How to Manage Perfectionism...with or without OCD

Perfectionism. Do you flaunt it as badge of honor? Are you exhausted by the constant efforts to be flawless? Today we’re going to take a deep dive into perfectionism. You’ll take away some tips for recognizing it, and managing it.

Truman Capote once reflected about his friend Babe Paley, “She had only one flaw. She was perfect, otherwise she was perfect.” 

Those sentences capture the paradox of perfectionism. You might get praise about your attention to every detail. Perfectionism can make you desirable in the eyes of others. AND perfectionism can stand in the way of the very results you want to achieve. 

There are two reasons people strive for excellence. 

The first is that you care about what YOU think. You’re always trying to evolve and grow. You shoot for the stars and then celebrate when you wind up at the moon. This is NOT what I mean by perfectionism in this conversation. Let’s call this healthy striving.

Instead, perfectionism is all about what OTHERS think about about you. 

Here’s the important difference. 

Healthy striving is an expression of  empowerment and strength that helps you get from good to great. 

Perfectionism is an expression of fear that’s designed to help you avoid danger and stay safe.

Here are the three reasons perfectionism is such a problem for people either with or without OCD:

1. You cannot control what other people think; you can only control what you think
2. There is no such thing as perfect.
3. Your efforts to achieve perfection will backfire on you.

Coleen is a dental hygienist who is learning to manage her OCD. Doing a good job has always been important to her. The dentist who came to examine the patients’ teeth after the cleaning always told the patient, “Look at what a great job Coleen did you your teeth!” The patients liked her. The staff liked her. Then one day, as she described it, Herman the Monster—that’s the name she give her OCD Monster-- showed up at work. As she was finishing up with a patient, Herman said, “You think you’re done with that patient? You left some plaque! Go back and remove it!” She spent an extra 10 minutes, which meant she was 10 minutes late for the next patient. Now, Herman was telling her that doing a good job was not good enough. She needed to be PERFECT.  

Coleen was more aggressive about looking for hidden plaque. Her patients starting complaining about more discomfort as Coleen dug deeper linto the gums. Her dentist employer took her aside and told her that the patients’ gums looked inflamed. Was she doing something differently in her cleaning?  The front office gal told her that patients were complaining because they had to wait so long. Coleen began to doubt whether she could even do a good job—much less perfect.

For Coleen Herman the Monster’s new demand for perfection in her work was nothing more than a new compulsions.

But you don’t have to have OCD to have perfectionist habits, and and the presence of perfection-seeking habits does not mean you have OCD.

Perfectionism is very common. I was working with one of my business clients, and said, “I’ve got to run and record a podcast about perfectionism.” He said, “Send me the podcast. I struggle with perfectionism myself!” 

Brené Brown has studied perfectionism and it relationship with vulnerability and shame. 

She says that perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fueled by this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of blame, judgement, and shame.

She says, ”When perfectionism is driving, shame is always riding shotgun -- and fear is the annoying back seat driver.”

You might have real life experience that make you consciously aware of the dangers of making mistakes. You might have been shamed as a child for not knowing the answer in class, or for some physical attribute. People might have laughed at you when you offered an idea in a meeting. 

Perfectionism can cause harm to many people. 

When my son was young, I used to let him choose his clothes. I would describe fashion guidelines. Don’t wear two patterns like stripes and plaids together. My son’s creative spirit was not going to be squelched by silly fashion rules. I don’t know whether other kids gave him grief about what he wore. If they did, my son didn’t care. He dressed to the beat of his own drummer.  

His grandmother was a different story. She could have written the perfectionism how-to handbook. She cared deeply about what others thought. 

One day when she was visiting my son came out of his room wearing striped pants and a Hawaiian shirt. He wanted me to clip on his bow tie.  She looked at him and asked me in front of him, “Are you really going to let him leave the house looking like that? What will the teacher and the other mothers think?” 

The shameful element in this story was not about what people would think about my son’s clothes; it’s that my son knew a stranger’s opinion of what he wore was more important to his grandmother that her relationship with him. He learned that it was not safe to be himself around his grandmother. That comment wounded their connection, and my son did not forget. 

I’ll leave a link to Brenee Brown’s book The Gift of Imperfection in the show notes. I highly recommend it.

And, if you enjoy reading, I also recommend Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. She   describes two mindsets: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Perfectionists have fixed mindsets; healthy strivers have the growth mindset.

This Stanford psychologist say she herself was the perfect child.

She believed that her perfectionism would lead her to a life of success.

Through her research she found quite the opposite. The people who were successful had a growth mindset—not a fixed mindset. 

It makes sense. When people with a fixed mindset are invited to try new things, they often say no. The author herself turned down a chance to compete in a spelling bee. Why risk her reputation on an activity that could uncover their imperfections Who would she be if she were not perfect? 

People who chase perfection understand it doesn’t make sense.

Intellectually they concede that perfection is an unattainable goal. 

They understand that their perfection-seeking behaviors defy logic. 

They may fully understand the high personal price they pay from their perfectionistic habits. They’re anxious. They may be burned out. Their own jobs and relationships may even be threatened. It makes them miserable. 

How and why is it so so hard to give up perfectionism—even when it leads to so much misery? 

It’s because we have human brains.

When our hunter-gatherer ancestors face the hungry saber-toothed tiger, or any other predator, they would fight, flee or freeze. They would get back to safety.

