The Perfection Deception: Why Striving to Be Perfect Is Sabotaging Your Relationships, Making You Sick, and Holding Your Happiness Hostage
A predictable reaction to Dr. Jane Bluestein’s new book The Perfection Deception would be the question “What’s wrong with perfectionism?” (HCI Books $14.95). The idea of perfectionism is confused by most to be a healthy drive for excellence. Dr. Bluestein, however, explains the dangers of reaching for total perfection. There is a difference between reaching for great achievement and the physical wound that develops, or the voice of the inner critic that screams “failure” even at the face of true effort and success.
Since beginning her research, Dr. Bluestein has uncovered a wide variety of places where perfectionism presents itself. There is a constant barrage of information about what a person should be, look like, and act that leads to corrosive effects on how people see their bodies, relationships, work, and sense of worth. Commercials, ads, television shows, movies, magazines are just some examples of where these deep-seated ideals of perfectionism can be found. No matter how many outlets use perfectionism as a sign of a good thing, striving for perfectionism can be dangerous. On the other hand striving to do your best is a healthy response to any goal in life. Because of the confusion this idea brings, Dr. Bluestein specifically states that perfectionism is not necessarily a positive. She wants to make it clear that perfectionism is akin to an addiction.
As a result of her work she hopes to help people recognize the various forms in which perfectionism can seep into a person’s ideals. From there she moves on to explaining how perfectionism shapes and defines our reality or identity. Dr. Bluestein tackles this issue head-on by defining the ways perfectionism affects a person’s wellbeing. In the last section of the book she works to heal those suffering from perfectionist ideals. She employs different solutions for fighting perfectionistic habits and, as a victim herself, Dr. Bluestein admits it takes time and hard work to make progress. But imperfect progress is at least an attainable goal. Some of the issues that stem from perfectionism are deep-seated and will come back to challenge you when it is least expected. Growth and change, she believes, are possible. Her life experiences have shown that with the right information and tools people can work towards a life where the need to have perfection does not run their lives. This book is in turn Dr. Bluestein’s way of delivering that information and tools to anyone in need.
About the Author:
Dr. Jane Bluestein is an educator and an award-winning author of twelve books. She is a dynamic and entertaining speaker who has worked with thousands of counselors, healthcare professionals, parents, childcare workers, educators, and other community members worldwide. She has appeared internationally as a speaker and talk-show guest, including several appearances as a guest expert on CNN, National Public Radio and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Formerly a classroom teacher in inner-city Pittsburgh, crisis-intervention counselor, teacher training program coordinator, and volunteer with high-risk teens at a local Day Treatment Program, Dr. Bluestein currently heads Instructional Support Services, Inc., a consulting and resource firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more information, please visit www.janebluestein.com.
Available on Amazon and wherever books are sold or to order directly from the publisher, contact: www.hcibooks.com or (800) 441-5569
The Perfection Deception Why trying to Be Perfect Is Sabotaging Your Relationships, Making You Sick, and Holding Your Happiness Hostage
ISBN: 978-0-7573-1825-2 $14.95—August 2015
Author Interview
1. At the beginning of the book you mention that you had several people asking you, “What’s wrong with perfectionism?” How did you answer them?
Well, it actually took most of the book to answer that question! The shortest possible answer compares perfectionism (and the need to pull off a certain image or avoid anticipated negative reactions from making mistakes) with the healthy pursuit of excellence. I’m actually quite a big fan of accuracy, precision, and doing the best we can do. As an educator, I also know that our best efforts can always be improved upon, and that growth and learning involves imperfect steps along the way.
2. What does perfectionism look like?
This is where it gets tricky, because it can look a lot like the healthier version of trying to do our best. But “healthy striving” does not usually involve trying to prove ourselves or our worth, nor would it likely be used as a way of avoiding feelings or dealing with the real issues in our lives. Not only that, but my perfectionism may look very different from how it shows up in someone else.
I tend to cross the line when I’m over-committing or over-correcting, or when I actually think I can accomplish a to-do list that would reasonably take weeks to finish. For other people, it may demand plastic surgery or self-starvation to get their body to look a certain way, a failure to start a project (or finish one), not letting their kids have friends over because it will mess up the house, or, say not being able to work if there is one stray paper clip on their desk.
3. You talk about the impact of the media, mentioning that “the media may be the easiest to target, but it is also the hardest to ignore.” Does that mean the media causes perfectionism?
No, I wouldn’t blame the media for perfectionism. The images and values that confront us in the media (and especially advertising) do, however, encourage the pursuit of certain ideals that are not especially realistic for most people. We are barraged with messages about who we are supposed to be, how we’re supposed to look, what our lives are supposed to look like. I don’t think that’s likely to change.
My main concern was about what makes us vulnerable to these messages; a feeling like we’re inadequate if we don’t drive a certain car, wear a certain brand—not to mention size, make a certain income, or live up to standards that really are not appropriate for who we really are.
4. Why is fear such a big component of perfectionism?
I was a bit surprised how often that word came up in the research and interviews I did while I was working on this book. The whole idea of needing to be (or appear) perfect is almost always linked to some kind of fear, whether we’re talking about a fear of failure, rejection, intimacy, or abandonment, or risk to our job or financial security or social status. What fascinated me was how much these fears can cost us in terms of our physical and mental health, and in some instances, financially as well.
5. How does our early upbringing affect our tendency toward perfectionism?
A few of the resources I used mentioned a biological, inborn personality trait that makes some of us more hard-wired for perfectionistic tendencies. However, each of these resources also acknowledged the impact of an environment and experiences, especially when we’re very young. Infants and young children who are not getting the responses they need from the adults in their lives – including very basic needs such as food, safety, or attention – will do everything in their power to get these needs met.
