3 Ways Perfectionism Shows Up In Your Life and How To Process It

It’s Monday, the official worst day of the week and you’ve probably had a long hard day at work, you know… deadlines and covid and stuff. The clutter you cleared up over the weekend is screechie-ing back into your space and the mental and emotional clutter you self-cared away is also back by unpopular demand. I just want you to know I see you because “this me”.

For the last five years (maybe longer) I’ve been fighting a battle against perfectionism and I’m at the place now where the “woo-woo” side of me wants to peacefully ask it to go away but the creative badass that I am is saying “A wanda if perfectionism know who him a deal wid?” It deeply, deeply hurts my soul when I look back and see all the opportunities I skipped because I didn’t do enough to work on the voice in my head that I always think is protecting me and defending me, but is really holding me back. And this year has taught me many lessons but the one about not wasting time is hitting kind of hard right now while plagues, pestilence, disasters and literal fire are willy-bouncing across the globe.

So goodies, while we continue to attempt to cope with the dumpster fire that is 2020, please, if you have a spare moment, take some time to look at how perfectionism has his claws in your life and how you can tell him to snatch his hand back before you break it off, with love and to counteract his evil with patience and kindness.

Fixed Mindset

Do you ever get really excited about a new idea and you kind of obsess about it for a few hours, maybe even days? You click every google result, you start following relevant IG accounts and it seems like everything is great and exciting. Then you hit a hurdle. Now, without perfectionism, you’d probably say “Hmm, that might be tricky to fix but let me see what I can do” and continue working on the idea. For people like me however, that hurdle may as well have been one big stone inna mi head back the way it literally knocks me flat to the ground. Suddenly, all the joy in the world is gone and nothing will ever be right again, and I’m asking myself who I am to have believed I could have done something so cool or big or even unique?

I remember one time in undergrad I got a bad grade and I felt so sad about it I almost dropped the course. By the end of the course I managed to figure out the problem and get a 96% on the final exam, but the journey to that place was a struggle. Fixed mindset perfectionism makes you doubt your ability to get better at things by fixing you at the place that you currently are/ that you perceive yourself to be with the idea that either you excel or you fail. To deal with the anxiety of you either excel or fail, you decide to only move when you believe you’ll excel. You close yourself off. You don’t think consider other possibilities. You might even become resentful of the growth and successes of others. It makes you stick to the stuff you know and struggle with trying, putting yourself out there, dealing with uncertainty etc. I definitely don’t want to be that person.

How to process it

Recognize where that fixed mindset is coming from and coach yourself through failure. It might be shame. It might be actual trauma. It can also be hustle culture. The evil lie that society force feeds us that “We all have the same 24 hours in a day”, or “You can pull yourself up from your boot straps” so we must hustle and grind ourselves into the dirt and anything less than that is unacceptable. We don’t even notice but these ideas root in our heads and rot our ability to allow ourselves to be humans rather than machines.

For me, this particular claw got hooked in me in the transition between prep school and high school. I was often described as “gifted” or an “overachiever” as a child. With that kind of easy success, it’s easy to feel perfect and I did. I was still a top student in high school but something about not being the best in certain subjects (MATH) kind of got to me, so I decided I just wasn’t a Math person and stopped trying… for four years. But in CSEC I was so eager to get nine ones that I realized I had to fix that and I did, with some help from an additional math tutor, being kinder to myself about my previous trouble with the subject and honestly, deciding that I would be satisfied with whatever grade I got because I know I tried my best.

Since then I’ve had setbacks and I’m still finding other things I’ve chosen not to do because I’m afraid of failing, but I’ve learned to recognize how this particular claw feels and manifests, and more often than not all I need to remove it is a little honesty, a little kindness and maybe just some help. Failure still hurts like a motherchucker, but instead of locking shop when I fail, I sometimes take a step back, learn what I can, ask for help and try again. Literally wheel and come again. I also actively avoid bullshit capitalist propaganda and counteract the programming I already have with affirming a growth mindset for myself and noticing the ways I already have a growth mindset in so many other aspects of my life. I tell myself that I can learn things because there’s so much I have already taught myself. I can find out what I don’t know. Failure is not the end. I can try again, but I can also choose not to. That’s not an indictment on my whole life. I’m still worthy, and good and I will still be able to succeed again.

Resources:

The Black Girl Bravado Podcast: episode 151: You vs. You (Part 2): Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset (topic starts at 19:55)

Approval Addiction

Approval addiction is really similar to a fixed mindset except, where a fixed mindset is internal, approval addiction often shows up in your interactions with other people. You want to be liked. You want to fit in. You want things to be smooth, easy, no tension. These aren’t inherently bad things, but they can wreak havoc on your sense of self when you want them so badly that you start pretending to be someone you’re not and excessively moderating your behaviour.

I have an example. So, you probably know by now that I’m fat, but importantly, I also grew up fat. And as a child, when my identity was still forming I had trauma introduced into my life from constantly dealing with negative comments around food. It didn’t make me eat less, it made me hide my eating and so for most of my life I tried to do the “model fatty” thing of avoiding criticism for eating, by eating very little or not at all in public. I thought I’d fixed the problem until in my early twenties I worked with a younger woman, smaller than me in size and not fat by any stretch of the imagination. One day one of the photographers on the project complimented me that although I’m fat I was better than her because apparently according to him, she was always eating and not watching her figure. In that moment I realized no matter how big or how small or how little I ate or how much I hate my body, my actions would always be a problem to someone.

