Perfectionism is Not Pathology

If you’re a perfectionist, there’s no cure.

That’s according to Katherine Morgan Schafler, who has written The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power. In it, she frees up perfectionists to lean into their perfectionism as long as it’s working for them and doing no harm. Schafler has developed a quiz to help you learn where you fall on the perfectionism spectrum – because not all perfectionists care about the same things or act the same way about every issue.

Schafler says we should probably stop talking about curing or fixing perfectionists. We need them, after all; they’re the ones who “never stop noticing the gulf between reality and the ideal, and they never stop longing to actively bridge the gap.”

She writes that “The noticing and the longing last a lifetime, hence the psychical constancy to perfectionism. People who relate to being perfectionists relate to that identity interminably.” To our non-perfectionist friends, partners, and coworkers, this state of being looks uncomfortable, even painful. Although my husband loves having beautifully organized pantry shelves, he twitches every time I turn jars or re-stack cans of beans to make our storage look just so.

Even when we agree that things should look perfect, the how can be a struggle. Last year, he helped move all our spices into matching glass jars with classy labels. He was an enthusiastic partner in the project, even volunteering to arrange the jars alphabetically in the drawer to make them easy to find and access.

Unfortunately, he’s arranged them from Z at the top to A at the bottom. Obviously, the only correct way to do it is from A-Z. He sighed heavily as he rearranged everything. But he understands my coaching mantra: there are only two things you can say to someone who’s giving it their best. “Perfect!” Or “Try again.”

Schafler says that perfectionism can make someone unhappy, perpetually aiming for an impossible standard. This is the dark side of perfectionism, and what she worked on when she was a practicing therapist. But even as a therapist, she worried that focusing on one issue was a limiting approach.

She writes, “Illness models are based on atomism, which supports the idea that the source of what’s wrong can be traced down to one thing. Wellness models, conversely, are based on holism (the opposite of atomism). Holistic care is the idea that each aspect of self (your social environment, work life, genetic predispositions, etc.) is interconnected within an indivisible whole. When you approach your health holistically, you’re not just trying to find one wrong thing and fix it, you’re working to strengthen each part of yourself so that you can become healthier overall.”

Her approach is to help everyone understand what drives them and learn to work within those needs. She also wants perfectionists to understand that the dark side of their drive might be the fear of failure and disapproval. They’re more prone to hearing a nasty critic’s voice in their head telling them they’re never going to be good enough. (If you listen hard, you know whose voice it is.)

So she recommends that we change our approach to helping perfectionists become happier. Instead of saying “Let’s figure out what’s wrong with you,” she says we should simply say “Let’s figure out what’s happening here.”

Managing perfectionism by telling perfectionists to stop being perfectionists is like managing anger by telling people to “calm down.” Never in the history of the world has this approach worked, Schafler says, yet we continue to barrel through on this doomed quest to get perfectionists to fall in love with average. It is not going to happen.

Schafler says, “Perfectionism is a phenomenon, not a disorder.” Once the perfectionist you love, work with, or manage comes to terms with their particular style of wanting to make everything perfect, they can relax into it – and maybe, just relax (a bit.) As with any other kind of divergent thinking, we (and I am a Classic Perfectionist) can and should  stop thinking of ourselves as broken and needing to be fixed.

We just need a little more love and understanding. And that picture frame tilted a quarter inch to the left.

To learn how to love the perfectionist in your life (or love yourself more), read up on The Parisian Perfectionist, The Messy Perfectionist, and the Intense Perfectionist.

Published by candacemoody

Candace’s background includes Human Resources, recruiting, training and assessment. She spent several years with a national staffing company, serving employers on both coasts. Her writing on business, career and employment issues has appeared in the Florida Times Union, the Jacksonville Business Journal, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and 904 Magazine, as well as several national publications and websites. Candace is often quoted in the media on local labor market and employment issues.
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