The Silent Perfectionist

The Silent Perfectionist

Your standard is high. And it applies more harshly to yourself than to others. Before starting some work, you already know what level its result has to be. When the foreboding arises that you might not reach that standard, you sometimes reach the conclusion that not starting is the better choice. The creed better not to do it than to be wrong protects you and at the same time confines you.

Is it that you cannot start because the standard is high, or that you raise the standard because you fear starting?

When anxiety arrives, your reaction is unusual. When others collapse under anxiety or avoid it, you rather tend to strengthen rules and immerse yourself in work. You tidy the desk, organize the spreadsheet, make procedures denser. This is a defense mechanism against chaos, and a strategy to reduce the anxiety of the uncontrollable by focusing on the controllable. It is effective, but it does not solve the root cause.

Emotional exchange is uncomfortable for you. Rather than honestly answering the question how are you these days, ending it with busy or just so-so is more natural. You can calmly analyze emotion, but bringing it out and sharing it is a separate matter. Defining a relationship by efficiency and results feels safer. It is because emotion has many variables, is hard to predict, and is not controllable.

When you have learned that you are wrong, you quietly digest it alone. Publicly admitting a mistake or asking for help feels, within your standard, like a weakness that is not allowed. This way of handling it alone is enough for yourself, but at the same time creates distance from the people around. Your high standard is an unspoken message toward both yourself and others, and learning the way of loosening it a little is the key to liberation. That key is already in your hand. Without abandoning your standards — just by turning their direction — your perfectionism can turn from a frame that squeezes you into the force that finishes things.