How to process it

I’ve been trying to adopt a “if a dirt” mindset. How do I explain this for people who aren’t Jamaican? “If a dirt, a dirt” is a really poignant way of saying that you’re going to do something even if the consequences will be severe, death even, going by the metaphor. You literally have to get up and say “Fuck it.” I’m going to show up as my authentic self regardless of what happens. I know it’s not easy. People will try you all the time.

One time since then, I stopped at a water cooler to drink water and one white dude was openly disgusted at the sight of me drinking water. Now back in the day, that would have been enough for me to cave in on myself and never drink water in public again, but by practicing “dirt”, I’ve become more comfortable with confrontation so I stared him down and did the universal Jamaican gesture for “A wha?” (a very aggressive what is the problem gesture) and whaddaya know? He backed down immediately and I smiled and said “Thought so.” Trust me. People will always be big bad bullies but most of the time, they’re just projecting their own insecurities onto you. You do all your potential a massive disservice when you let approval addiction make you live by their limitations. Free yourself Queen. Recognize that the fullness of you will always be too big for small minds and that if it’s good with your soul, you owe it to yourself to live it.

ALSO — to everybody else, stop being so nasty to people and mind your business. Criticism doesn’t always have to be vitriolic. Truths don’t always have to be hard. Even if it’s your friend, actually… scratch that… especially if it’s your friend, be kind man.

Resources: The art of being yourself | Caroline McHugh | TEDxMiltonKeynesWomen

This is probably my favourite Ted Talk of all time. I routinely go back and watch it just to be filled with the sense of clarity I felt when I watched it the first time.

Weak Boundaries

This one is particularly insidious in that it has a side that’s really really hard to notice. Most of us know the usual manifestations. How often do you say yes to things you really want to say no to? How often do you stay when you really want to leave? How often do you find it difficult to say you don’t like something, or to go against the consensus even when you really need to? This type of weak boundary makes you feel unheard, dissatisfied, like you don’t matter. But there’s another side to it we don’t deal with enough.

Many of us make the mistake of substituting healthy boundaries with ego — the fallacy of control. You think you can be nice enough or cruel enough to people that they will never hurt you so you turn yourself into either the good girl or the bad bitch. You think you can be excellent enough that you will never lose. You think you can be smart enough that you will never be fooled. Instead of realizing you cannot control other people, so you need to set boundaries — to decide what you will and will not tolerate and protect yourself when necessary without closing yourself off unnecessarily, you take on the burden of managing other people’s reactions, and it will always fail you.

How to fix it

There’s no shortcut for this one. You really just have to learn how to set boundaries. Boundaries are essential for healthy relationships with others but also with yourself. People are going to people, it’s just the dynamism of life, there’s no science to this. You have to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable without burning down the house or running away. I’m not saying to ignore red flags, but sometimes we’re processing situations through the lens of hurt and pain, rather than just being honest with ourselves about how we feel.

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Carla Moore talking about abandonment issues and the ways we try to avoid our feelings, and defend ourselves from our feelings instead of dealing with them. When we feel vulnerable, we withdraw or blow things out of proportion and even overreact and read other peoples’ boundaries as attacks. I’ve learned from watching Carla’s live videos that it’s actually codependent. I’ve also recognized how I’ve done this in my own relationships.

One time a mutual friend invited me and Aarti out to dance. I wanted to go but Aarti didn’t but I didn’t want to go without her, so I tried to persuade her to come with me. She said to me “You’re a big woman. Go where you want to go” and I swear it broke my heart, my vibes, my everything. For the rest of the night I felt completely and utterly rejected. But the next morning I journaled about it and realized that she actually didn’t say anything hurtful, I was simply vulnerable because of issues I haven’t processed. She isn’t responsible for that. She doesn’t even know about that and in that moment I was, without realizing it, expecting her to go against her own boundaries and to do something she doesn’t want to do for my benefit. And I love her too much to ever ever ask that of her. I’ve learned since then to give myself grace to have a natural reaction without acting from that reaction, to not become dependent on people to manage my reactions by behaving how I want them to behave.

Resources:

I referenced Carla Moore’s @mooretalkja video above. Watch the whole thing and be blessed.

So why am I telling you all of this? Firstly to be honest. I’m sharing parts of my experiences because part of the way I sabotage myself is to pretend to be perfect. I’m not and affirming the full spectrum of myself is such an important tool for me in claiming more space. I spend a lot of time “smalling up myself” and not saying what I feel or what I need out of fear of being rejected, out of thinking I can control things. I think I’m being strategic, avoiding oversharing but what I’m really doing is copying what other people do instead of listening to how I feel and doing what feels good to me. But in January 2020 I told myself that sometimes things will just have to fall apart. Sometimes people are just going to have to be disappointed. I can’t control everything. I can only do my best and work with myself and at some point I just have to get comfortable with deciding that places where I have to contort myself are not for me. Again, NONE OF THIS IS EASY. I wake up every day and keep trying. Why? Because I am a point of light in this universe that as far as I know will blaze across the cosmos for a finite amount of time never to be seen again. One time. One Kristeena Monteith. Just one. If I spend every moment of this life figuring out how to be more authentically myself, and to live in harmony with others, it would be a life well spent.

So I work on it. Every day. With love.