I used to wear my perfectionism as a badge of honour however, in the past couple of years, I have begun to see it for what it really is; a burden.
In recent months, probably since the Bin The Mince Pies episode, I have noticed my perfectionism curing itself. I say curing itself, because I haven't been actively working on fixing it. Instead, what has been happening is that I've been noticing opportunities for it to hold me back and in those moments I have acknowledged what is happening and actively chosen to take the less-than-perfect option.
You see, when I was little, I was told that it didn't matter if I failed, as long as I tried my best, because doing something really carefully and attentively meant that you cared and it's nice and good to care. These are not bad qualities to teach a child however, if I did fail at something, it was assumed that I must not have been trying my best (which meant I didn't care, which meant I was a bad person). That's seven year old logic. So when not doing something perfectly was met with disappointment, withheld affection or being told off, little Aislinn quickly learned that being perfect kept the peace and keeping the peace meant not getting shouted at and that felt safe.
That kind of thinking was hard-wired into my psyche and it was only when Watson gently took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes and said "You don’t have to do this. You are the only person who is expecting you do to this” that something shifted.
One of the big Aha! moments on this journey came when I finally understood why I get so worked up when things don't go according to plan and it links back to "keeping the peace". Growing up, if things didn't go perfectly, be it dinner, a purchase, or a day out, both my father and my stepfather would fly into a rage and that, quite frankly was scary. There was shouting and door slamming and you could cut the tension in the house with a piece of string, let alone a knife.
It's not their fault. It's a vicious cycle. Both their father's had perfectionism drilled into them from their fathers and from the army, where not doing things perfectly quite literally meant life or death, so they were brought up believing that being perfect kept you alive. Back then parenting was very different and PTSD from the war caused my grandfathers to lash out at my fathers and so for them, being perfect meant not getting whipped with a belt.
Neither my father or my stepfather ever lay a finger on me or my sister, but the visceral fear they felt when something wasn't done perfectly was physical and real. Unbeknownst to us, their own inner children were remembering that imperfect things meant danger and were desperately trying to protect them from a beating. But this happens on a subconscious level and so on the surface it just appeared as though they both had anger problems and were prone to overreacting to little things. Unfortunately, they passed this perfectionism on to me as I learned, like they did, that being perfect prevents dad from getting angry.
I had this realisation when watching an Instagram reel from a therapist where they talked about why some people overreact to little things and it's because those seemingly insignificant things trigger a very real feeling of not being safe and the nervous system raises the alarm.
I have a key memory of one such overreaction that happened a few years ago. I was doing the washing up when I noticed little scratches, as though made by a knife, on the non-stick coating of the pretty blue frying pan my parents had bought me to take to university. As someone who had had the importance of looking after your positions drilled into her and who had the fear of god put into her if she ever used a metal utensil on a non-stick pan, I flew into a rage of my own. Poor Mr Ex was walking through the door at that moment as I let forth a barrage of insults and exclamations. I was beside myself. I wailed at him like a banshee. All over a frying pan, or so I thought. I couldn't understand why I was so upset and put it down to being a perfectionist. I would never ruin a pan in such a way, how could he?! He had no respect for my possessions!
In hindsight, I can remember how I physically felt in that moment. I remember the bottom dropping out of my stomach, the adrenalin rush, the shaking. My body went into full-on fight or flight mode and was primed and ready to protect me from an onslaught not unlike the one I subjected Mr Ex to. But of course, as an adult, it wasn't coming. My dads weren't there to tell me off for scratching the pan but my inner child knew that if I had done that to a pan years ago, I would have been in so much trouble.
Learning what was going on in those moments has been life changing for me because now, if something goes wrong and my nervous system raises any alarms I can recognise what's happening and self-soothe myself back down by reminding myself that I'm safe. Now that I know where my need to be perfect comes from (because perfect = safe) I've been able to override that belief because it simply isn't true and it has been liberating.
