When is perfectionism bad for you?

Do you want to stop being a perfectionist? Is this something that is getting in the way of your life?

Then start by removing your judgement around it. It doesn’t matter how or why you turned out this way. We focus so much on the problems that perfectionism creates for us that we forget that perfectionism is a coping mechanism.

Perfectionism isn’t bad for you. It isn’t good. It just is.

It is a coping mechanism that was protecting you from a pain that your child self could not understand. Would you judge your child self for doing whatever it had to do to survive? How could your child self know that this would become a problem for your adult self? This is why removing our judgement is the first step.

What you need is self-compassion, not another listicle on how to overcome your perfectionism.

Language and labels are so important because that’s how our simple brains process information. So take perfectionism out of the “bad” bucket and see it for what it is. An old wound that you haven’t had the opportunity to heal.

Can you reflect on that and see what comes up? And not attach judgement to that either?

That’s the real work. That’s how you “overcome” it.

This post was created with Typeshare