Perfectionism

Hey everybody! It’s Charlotte again (I post blogs here every Wednesday, and Brooke posts every Sunday.) Well, I guess most Wednesdays because this week I'm posting my blog on a Friday. In the past, I’d beat myself up over not being able to post this blog the exact day and time I’m meant to, but recently I’ve learned to give myself grace. I’ve had a busy week, and have been working on so many different projects which I’m really proud of. No biggie if a blog is a few days late, right?!

Whatever it is, the way you tell your ry online can make all the difference

Well… in the eyes of a perfectionist, this would be a BIG BIGGIE, which is exactly what I’m discussing today. Perfectionism is something that at one point in my life had the power to destroy me, but is now an almost forgotten concept. Learning to let go of my perfectionism has bettered my life in about a million different ways, and I’m so glad I get to share this with you because I seriously wish I had someone to share this with me.

Well… in the eyes of a perfectionist, this would be a BIG BIGGIE, which is exactly what I’m discussing today. Perfectionism is something that at one point in my life had the power to destroy me, but is now an almost forgotten concept. Learning to let go of my perfectionism has bettered my life in about a million different ways, and I’m so glad I get to share this with you because I seriously wish I had someone to share this with me.

But first, let me give you a few updates on what’s going on with TRUE (which fun fact, stands for This Road Unlocks Everything!)

1) We reached 400 Instagram followers this week. We’ve only had our TRUE Instagram (@thisroadunlockseverything) for a month, so seeing that people are resonating with our content is a HUGE deal to us!

2) We are going to be doing weekly YouTube videos starting next week. This will give us a better chance to connect with you and express ourselves in more vulnerable ways.

3) Soon (hopefully in the next week) we’ll be releasing our free handouts on this website. They will help you get to know yourself better and are an incredible resource for anyone from self-love newbies to self-love pros.

4) Last, but CERTAINLY not least, we will be releasing our TRUE COURSE on August 1st. It will cover everything from self-love to  chasing your dreams (without burnout!) If you’re interested, we’d suggest you sign up for our newsletter below. We’ll keep you updated on everything you need to know (plus give out a ton of free information, advice, and support) without being spammy.  We only send one newsletter a week, and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Now for the blog. It’s a subject I’ve learned a lot about (unfortunately, the hard way,) so in advance I’m warning you this blog may be lengthy. Grab a snack and get ready for me to spill my heart to you. Here goes!

My battle with perfectionism began when I was in elementary school. I was a pretty careless and free child who never really worried about, well, anything. It was only around Grade 4 (when I was 9) that I started to be severely bullied by the other girls in my grade. They would call me names, exclude me, and gossip about me behind my back. This made me feel isolated, extremely insecure and ruined my confidence. For the first time, I started to worry that I wasn’t enough as a person. I felt the only reason that could justify their behavior was that there was simply something wrong WITH ME. I felt I wasn’t good at school, didn’t do well at any extracurriculars and was all-around unlikeable (which wasn’t true). Being so young, I couldn’t fully grasp why the other girls were so mean, which was likely just that they were trying to deal with their own unhappiness. Because of all this, I placed all these messy emotions onto myself and believed I was the problem. And I guess it’s safe to say that I wanted a way out. 

So, I turned to fixing the external elements of my life. I decided that the only way for people to like me was to do well at everything, and I didn’t realize at the time how toxic this way of thinking was.

It started small. I just tried harder at school and extracurriculars. A great example was my Grade 4 cross country tournament. The year before I had also done cross country, but didn’t care about how I placed. But now that I placed this immense pressure to “be better”, I put in a lot more effort. I remember (all of a sudden) I was forcing my mom to take me running virtually every single day. As one can imagine. I improved come race day and was no longer the worst on my team but one of the best. This made me feel proud, but my accomplishment was overshadowed by my teammates giving snarky back-handed compliments (like calling me “lucky” because I didn’t deserve to have done well.) I felt alone again and thought that all I needed to do was be even better.

This became a terrible, toxic cycle that continued for years. I always associated “being liked” with “being successful,” which are mutually exclusive things. Even when I did make friends with kind, genuine people, I stayed distant because, underneath all the distractions, I felt unworthy. 

Many areas of my life did become better, on paper. My grades improved, I won tons of competitions and I packed my schedule with ANYTHING that would look good on a resume (yes, I was thinking of resumes at 12 years old.) I started to get a lot of praise, at least from adults. They’d say I was ambitious and hard-working. Rather than taking these compliments to heart, I brushed them off. When I got any criticism or constructive feedback, I became angry and self-persecutory. You can probably imagine how this can slowly transform into perfectionism. When you base all your worth on external things, failure seems like the end of the world (and something you’d do anything to prevent.) It wasn’t just about trying hard anymore, it was about being perfect. Nothing ever felt like enough, so I was constantly left reaching for this impossible standard of living.

To break it down, these are the symptoms of my perfectionism (unique to me, everyone is different).

• I never celebrated my wins. I just moved onto the next thing.

• I pushed myself way past my limits, never stopping to take breaks.

• Anxiety and stress became a way of life. Sweaty palms, overthinking, panic attacks, brain fog, all of it.

• I beat myself up over the tiniest mistakes or failures (like getting one question wrong on a test, tripping over my words while speaking, forgetting a minor detail, etc.)

• I didn’t allow myself to do anything fun. I never spent time with friends, relaxed or stopped working.

• I compared myself to others - always. I wasn’t necessarily a jealous person, I was just hyper aware of how other people were doing in comparison to myself.

• I became pessimistic. I believed everything was against me and there was no way out.

• I spoke negatively to myself all the time. I degraded myself, called myself names, and held myself to a standard I was never able to reach (so I was always disappointed in myself.)

• I was socially awkward. I was so consumed in how others perceived me that I could never live in the moment.

• I was always checking on my appearance. I felt nervous eating in public and spent hours getting ready.

Eventually, my anxiety got so bad that I couldn’t do things I normally could. Public speaking became much harder, and I would appear more and more nervous each time. I would forget lines when I was acting because I was so caught up in my head. I started to procrastinate doing schoolwork or simple tasks because working on anything became so draining. I was miserable. I felt I was missing out on everything good in life. And, for perspective, this was all going on until like last year (so that’s like 7 years of this pressure and perfectionism.)

So, how did I fix it? That’s a great question and one I had to reflect upon for a while. No, it didn’t just happen, but it’s also not something I was actively working on. You see, I never saw perfectionism as the issue. I thought my anxiety was the issue, and I didn’t think there was any solution to that. We often do that as people: we blame the symptom and not the cause. It was only deep into therapy that I actually identified perfectionism as the problem.

With that, my number one tip is therapy. I know it’s not available to everyone, which is why I feel very fortunate that I had access to it.