Healing Perfectionism
Playing the Wrong Notes
My mother was a piano teacher growing up and from a very early age she began giving me music lessons. Being raised playing classical music taught me so many great things and provided so many life lessons that I still carry with me to this day:
I learned to love music.
I learned self-discipline.
I learned the benefits of hard work.
I learned delayed gratification.
I learned emotional sensitivity.
But one of the other things that I learned as a classical musician from a very young age - is that there are right notes, and wrong notes. If you play the exact right note at the exact right time, you’re doing it correctly. Anything else is…well…wrong. And there’s not a lot of wiggle room either…it’s pretty black and white - either right or wrong.
Playing classical piano is not the only example of this rigid understanding of right and wrong that I received growing up either. There are rules for how to write, rules for how to do math, rules for where I was supposed to color on the page, rules about what to do and what not to do with a basketball…my education was full of very clear examples of right and wrong…and the goal of course, was never to be wrong.
Rigid black and white rules may have their place in classical piano music, and may be developmentally necessary in early stages of our lives to form a secure container to operate from, but many of us can find ourselves stuck when a “perfectionist” part takes over and runs the show in our own inner world.
And, unfortunately, much of religious and political education actually serves to create and maintain these “perfectionist” parts…
Religious/Political Education
Many of us have a perfectionistic part within us, and I’ll go into more detail about it in a bit, but I want to name the role I’ve seen religious/political education often play in promoting the perfectionistic part within us to a lead role and asking it to run the show.
I’m not upset at anyone or calling anyone out to say this, and I don’t think that religious/political leaders do this maliciously…we are all sharing the world as we view it. If our own leaders have a perfectionistic part that is running the show, then they are surely going to encourage the perfectionistic part in others to step up and run the show in others as well.
So much of the religious education that I witness amounts to telling people that there are bad or wrong parts within them that effectively need to be pushed down and locked up:
The “selfish” part
the “greedy” part
the “sexual or erotic” part
the “angry” part
the “guilty” part
the “doubting” part
the “lazy” part
the “sad” part
the “proud” part
People are told by the leader's own perfectionist parts that these parts should not exist within a person and should be pushed down and suppressed at all costs. They are parts within us that are not welcomed and should be exiled as they are entirely and totally negative.
Religious/political education often amounts to telling people that even if they don’t want to do something, they kind of just need to suck it up, suppress the part that doesn’t want to do something, and do it because it’s the right thing to do.
As the ever articulate James Hollis wrote, “one of the most pernicious influences of most religions, and a lot of unconscious parents, is the shaming process, the inevitable admonition to be perfect, to measure up to some abstract code. As none of us is able to live a model of perfection, we wind up swimming in shame, overcompensating, or self-sabotaging.”
It may sound reductionistic, but I don’t really think it is - there are so many religious messages I’ve heard that could be summed up by saying “there’s right and there’s wrong, so suck it up and do the right thing even if you don’t want to.”
A community and an individual that operates by suppressing the “negative” parts within them can, on the one hand, certainly get a lot done. Someone who is told in so many covert and subtle ways that they just need to show up and volunteer no matter what their other parts are telling them will probably show up and get a lot done…maybe for years…maybe for their whole life…
A religious/political organization can be full of very active, dutiful people showing up and working hard and giving financially. The organization could on paper accomplish a great deal…and yet…in the inner world of each of its members, it turns out, all is not well…
The truth is, we never know from our outside vantage point what internal mechanisms and parts are actually in the drivers seat.
The Perfection of Imperfection
If our early education, training, socialization and religious/political upbringing gave us messages that the “perfection” we are all striving towards is the repression of the parts within us that are not socially desirable, then, it’s time for an update.
Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has said: “The only perfection available to us as humans is the ability to include and forgive our imperfection”.
Maybe that sounds like blasphemy to you…how could imperfection ever be good?!
