Which Perfectionist Am I?
I’m not a perfectionist.
I just have to know that I did my best.
Well…and that my best was good enough.
And that my best was better than I did last time.
And that I did everything I could.
And that I couldn’t have done it better.
And that nobody else does it better, either.
I’m not a perfectionist.
I’m just trying to keep up with everyone else.
I don’t want to disappoint anyone and I definitely don’t want anyone to think bad things about me.
I’m not a perfectionist.
I just know how the rest of you should be doing it.
It’s so easy to be normal.
Perfectionism can show up in different ways. You might have high expectations of yourself, you might perceive that others have high expectations of you, or you may have high expectations of others.
Or you might experience any combination of the three.
Perfectionism isn’t always a problem.
A fine line separates someone who cares about bringing their best efforts to the table and someone who is plagued by feelings of never good enough.
Likewise, it can be nebulous to determine whether someone is inspiring and encouraging someone to do their best or putting unfair expectations on someone to do it according to their view of the task and timeline for the task.
Which perfectionist are you?
You have high expectations of yourself
If you are this type of perfectionist, you may have indicators, proof even, that you are successful, but you have a hard time believing it.
Maybe you get top grades on your coursework, but feel unsatisfied; you could have done better
You might get lots of positive feedback from others but you fear they are lying to you.
You always feel like you have to be the best, but even when you are, you don’t really feel satisfied.
You might even knock yourself out to do a good job on something, because you are genuinely concerned about doing well on it, but when you turn the assignment in you realize yours is head and shoulders above the rest. Instead of feeling great that you did a good job, you might feel embarrassed, because everyone will know that you put hours more into the assignment, like a try-hard.
I previously wrote about how perfectionism is usually a coping mechanism that comes from anxiety and often trauma.
Specifically, this type of perfectionism commonly shows up if you had to compete with someone for attention, or if you only received attention when you were achieving.
You perceive others to have expectations of you.
We all do this to some extent.
We assume that we know what other people are thinking and what they want, what they expect from us. We base these assumptions on what we would think, or what people who are close to us would think, what we see in the media and in groups we belong to. Often we are waaaaaaaay off.
Often, the person we are worried about was never even thinking about us in the first place.
With this type of perfectionism, you live in constant comparison to others
You remember in detail what others have said is acceptable and bend over backwards to be a version of yourself that fits into that definition of “acceptable.”
You are afraid no one would like you if they knew the real you.
You might react to a social media post and assume others think that way about you. I remember doing this once. It was a post about eyebrows of all things. Somebody was making fun of the way a woman shaped her eyebrows, and this popped into my newsfeed at a time in my life when I was a little obsessive about having fabulous eyebrows. I was so self-conscious for a while after that…I walked around just knowing that people must be looking at my eyebrows and judging them. (Looking back, I am quite positive that no one was doing that. And that my eyebrow obsession was no where remotely close to the extreme that someone had poked fun at on social media.)
You may relate to being a people pleaser. You do everything for everybody because you want people to think you are a good person, that you are talented, capable, etc. (You might want to check out my other articles about people pleasing, grouped together on this page.)
You either do not have boundaries, or you have trouble keeping them. You can’t bear the thought of someone being mad at you. You just can’t say “no.”
This type of perfectionism tends to show up if you have experienced rejection, criticism, or abuse because you did not do something according to someone else’s standards. You’ve been hurt by someone who did not value you (or, very likely had so much they were dealing with themselves that they didn’t pay attention to how they were treating you). You learned that it was important to meet the standards of others so you wouldn’t get left out or punished.
You have high standards of others in your life.
You may be the kind of person who is good at a lot of things. Your brain functions in a way that it easy to organize and execute tasks and you are very productive. You take care to give time and effort to the things you do, and you expect others to do the same.
Maybe you get frustrated when people do not share your urgency towards certain tasks.
You are irritated that you can’t delegate things to other people because they won’t do it right.
You notice (and/or comment on) the flaws of others more than positives.
Your way just makes so much sense. Why would anybody do it a different way? What is wrong with people?
With this type of perfectionism, you may also have experienced a lot of criticism. You may be someone who felt embarrassed at some point in life because someone made a negative judgment about you based on the people you were close to. You are pushing the people around you to high standards to inspire them to do better, but also maybe because you are afraid of looking bad if they look bad.
You may be a person who actually did feel motivated in a positive way by pressure and stress. You may be a leader-type, and the people who surrounded you in your formative years always looked to you to know what to do.
It is usually the case that people are some kind of combination of the three.
High expectations on self + high expectations on others
If I am knocking myself out to be the best, you should put some effort in, too.
I worked hard to achieve that thing, why can’t you?
High expectations of others + perception that other people have high expectations of me
I expect you to go above and beyond to do what I want you to do because I am constantly sacrificing myself to do everything for everyone.
I see the ways you fall short (in my eyes) so you must be focusing on the ways that I fall short, too.
High expectations of self + Perception that other people have high expectations of me
If I think I am a failure, you must think so too.
I think mistakes are catastrophic, everyone else must think I am a real loser.
If you resonate with anything in this article, the good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in those patterns of behavior.
You have some options and strategies for personal growth in this area.
There is a lot of free information to use for self development. Some of the articles I tend to send to people are gathered together here, but there is a wealth of information in libraries and online.
I plan on writing another blog with specific strategies for specific types of perfectionists next week.
You can also call a therapist for individualized support in the specific ways perfectionism shows up for you. I happen to know one, but she’s not perfect!
Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.
