Achieving, Comparison, Shame, & Perfectionism
While I know this post may be difficult for some to read, remember “shame needs three things to grow out of control in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgment.” - Brene Brown
My desire is to shed light to the dark topics, in hopes you will have the courage to bring yours in to the light. It doesn’t hold as much power there.
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As a recovering achievement-holic, I grew up believing the more things I achieved, the more praise I received. That became so ingrained, I didn’t know who I was without achieving. When the external praise stopped or didn’t hold up to the standard of what it used to be, I got incredibly down on myself. However, being the serial achiever I was and eternal optimist, I was able to turn a yearning for external praise into an excuse for internal praise. I became my best cheerleader.
Eventually I became my best competitor too. I have a brother who was identified as a great athlete. So many saw his potential. But as an achievement-holic following another one, that left no room for athleticism for me. There were multiple factors at play. I didn’t want to compete with his limelight. I love my brother, and if I “became athletic,” it would take the attention off of him. Instead I decided if I wanted to play sports, it was me against me. There was no comparison when it came to my brother, which is what I read between the lines. I was even paralyzed from playing soccer because he did. I felt I had failed before I began. After I felt I had been sufficiently guilted in to it, I decided to put myself in a different position than he played - specifically so there would be no comparison.
Over time, the internal praise became a weaker voice and less positive. Eventually, “You kicked ass in that workout,” turned into, “Well, obviously you did well. That’s a great workout for you. Is that really an achievement, then?”
I found school as my niche. Because my brother was deemed a great athlete, I learned it must be something that appears easy to you. That’s how you get praise. So I worked really hard at school - but no one saw it. When I was in my room, I was studying. (Later I figured out I was numbing out to the bad situations around me, but I’ll save that for another day.) Because I felt lesser than, hard-working (while making it look easy) became my thing. However, A’s weren’t enough. I wanted every possible point in that class. If the teacher offered 10% bonus for the class, anything less than 110% in the class was unacceptable.
Great results yields great expectations.
When it’s a pattern and you don’t take the time to celebrate, it results in perfectionism.
Perfectionism is something I never wanted to struggle with. I saw it from both of my parents and realized how destructive it was. But I didn’t realize how sneaky perfectionism could be.
What I saw from my dad was a pattern of staying up all night Saturday rewriting his sermon that he spent all week writing, just so it could be perfect. (Why did he do that? Deep down he realized it could never be perfect, hence procrastination enters also.) I saw agonizing dark circles under his eyes and lines on his face from sleep deprivation. I saw a pained look because when he finished delivering his sermon he had nothing left in the tank.
What I saw from my mom was the need to always put her best foot forward - whether it was at school, at church, or in the community. I have seen her at her thinnest still be worried she had too much body fat. I have seen her ruthlessly pursue eliminating what my brother and I could be teased about (my lazy eye, acne, etc.).
As I didn’t want to share in their struggles, I made sure to remove the possibility. I broke down every assignment at school when I received it with a timetable on what needed to be accomplished by when, so I wasn’t up the night before trying to finish the assignment. I made sure to not weigh myself but maybe once every three months, regardless of whether I was in a regular routine of exercise or sedentary. I actively choose not to wear makeup that takes me more than three minutes to apply.
My struggles with perfectionism were a little harder to see on the surface.
Needing to research everything for hours before publishing (hello, why do I have multiple books and none published yet?)
Beating myself up for months (yes, daily for months) after I let an insensitive comment slip
Being stuck in self-judgment instead of self-compassion
Not forgiving myself and others (because if you’re perfect, why do you make mistakes?)
Keeping a list of wrongs my husband has done to whip out at a moment’s notice when the next offense occurs
To be fair, I kept my own list of my wrongs too
Not celebrating my small victories, because that’s what I expected from myself in the first place
At the end of the day, primarily seeing the ways I succumbed to the darkness inside
Sometimes losing hours of sleep meditating on what I did wrong
Why is it that I didn’t realize these were perfectionistic tendencies? Because I didn’t know the link between shaming and perfectionism. As mentioned earlier, shame doesn’t like to be brought to the light. Usually our perfectionistic tendencies are the things we bury. We don’t like to talk about them, (1) because we’re perfectionists, so we can’t reveal struggle, but (2) because we think we’re alone in our struggles. Every person I have ever talked with extensively either struggles with perfectionism or has struggled with it at one point in their lives.
“The less we talk about shame, the more we have it.” - Brene Brown
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What I do to combat my old patterns of perfectionism:
Hit “publish” on a blog post I spent one hour MAX working on from the heart…with NO research
Remind myself I can think before I speak, but regardless of what I say, there are those who will take what I say out of context and they’re not the ones I’m looking to have in my life anyway
I will apologize, but if that’s still not enough, I have to release the outcome
Spend each week asking myself for forgiveness and forgiving others for things big and small
Actively destroy that list and not even pick up the pen
Every time I make a small accomplishment, I write about how proud I am of myself, celebrate in some way, and in some cases throw my hands in the air with a “YES!”
Remind myself I am light. I commit to whatever is of the highest good for all.
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What will work best to fight perfectionism and to expose shame will be different for every person, but just know it’s a long road. You have to be patient with yourself. I know when I started bringing this all to the light, I began having increasing headaches and dissociation - a self-defense mechanism to keep it buried in my body.
Shaming is a common parenting technique I see nowadays also. It’s incredibly pervasive in churches. I’m not judging it, simply trying to bring awareness to where we may be perpetuating the problem. It’s an uncomfortable question, but try to ask yourself, “How do I contribute to this? How can I expose the shame in my life? How can I stop shaming myself and others in my life?”
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