Or maybe there’s something just intriguing enough about the particular turn of phrase that perfection is found through embracing imperfection (it’s almost like a parable or koan or riddle isn’t it) that it strikes your curiosity…
One of, if not the core belief I have that influences how I understand people and therapy is that there are no bad parts within us…
While we may receive messages from others or ourselves that we need to stuff down and hide certain parts of ourselves from others (and even ourselves)...the truth is that a) that does us no good and simply shoving a part we don’t like down doesn’t make it disappear, and b) those parts aren’t bad, and they have truths to share with us.
Take our “greedy” part, for example. This is a favorite for our culture to try to eradicate within us. And, it totally makes sense on one level - we see the kind of rampant inequality in the United States, and we recognize that this is not just. However, the path towards wholeness does not come from trying to banish our “greedy” parts and exiling them within us, but through understanding them, and listening to what they are trying to tell us.
If you spent time listening with compassion and curiosity to the greedy part within you, you would find out all kinds of things about it that both made total sense and weren’t rooted in some evil or malice desire.
It could be that your “greedy” part feels the need to hoard resources because it’s trying to protect part of you that was five and your mother told you that you couldn’t afford to have the kind of birthday party you wanted because of finances. This “greedy” part then, is trying to cover up and protect the pain that the 5-year-old went through back then, by hoarding resources today.
It could be that your “greedy” part feels the need to hoard resources because it’s protecting a part within you from when you were 12 and were made to feel insignificant or stupid. The “greedy” part then has worked to accumulate resources in order to feel significant and accomplished, in a hope it can protect that 12-year-old from feeling insignificant.
In this light, with this new information, you can see how this “greedy” part isn’t bad or wrong…it’s just doing the best it knows how to do to try to protect hurting parts within you.
Paradoxically - once we are able to come to the parts within us that have been labeled bad or wrong with curiosity and compassion, they are able to loosen up, become less rigid, no longer feel the need to run the show.
It is by embracing our “imperfect” parts, not rejecting them, that true healing and transformation is possible.
As Brene Brown has wisely written, “it is in the process of embracing our imperfections that we find our truest gifts: courage, compassion, and connection”.
Compassion for our “Perfectionist” part
Finally, as we begin to get to know the parts that we have previously labeled as bad or wrong, and learn what they have to teach us about ourselves, it can lead to incredible healing and growth. It can also be very easy to become critical, frustrated or angry at our ‘perfectionist’ part for having duped us and run the show for so long. We can easily find ourselves trying to reject and push down that part as well.
But, even our “perfectionist” part is trying to help the best way it knows how.
If you can extend the same curiosity and compassion towards the “perfectionist” part that you are able to extend towards your other parts, you’ll see that even the “perfectionist” part is working hard to keep younger hurting parts from feeling ashamed.
And I guarantee that within each of us in our culture, there are moments when we have felt ashamed because we were found to be “imperfect” in some way by others (our family, our school, our religious community, our society)…and so our “perfectionist” part has felt the need to try to protect those parts from experiencing that hurt again.
Elementary School Homework
I help my daughter with her homework every evening. It could probably realistically be done in about 15 minutes…but…somehow it ends up dragging on for much longer.
Early in the year my daughter and I discovered a typo in the assigned homework. I have to admit that a “perfectionist” part within me began getting riled up! My immediate reaction was, “why didn’t they take the time to proofread this?”, and even “what kind of an example is this setting to kids to have a mistake in their homework?!”.
But then a couple weeks later there was another mistake. And then another. And then another.
I spent some time with my own “perfectionist” part and got it to relax a bit, and now, although I have no idea why the mistakes are there - whether it’s human error or intentional - I know that my daughter and I have been able to use the recurring mistakes as a chance to talk together about how it’s okay to make mistakes. If even the adults who make the homework are not “perfect”, then it’s okay for us to not be “perfect” too.
If you’re reading this and can identify your own “perfectionist” part that feels like it needs to run the show…I see you, and I’m here.
We can work together to transform your “perfectionist” part, and to access, understand, and incorporate the “bad” parts that it has felt the need to reject. Instead of being driven by the shame, duty, obligation and guilt of the “perfectionist” part…you can find a sense of joy and freedom to be who you truly are inside.
Are you ready for the next step???
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