Our ancestors faced a different kind of threat that was potentially lethal. Separation from the tribe meant almost certain death. To avoid the danger that comes with being kicked out of the tribe, there’s a fourth danger response called fawning. You earn your place in the tribe by being seen by others in a positive light. Perfectionism and people-pleasing are cousins. They’re both ways to reduce the risk that the tribe will reject you. Perfectionism is driven by the primal force to escape danger and stay alive.

All of this can happen below the level of conscious thought. People with perfectionist habits don’t consciously say to themselves, “I’m unworthy, and the only way I can earn my place is by never making a mistake.”

Instead, they experience the urge to keep trying to be perfect. Further, the reptile brain sees literal pictures of perfection on social feeds and pushes harder. “See. Perfection is possible, try harder.” 

You can see how the OCD Monster would glom onto perfectionism. The OCD monster is always looking for potential threats and danger that you may overlook. Many OCD themes like moral OCD or harm OCD come down to idea, “If you don’t fit in, you’ll be pushed out and die.” 

Let’s summarize.

Perfectionism is driven by the fear that if you just showed up as your authentic self, warts and all—you wouldn’t be enough. Instead, you protect yourself with a cloak of perfectionistic habits that are certain to fail.

Perfectionism is not a badge of honor. It’s a set of behaviors that will keep you stuck.

AND you can learn different habits.

Here are some exercises to help you begin to shake free from  perfectionism.  You’ll find a link to a worksheet in the show notes

1. First, please pay attention to language you use around perfection. You might be tempted to say, “He’s such a perfectionist.” That’s like saying “He’s so OCD.” Perfection-seeking behaviors are what you do—not who you are. Further, these identities tend to glorify the very conditions that do so much damage. 

2. Look at some areas of your own life in which you seek perfection. It may be your own habits, or it may be someone else’s habits that are impacting you. 

Describe some specific examples. “I need new towels, but when I go shopping, there’s something wrong with the towels I find. So I come home empty-handed.” 

3. Ask yourself, “What’s driving these actions? Is it healthy striving, or a way to avoid dangerous outcomes? 

Are you having a hard time finding towels because you’re sensitive to touch and you haven’t found towels that are as soft as the ones you used at the spa? Or are you worried about what people will think when they use your bathroom? Maybe the color has to be perfect.

4. Ask, “How does my perfection-seeking serve me or benefit me?” Maybe you enjoy the compliments.

Your brain might tell you something like, “I would be terrible at my job if I gave up chasing perfection.”

Then ask yourself, “Is that true?” 

In most cases perfectionism creates the very results you’re trying to avoid. 

Let’s say the perfection-seeker is working on a report. They get an email from their boss asking, “How’s the report coming? Do you need anything from me?”  This is a completely reasonable question in this situation. Yet, they feel called out on their procrastination that so often accompanies perfectionism. Then they invest 3 hours crafting the perfect email response, fully aware they just stole three hours they could have investing making progress on the report. 

What if perfectionism contributes to your missing deadlines, procrastinating or ignoring responsibilities because you just don’t have enough time? Would you say that employee is good at their job? 

4. Ask, “What are some of the costs you pay for perfectionism? If you have the drive for perfection, how much anxiety do you have over being perfect? How has this impacted your relationships or your education? 

If this person with perfectionist habits is someone you love like my son’s grandmother, how have these habits impacted you and your family? 

6. Imagine the person seeking perfection is always accompanied by someone or some being whose job it is to make things perfect. Think about having a conversation with this “person” or being. Ask, “Why is being perfect so important? What’s the difference between perfect and good enough? Are there any situations in which good enough is good enough?”

7. Practice making on- purpose mistakes. I remember watching a TED talk given by a man who said that his fear of rejection was holding him back. He decided to take it head on with an intervention he called “rejection therapy.” Every day he would intentionally put himself fin situations in which he knew people would say no.  He would go up to a complete stranger and and ask to borrow $50. He would go into a a fast food restaurant and ask, “Can I get a refill of hamburgers? You know, you give free drink refills; I want a hamburger refill.” He asked a Krispe Cream employee to make him a donuts in the configuration of the the Olympics logo. They did it. I’ll leave a link to his TED talk

What if you tried some mistake therapy. Every day you would challenge yourself to make a mistake that showed to the world you are not perfect. Maybe you wear unpaired socks or you wear a red clown nose. You intentionally send out an email with a spelling error. When you’re walking your dog, you skip instead of walk.  You set a goal that’s absolutely impossible to achieve and try anyway. Let us know: what mistakes did you set up. How did the mistake therapy work for you? 

8. Know that if you’re managing OCD and you identify compulsions are related to your perfectionistic habits, bring them to your therapist for ERP. That’s what Coleen the dental hygienist did with great results.

Just to wrap up…It’s tempting to see perfectionism as a desirable or positive quality – it shows that we pay close attention to detail and get things right! 

Now you see perfectionism for what it really is. It’s an unhealthy habit that does more harm than good. In fact, it can be downright dangerous.

Perfectionism habits can be unlearned. You can switch from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. 

And if no one has told you yet today, I admire your courage. Managing OCD may be the hardest job I’ve. Whether you’re an OCD Warrior or and OCD Champion, you’re not alone. There’s hope for a better tomorrow. You got this!