The most apt description I have come across of perfectionism is that it stems from some unresolved trauma that led to a fear of not being accepted and resulting lack of confidence.
I know that you didn't exactly invent the term unresolved trauma, BUT...
As a person with a lot of unresolved trauma (and perfectionism issues), I hate the term "unresolved trauma". I've been working hard with a therapist and a psychologist for years, and I've made a ton of progress, but my trauma will never be truly resolved. Every few years some new facet of damage will pop up that I won't expect and will have to work through.
It's a never ending process, and (imo) the term unresolved trauma implies that there should be a point where it becomes resolved. That's just not realistic or true for a lot of people.
I've even seen therapists who claimed that I could completely 'heal'. But that's a perfectionist attitude itself, which had me banging my head against the wall for too long.
I think the truth is far closer to 'able to live a satisfying life in spite of'
"Resolution" of trauma is generally nothing but an imaginary "perfect" state. It doesn't exist and usually chasing that is another form of the same dynamic rather a departure from it.
Kudos to you for identifying that for yourself and trying to distance from it!
One could argue that there will never be an accurate term, and thus hating the term for not being completely accurate is perfectionism.
But I could be wrong.... (Says the perfectionist, letting himself off the hook if he is wrong, which he may very well be because he's talking out his ass)
Or being required to do something really important, but failing and suffering/seeing bad things happen in part because they or someone they depended on was unprepared (even if knowing how to be prepared, or being prepared was not really realistic in the circumstance).
It can come from something as simple as the family losing their income and having serious problems due to economic issues, to a parent dying, or a major childhood illness, death of a friend, etc.
Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call it ‘perfectionism’ has saved my ass many times, because it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or get out of the situation successfully.
Many, many people I have known over the years have not been so lucky.
Pretty sure it never hit a pathological point though, which something like OCD definitely is.
The way to turn it into a better coping skill is to evaluate where it is and is not helpful - it’s almost certainly has not always been wasted effort, though for folks in particularly bad places, maybe it has. CBT has a really useful ‘Worry Worksheet’ which can help walk people through and reality test things like this, which can help tease it apart.
Prioritizing self care is also key, as when it is a problem it’s usually because other important things aren’t getting addressed (like rest, or positive social interactions) because someone is hyper focusing on perfecting one specific thing, and necessarily unable to tackle the other things that are important to be functional. This leads to a spiral of less and less ability to be functional, which rightfully will trigger anxiety and the maladaptive behavior even more. Hopefully the person is able to snap out of it, or environmental/external factors stop it, but that doesn’t always happen.
If someone was in a situation where they ended up in a unexpectedly bad situation or emergency as a kid, this is probably one of the better ‘bad coping skill’ ways of handling it.
Other, even less helpful but common coping skills for that kind of trauma include:
- pretending that the problem is not or could never actually be a problem (delusion)
- avoiding any reminders of the problem (avoidance)
- attacking others as the cause of the problem, when they aren’t (deflection, finger pointing)
- making the problem someone else’s problem in a destructive way (usually using manipulation, gaslighting, abuse)
> Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call it ‘perfectionism’ has saved my ass many times, because it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or get out of the situation successfully.
That bit really resonated with me. Having a fixed mindset in certain cases has allowed me to get away in some extreme challenges where a growth mindset surely would not have.
Nod, the challenge with it, like many things, is if it is appropriate/helpful/most useful for the actual situation at hand.
There are a whole class of issues, including PTSD, Anxiety, Depression (and related or semi-related stuff like perfectionism), that are not so much that the behavior or feeling is bad or wrong in any absolute sense - it’s just not useful or appropriate in the current environment and it is causing distress and life problems because of it. There are plenty of life circumstances where any of those states could be appropriate and would help the person. PTSD in the checkout line at the grocery store is clearly not one of them.
More nuanced research over time seems to be discovering it’s sometimes less about ‘smash the symptoms with a hammer forever’ (heavy medication) and sometimes it’s more about unblocking whatever is stuck that is stopping the person from learning and adjusting appropriately to what IS actually happening, and process whatever was going on before, so they can get out of the ‘stuck’ bad state.
This does include medication, among other things sometimes. Sometimes it’s also changing environment, removing bad influences/people, living support, etc.
Definitely not applicable to everyone. But applicable to a surprising number of cases.
The unresolved trauma part seems plausible but at least from personal anecdote the corresponding fear may not be of social ostracism in particular but any of a larger family of undesired social consequences (self-image could be considered "social" insofar as it concerns one's relationship with oneself)
Yea, I find when I seem to be the most plagued by it is when I want to control how other people are feeling (and also behaving as a result). I fear that if I publish a thing, people may feel confused or angry or sometimes worse: indifferent. But also that someone will feel so smitten and overjoyed that they come to me saying that I'm a god or a superhero/savior. I can sometimes deeply fear people feeling things that I don't want them to feel, and more so, responding in ways I don't want them to.
I think a lot of it comes down to uncertainty: I don't know what will happen and I want to know what will happen. I don't know if people will love me, hate me, or ignore me, and if so, how they'll do it, and so much of that uncertainty can drive me into trying to control as much as I can (or think I can).
For me, perfectionism seems to lie in that fear of the unknown and trying to mitigate as much (read: squash/eliminate) of the uncertainty instead of recognizing that we're human beings and so many things are outside of our control.
