"As a perfectionist, I..."
On cycles of trauma
Black Swan? For perfectionism analogy? Groundbreaking.
Do you ever feel called out by social media posts that say something to the effect of, “___ is a a trauma response”? Maybe we run in different circles, but I encounter this manner of thing fairly often: contextless Instagram psychotherapizing. It has injected an idea into my head that my entire personality is a trauma response. People-pleasing? Trauma response. Monogamy? Trauma response. Polyamory? Trauma response. And on and on. Who is this helping? The answer, so far as I care to hypothesize, is influencer-therapists cosplaying big pharma by producing commercials that encourage patients to diagnose themselves and thereby engage their services (something something dismantling the master’s house with the master’s tools something something).
With thanks to the IG therapy community, my latest installment of self-pathologizing is about perfectionism. In my case, yes, it is a trauma response. Or, as I like to call it, a trauma cycle. It turns out that most responses to trauma don’t, in fact, effectively resolve trauma. In fact, like an ouroboros, the trauma cycle is recursively driven by successive responses to the original trauma (see: complex PTSD). It’s a perpetual motion machine of irresolution, the cope mitigating only the acute re-reactions and distracting from the root cause. It is action- and behavior-oriented, yet static.
I assume by now that everyone reading is on board with my digressions, and I acknowledge that I’m using it to deflect attention from the origin story of my own trauma cycle. But anyway! Onto perfectionism.
I just wanna be perfect, daddy
One of the most cringe things I’ve ever done is to answer, “Well, I’m a perfectionist so sometimes I get very absorbed in making sure everything is exactly right,” to the question, “What is your greatest weakness?” in a job interview. Yes, job interviews are absurdist theater, but did I have to choose the role of “insufferable try-hard” for myself? Not to be a determinist about it, but yes. I did.
Perfectionism ingrains a deep fear of admissions of vulnerability or incompetence. This is because we have been taught that our acceptance is highly contingent. We aren’t about to jeopardize what already feels tenuous with even the barest suggestion that there might be something about us worth critiquing. Although we may not always be aware of it, or even consciously believe it, we operate as though we are fundamentally deficient in character. Yes, I am tyrannically speaking for all of us!
Our reaction to this permanently threatened condemnation is to either labor exhaustively to curtail the possibility of criticism, or to avoid engaging with anything at which we can’t guarantee instant and unmitigated success. “Wow,” the non-perfectionist muses, “doesn’t that mean that you wouldn’t ever try anything new?” Yes, Craig. Good job.
But Craig is mostly right about this aspect of the perfectionism trauma cycle. Of course, we necessarily have to engage in new activities every now and again, but usually only out of duress or peer pressure. And in the process of trying the new thing, we are miserable. Would any reasonable person mock or ostracize someone for being bad at tennis the first time they pick up a racket? Of course not. But the little asshole perfectionist homunculus that lives in our brains insists that others would be justified in doing so. Just because you wouldn’t engage in such behavior against others doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve such treatment, or so the demonic logic goes.
We either die Mila Kunis, or live long enough to watch ourselves become Natalie Portman.
It’s a joyless experience to believe yourself unable to withstand the barest scrutiny. It is the opposite of flow, the opposite of presence, the opposite of fun. But! It’s a belief that doesn’t map onto reality. We *can* sustain scrutiny and criticism, because we weather a veritable firehose of inwardly-directed scrutiny and criticism from ourselves on a near-constant basis. Not only that, but the criticism we levy at ourselves is exponentially more cruel and unhinged than anything that could come from someone outside the haunted mansions that are our brains.
So what, then, do we do? THIS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE MEDICAL ADVICE. I’M JUST A PERSON WITH A NEWSLETTER, OK? THE ACTUAL ANSWER IS TO GET THERAPY, SURROUND YOURSELF WITH COMMUNITY, DRINK SOME WATER, ETC.
The first step is always about awareness. By some reputable accounts (much of Eastern philosophy, and also Einstein or something), mere observation of a phenomenon is sufficient to change it. Nerds, please don’t @ me, I’m speaking metaphorically. Realize that you are treating yourself ungenerously, recall moments when you were criticized and didn’t literally die. That’s all that I’ll say about that lest I become one of the hacks I was complaining about earlier. But I hope my experience might illuminate commonalities that prove helpful and build community.
Don’t be like Nina
I can only conclude by reflecting that, like most behaviors related to trauma cycles, I think perfectionism is ultimately a cope for the random, violent chaos of the universe. We cannot face the idea that our acceptance is probably arbitrary and, above a low threshold, beyond our scope of influence. So we fixate on something smaller and more manageable, refining our behaviors and thoughts to build and maintain the illusion of meaningful control. It works, sort of. We are just factually, incontrovertibly imperfect, and the denial of that reality will drive you mad at some point or another.