Of course, doing things to the best of your ability is a good thing and foreseeing potential challenges and having a back up plan in the case of failure can often ensure smooth sailing which is great, but when the need to be perfect becomes this crippling compulsion, it starts to hold you back and that's the point I was reaching.
By being a perfectionist, I was actually being less productive, because everything had to be done perfectly, right? And here's the best part: Perfectionism is procrastination in a fancy dress. Unless I could execute a task to the absolute best of my ability, I wouldn't start it, usually because it felt overwhelming. Gallery wall? You must be kidding! In order to achieve that, I would have to source the right number of matching picture frames in varying sizes and get pictures to fit them, or choose pictures and find frames to fit them, then plan the layout and get the gaps between the frames to all be the same distance which means measuring the amount of wall space I'm using, plotting it on paper first and then hammering nails in exactly the right spots so that it is neat and perfect and woe betide me if any of the gaps between the frames aren't equal or any of those pictures isn't hung straight. Or at least, that's what I thought.
One of my favourite sayings, courtesy of Tiff, who runs the Business Bread and Butter Club is: Done Is Better Than Perfect. A few months before Watson snapped me out of my perfectionist reverie, I had started putting this phrase into practice and was getting more and more comfortable at completing things to a less than perfect standard. One example of this is this blog.
When I started writing it in January 2018, I thought it had to contain pictures and I had to have taken those pictures myself. I kept that up until September 2020 but as a result, couldn't commit to my goal of writing one post a month because 1) I never knew what to write about and 2) taking the pictures took so damn long! Then in May 2021 I picked up the blog again after breaking up with Mr Ex and the whole tone of this blog changed, but because of the radical mindset shift I had undergone, I decided that it didn't matter if there were no pictures, what matters to me are the words. It wasn't until October 2022 that I started using images straight from the Wix site to embellish my posts and honestly, I can't believe that it took me so long. Past Aislinn would have been horrified that I've been posting "less-than-perfect" content but as a result of lowering my very high standards, I have been so much more productive and have now written one post a month for the past seventeen months. I'm really proud of that! And it's all because Done Is Better Than Perfect.
Another area where I'm being less-than-perfect is in mine and Watson's Marvel movie marathon. That's right folks, we nerds are watching all the Marvel films in timeline order! With the less-than-perfect exception of Iron Man 2 (because we've both seen it plenty of times) and Antman (because neither of us are particularly bothered about that one). The completionist in me wants to watch them all, the recovering perfectionist in me says it's more than OK to skip Antman.
These trivial, everyday examples are the baby steps I am taking towards overcoming my perfectionism but they are about as far as I'm taking this process. I could very easily run with this idea and seek out opportunities to be less-than-perfect but in doing so would be trying to perfectly cure my perfectionism and that would be nothing short of ironic.
In real life, accepting that Done Is Better Than Perfect has meant that I have made able to achieve so much more than I was previously doing, but more importantly, it has granted me a much greater sense of peace than being a perfectionist ever did. I thought that by being a perfectionist I was keeping the peace but in reality, whose peace was I keeping? The pressure that came with being perfect all the time wasn't doing me or my nervous system any favours and I am most definitely more at peace now as an imperfectionist than I ever was as a perfectionist.
Now I can tap into my perfectionism as something of a super power if I want to and plan an exceptional day out or an amazing picnic down to every last little detail. If I want to achieve an outstanding result, it's easy for me to get into that mindset and produce something awesome but it's unbelievably freeing to be able to take of that hat again afterwards and not have to wear it all the time.
It has freed up a lot of mental headspace that wasn't available to me before, because in my attempt to always be keeping the peace, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Relaxing didn't feel safe to me because I thought I always had to be vigilant. I was always on the lookout for a sign that the peace was about to be disrupted and would do everything in my power to keep that from happening, so I could never switch off. It wasn't until very recently that I learned that it's safe to feel safe and I tell myself that simple phrase whenever something that is less-than-perfect is starting to bother me.
It's safe to feel safe.
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