Unfortunately, a lot of parents, including well-intentioned adults, have other issues and stress they’re dealing with and aren’t always there for their kids the way their kids need them to be. So their children develop a repertoire of coping, which often includes trying to be good enough, or trying to keep the parents happy enough (to avoid the parents getting angry), and trying to control a lot of factors that are not within their ability or responsibility to manage. This can also happen with parents who are a little too over-attached or smothering. If we’re not getting the responses we need from the people on whom we depend, it’s easy to start believing that there must be something wrong with us.
6. You mention parents on both ends of the spectrum. How can these contribute to the development of perfectionism in a child?
Children will try to get attention and approval from a parent who might be neglectful, distracted, depressed, addicted, or angry, for example. That makes sense—trying to create a sense of safety from the people on whom we depend. But there are also perfectionistic parents who “turn their tots into trophies,” looking for status in their children’s achievements, performance, or appearance. That’s a lot of pressure to put on kids, and fusing our identity and worth to another person is always going to be a risky endeavor.
7. How can parents encourage their kids without encouraging perfectionism?
It’s all about responses—to achievements and mistakes. If we express anger, impatience, or even disappointment whenever kids make mistakes, it’s easy to develop a false sense of our ability to influence and control how people feel. The same is true when we connect their achievements to our happiness. I’d like to see kids making choices for some outcome besides how-other-people-will-react. (Look at the connection to the power of peer pressure here.) Kids’ mistakes are great opportunities for helping them learn how to make better decisions next time.
If we can shift from labeling kids as “good” or “smart” to focusing on their efforts, we don’t tie up their value with their performance. Likewise, if we can describe what kids have done and connect their choices to some meaningful positive outcomes of their efforts, kids start to see the power they have to influence and change their lives when something isn’t working for them. Let’s just quit telling kids that they’re good or worthwhile or that they make us happy when they do good things, and respond to failures and mistakes simply as steps along the way to learning.
8. What would you say is the biggest problem perfectionists’ face?
Well, clearly there are quite a few, but I think that most of the problems start with a tendency toward all-or-nothing thinking. That’s where we get the idea that mistakes equal failures, where one cookie leads to a binge, where not being at the top of our class tempts us to drop out, procrastinate, or assume we are at the bottom of the heap, even if we’re only in second place. It’s what drives us to “get it right” and what inspires us to just give up when we can’t. It’s the “always” or “never” statements we make about our worth or our abilities. It’s incredibly disabling and it’s so much a part of our culture that we don’t even realize how often we reduce a person to some superficial, 2-dimensional tagline that we nevertheless accept as real.
9. We know that perfectionism can affect a person’s physical and mental health. How does it impact relationships?
Perfectionists can be really annoying. When we bring perfectionism to a relationship, we also bring along a set of expectations and standards—whether for our self or the other person—which can create a great deal of stress and alienation. When our sense of worth depends on being right, it often comes at the expense of someone else’s dignity and worth, because we insist on making them wrong (win-lose). That will put a lot of pressure on any relationship.
Look at the wide range of possible perfectionistic behaviors, and you’ll see a spectrum stretching from highly self-focused on one end to outwardly hypercritical at the other—with plenty of people likely to be quite capable of both extremes. That said, I’m frankly more concerned with the feelings and needs at the core of these expressions of perfectionism than I am with the direction in which they are projected. Whether our actions represent a lack of self-worth or a disregard for the dignity and emotional safety of someone else, I see similar threads of anger, impatience, frustration, disappointment, and even contempt.
10. You recently got an email from someone asking, “How can you tell if you’re trying to be perfect?” How did you answer that question?
I said I’d probably start by looking at my intentions: Am I doing something to satisfy curiosity or a particular passion, or am I’m doing it to look good, get approval, gain self-worth, or avoid negative reactions from others? There’s a big difference in motivation. If I’m interested in growth—learning, improving, or producing, trying to get ahead of where I was when I started, then I’m not quite so worried about getting it right, especially in the beginning. I also said that I’d want to look at the cost against whatever benefit I’m seeking. Is it worth the stress, pain, health risks to rewrite a paper a dozen times, starve or carve myself to fit into some random cultural ideal of beauty, meet an unrealistic deadline, or say, choose a career or mate based on pressure to get conditional approval or acceptance from some person or group that’s important to me. I guess the bottom line is: are we having fun yet?
11. Is there a cure for perfectionism?
Rather than looking for a cure—which, frankly, feels like a rather all-or-nothing approach to healing perfectionism—I think it might make more sense to look at ways we can recognize our inclinations and perhaps get to a point where they aren’t running our lives. I also think that it may be easier to “get” this disorder on an intellectual level than it is to actually heal the parts of ourselves deep down that created these tendencies in the first place.
Yes, we need to deal with the anxiety and stress and depression, but if we don’t look at the belief system that says “I’m not good enough unless (or until)…” then we’re really only dealing with a surface piece of what could be a challenging recovery process, one that could take some time to get through. I would not recommend looking for a quick fix for dealing with these issues.
Joan E. Childs, LCSW, has been in private practice since 1978. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in couples therapy, known as Encounter-Centered Couples Therapy. An expert in Codependency, Inner Child Work, Original Pain Work, and Second Stage Recovery, she is certified in many modalities including a master practitioner in NLP, (neuro-linguistic programming), a master practitioner in EMDR, (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), Supervision, Hypnosis, PAIRS, (Practical Applications for Intimate Relationship Skills), and is a Certified Grief Counselor. She was the first affiliate of the John Bradshaw Center in the United States and has made appearances on national TV shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Mark Wahlberg Show, Maury Povich, The Montel Williams Show, and many more.
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