Threading the needle (me)/ Understanding Unhelpful Perfectionism (Jennifer Kemp)

Hiii it’s me again this is kind of a lot sorry. So perfectionism has kind of been one of the main antagonistic forces of my life, and I can really boil all my mental illnesses/OCD subtypes into perfectionism. I think of it as a “perfectionism triangle,” where I focus on moral perfectionism, perfectionism about my appearance, and “performance” perfectionism (academic/creative/job-related). Re academia, I dropped out of school when I was young because of debilitating academic perfectionism, and I had to do a whole kind of facing-down-of-the-dragon to get myself back in school. It’s still something I struggle with constantly, but I have thought a lot about it/ spent a lot of time navigating it if any of this is helpful.

I’m linking to an article by Jennifer Kemp that’s a nice little primer if you’re interested - this was my first time reading it, but I’'m pretty aligned with all of it.

Basically for me what I’ve learned is it’s really about threading a needle. Perfectionism isn’t something I can just turn off, or something I even want to turn off completely. It has worked for me in many ways — I am a conscientious, detail-oriented person, and that can really serve me. And then, it can also totally freeze me in place/make me absolutely miserable/make me want to shut myself up in a room and avoid the world. So with school, it’s not about: I’m doing perfectionism right now or I’m not doing perfectionism right now. It’s more about, huh, I sure have been working on this essay a long time, I wonder if I should set a timer and cut myself off after a point. Or, I know I’m harder on myself in the evenings, so maybe I’ll have a rule where I don’t work in the evenings. Or even just: I have all these ideas about how this isn’t good enough, but maybe at this point I know not to full-on trust my brain and take those thoughts with a grain of salt.

Generally for the procrastination of it all, I’m pretty strict about doing a small amount every day. Some days I can’t do anything, and that’s okay, but breaking it up is really helpful for me. I don’t have ADHD, and know that adds so much difficulty, but hopefully that’s still helpful. I also know I do my best thinking in the morning (I deal a lot with fatigue and brain fog), so I try to get my work done in the morning, and then take rest/not working seriously when I can.

Re writing: something I tell myself is, I can either write imperfectly, or I can not write at all. That’s really the deal. I am gonna write and it is gonna feel horrible and frankly disgusting sometimes, or I’m just not gonna write. When you break it down like that, it’s pretty simple. Another thing I tell myself: every single person I admire has failed spectacularly at some point. It’s very chic to do.

So sorry to just throw all this at you, but this is something that has really been hard for me and I wanted to share my thoughts. Solidarity <3