Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

Oversimplification: Perfectionism

I have never been a particularly organized or neat person by much of anyone’s standards. There are pockets and moments of organization in my life, and I really enjoy being in neat and organized surroundings. But it just is not in my personality to get things that way and keep them that way. For this reason, it never crossed my mind that I may have a perfectionism problem. Who ever heard of a messy perfectionist? But there I was in college, discussing with a graduate student mentor how to remedy my procrastination habit when she told me she thought I procrastinated because I was a perfectionist. Huh? She explained that I put things off because I was waiting until I could write the perfect paper. But since there is no such thing as the perfect paper, I would wait until a day or three before the deadline, then hammer out a good-enough paper—an extremely stressful practice and one that certainly did not demonstrate my true abilities.

If we were to oversimplify, which most of us do, we would probably never think that perfectionism is a bad thing. A perfectionist has high standards and works harder than anyone else to achieve those standards, right? Wrong. As with most things, it is way more complicated than that. Just this morning I read an article entitled “The Dangerous Downsides of Perfectionism” by Amanda Ruggeri, and I would heartily recommend it to all of you, especially if you have children. One key point is that perfectionism is a self-defeating way to be, and worse, it is linked to many of mental health problems including suicide. Another key point of the article is that perfectionistic thinking has increased dramatically, especially amongst younger generations.

Of course young people are suffering from perfectionism! Everywhere they look they are presented with people who seem to be doing everything right and looking perfectly gorgeous in the process. At the same time, everything in today’s world is competitive and achievementoriented from standardized tests in school to how much money you can earn to how many square feet of house you occupy. Young people are also much more judgmental than previous generations which is why we have all the varieties of shaming and cancel-culture these days. Humans are social animals—our natural impulse is to adhere to social norms. Many current social norms are impossibly ambitious, leading to a widespread sense of failure to all those who cannot reach the goals set out by society.

I thought of a phrase I had heard before and started typing it into a Google window, “Perfectionism is the …” and some suggestions that popped up were “voice of the oppressor,” “enemy of progress,” “enemy of good,” “enemy of creativity,” “enemy of crisis management,” and “enemy of action.” I would argue that all of those are true and can think of many to add to that list.

In the almost forty years since I first considered that I may be a perfectionist, I have been doing battle with perfectionism. I have gotten so much better! I can warm leftovers or make a sandwich for supper instead of making a homemade meal. I can make a quilt and ignore the points that do not quite match. And I long since realized there was no use in trying to perfect my looks, so I just aim for clean and minimally presentable most of the time. Contentment and peace mean far more to me than winning or perfection. Perfectionism still rears its ugly head on the regular, particularly the procrastination variety. I continue the fight as I am convinced it is a destructive force. I hope you will make the kind choice for yourself and the people around you and consider giving any perfectionism in your life the boot.

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