Last month, I published a children’s book about divorce. Someone asked me why a psychologist who works on anxiety and perfectionism wrote a book about divorce, no less for children? I forget that many people don’t recognize how perfectionism can wreak havoc in our life if we leave it to its own devices.
Many perfectionists love projects.
Projects contain the perfect combination of control- “I can choose each aspect of this activity”, suspense – “I wonder how much work, effort, creativity is needed for it to turn out amaaazing?” ego – “This worked out because of me”, multitasking – “There’s so much to do and while one area is churning, I can work on the next.” Marriages can be considered a project or even worse, the spouse can be thought of this way as well.
When we marry someone in the hopes that they will change, when we move into the house, when we have the kids, when we turn a certain age- we are marrying the potential not the actual person standing in front of us. Since perfectionists tend to focus on making the components of their outside world perfect to help them feel better about themselves, marriages like these take a hard hit. It’s offensive to your partner for them to think that you would only be happy with them once they become someone else. It’s also nerve-racking because the relationship is sustainable as long as one is in control and the other changes to fit the other’s liking.
Perfectionism affects children as well.
An unhappy parent who has perfectionist tendencies can be critical of them along with the spouse. The children may feel the pull to favor one “safe” parent over the other creating messiness in the actual parent-child relationship. Perfectionism also creates a gaping hole in the children’s self-esteem feeling that they too, must be perfect in order to be fully accepted by the people they look up to or care about. First, the parents, then expanding to teachers, peers, and romantic interests. Toxic perfectionism, without insight and containment, is like a plague on the individuals in the system and the generations that follow.
