the approval of others.

That’s why we must reverse the process and learn how to do things of our own volition regardless of external pressure. That’s exactly when the flow state enters as it occurs when we’re deeply connected to what we’re doing and the activity itself is deeply rewarding.

There isn’t a final goal, like gaining the approval of other people, you’re doing it because it gives you pleasure and makes you feel inspired. I often experience this state when I’m playing music or writing, I get transported to another place and feel the creative spirit moving through me.

However, we can only access the flow state when we deeply care about something and allow ourselves to be fully affected by it. When something has this level of importance in our lives suddenly, what other people think stops mattering so much.

It’s not that we stop caring completely nor should this be the goal, but we have access to something so potent and powerful that what other people think becomes irrelevant. When we access the Flow state we’re driven by inspiration and our lives acquire a deeper sense of meaning. That’s why Flow is a powerful antidote to perfectionism.

Lastly, I teach you to conquer perfectionism, the impostor syndrome, and how to access the flow state in my new and accessible course Obliterate Procrastination. You can also come directly to the Audacity University and access all of my courses.

Read Next:

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

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