By Juliana Stanfield
Picture this: You wake up and get ready for the day, but you’re already running ten minutes late, and none of your shoes look just right with the jeans you picked. At work, your first email takes twenty minutes to write because you keep re-reading it and making teeny tiny edits. After lunch, your boss asks about a project and, instead of admitting you haven’t started, you fib because the thought of not doing it perfectly is too uncomfortable. You’ve been procrastinating because you’re terrified it won’t be flawless. When you get home, you glare at the sink full of dishes, because to you, it’s all or nothing: either wash every dish or pretend the mess doesn’t exist. You tell yourself you’ll use paper plates “for just one more night.” By bedtime, you’re emotionally drained, doom-scrolling in an attempt to escape the invisible weight of perfectionism that’s been sitting on your chest all day.
Sound familiar? Welcome to the ✨Perfectionist Club✨ — where the perks include chronic overthinking and never feeling quite good enough.
The Mental Load of Perfectionism
Perfectionism isn’t about having high standards; it’s about fearing that anything less than flawless makes you unworthy, unsafe, or unlovable. And that fear can quietly wreak havoc on your mental, emotional, and physical health. Symptoms of perfectionism may include:
- Fatigue and difficulty sleeping
- Irritability and mood swings
- Social anxiety and avoidance
- Low self-esteem and hopelessness
- Lack of motivation and burnout
- Strained relationships
Unchecked, these symptoms can deeply affect your well-being and sense of self.
A New Perspective on Perfectionism: It’s About Self-Trust
You’ve probably heard that coping with perfectionism involves mindfulness, relaxation, or “letting go.” Those are helpful tools, but they may not be the full story. What if perfectionism isn’t rooted in an inability to let go, but in a lack of self-trust?
Perfectionism isn’t the fear of failure itself. It’s the fear of what failure might say about you and whether you’ll survive it.
So, where do you go from here?
Step One: Explore It
Ask yourself: Do I trust myself? If the answer is no, explore why that might be.
Remain curious and compassionate. Journal, call a friend, or talk to a therapist about where you may have learned that self-trust wasn’t safe. Maybe you had sky-high expectations set for you as a child, and you could never live up to the standard. Maybe something happened to you and you didn’t handle it well (how human of you!), and ever since then, you’ve doubted yourself. Maybe it was a relationship where you figured out that love was conditional and that if you wanted it, you had to earn it.
You didn’t wake up one day and decide to stop trusting yourself. Go deep to figure it out.
Step Two: Grieve It
Once you have those answers, allow yourself to grieve. Let yourself process the loss of real, true, unconditional love and emotional safety. Pay attention to where it shows up in your body. A few more things to try:
- Write a letter to the people who have hurt you.
- Set aside 15 minutes to look at old photo albums.
- Make a playlist of songs that remind you of that time in your life so you can access those feelings more easily.
Reflect on the person you were at the time you experienced those losses and extend compassion to that version of yourself. Cry. Scream. Laugh. Exercise. Your nervous system has had those feelings on lockdown to protect you, and it’s time to get them moving.
Step Three: Prove It
Time to show up for yourself. What makes someone else trustworthy? Here are some hints: consistency, honesty, understanding, compassion, connection, and accountability. You’re no different!
- Consistency, not perfection. Follow through on the things you say you’ll do for yourself, especially when you don’t want to do them.
- Be honest with yourself and others about how you’re really doing and accept support.
- Understand your feelings and honor them without trying to change them.
- Show yourself compassion, just like you do for everyone around you.
- Connect with yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically. You know yourself better than anyone else.
- Do stuff that scares you, and when you do make mistakes, hold yourself accountable. Don’t tie your mistakes to your worth. Just apologize, make a plan to recover, and then move on. No need to dwell.
You’re Not Stuck Here
Good news: Your membership to the ✨Perfectionist Club✨ isn’t permanent. Get to know yourself intimately and establish an identity outside of what you do for others. When self-trust is your foundation, the mistakes you once feared as a perfectionist lose their power. You’ll know and trust that no matter what happens, you can handle it.
Start today. You deserve it.
