How to be a Recovering Perfectionist
How to be a recovering perfectionist in five easy steps!
If only it were that simple, right? As an overachiever, I've often wished for a straightforward solution to my perfectionist tendencies. But the truth is that perfectionism is complex. It's not something you can just read about and magically overcome. It's a journey, one that requires self-awareness, acceptance, and a willingness to learn something new.
In this three-part series, we've explored the different ways perfectionism can manifest and the impact it can have on our lives. Now, I want to share some strategies that have helped me and that help my clients navigate perfectionist tendencies. These are not quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions. They're practices that require time, patience, and a commitment to yourself.
So grab a cup of tea, get comfortable, and let's dive in.
Embodied Connection - wholeness in action
Embodied Connection is about tuning into the wisdom of your body and relating to yourself and others from this grounded, centred place. It's connecting to your body, your rhythms, your values, to others, and to bodies bigger than yours.
Embodied connection allows you to act from a place of wholeness. It is the foundation for all the other practices and it's built with awareness, acceptance and appreciation.
Awareness
Embodied awareness asks you to come into contact with the here and now, as it is. It's a practice of noticing - noticing what's on the surface and what the deeper, more subtle layers might be. In essence, you're collecting data about yourself so you can make more informed decisions about how you respond to life.
Close your eyes or soften your gaze and see how much you can notice about your own experience right now.
What physical sensations can you feel?
What information are you getting from your physical senses?
What emotions are present for you? (top tip here - use actual emotional words like I feel sad or I feel angry or I feel joy. So often what we describe as a feeling is actually a thought or a story!).
And finally, what are the thoughts and stories you have about what you're experiencing?
The practice here is not to change anything; it's to pay attention to what is here, whether you think it's nice or not, comfortable or not.
Acceptance
"The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it" ~ Ram Das
Let's get something clear. Acceptance doesn't mean everything is suddenly okay. It doesn't mean tolerating everything or papering over the difficulties. It's not an invitation to bypass your emotions. It doesn't mean you acquiesce or give up.
Acceptance is an opportunity to stop fighting reality. Stop battling upstream and instead work with what is actually here. Start from where you are.
And it turns out that's powerful. It turns out I have so much more energy when I stop battling myself. And that most of things I don't like aren't nearly as terrible as I thought they were when I turn towards them instead of pushing them into the shadows, where they look even more like monsters.
Complete and finished are two different things.
This one is a great practice for the overachievers and control freaks
Sit so you can relax and gently round your spine. Take your arms out the side with the palms facing up, as if you were inviting someone to come in for a hug. You might even like to imagine a small child you like running towards - notice how you would welcome that child into your arms, regardless of whether that child was happy and smiling or in pain and crying. Take an easy breath in and, as you breathe out, say yes and see if you can relax your body a little more.
Appreciation
It seems to me that perfectionism is often driven by scarcity and dissatisfaction. When I'm in perfectionist mode, nothing is quite good enough. So I love the feeling of appreciation as an antidote to the shame and fear of the not-good-enough-ness.
It almost feels trite to mention the Japanese art of wabi-sabi - it's in danger of becoming an overused metaphor. But there is something I find so soothing and joyful about finding the beauty in imperfection and impermanence. Maybe my imperfection and my humanity aren't just something to be tolerated but something to be celebrated and enjoyed.
As the poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen said, "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Another good one for the overachievers and the perpetual procrastinators
A trait of many perfectionists is that we are so focused on our goals that we forget to celebrate our progress. One easy way I like to do this is with a Ta-Dah! list. At the end of a busy day, I write down all of the things I did, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Seeing all my achievements down on paper never fails to make me appreciate how much I am capable of doing, even on the days when I feel like I've got nothing done.
I also still do a little happy dance every time someone signs up to work with me!
cyclical alignment - flowing, not forcing
Cyclical Alignment is aligning your intentions and actions with your natural rhythms and cycles. It's moving with the seasons of your inner world rather than pushing against your natural currents.
Cyclical alignment helps you work in harmony with yourself and the world around you.
There is a right time for everything. Cyclical alignment is a permission slip to rest when you need to and to be all in at those times when your energy is high and you could conquer worlds.
This is a good practice for every flavour of perfectionist!
If you're curious about getting more in tune with your rhythms, I suggest you start with your circadian rhythm - the cycle of your day. A day is relatively short so it's easy to start to spot the patterns and get feedback on what works for you. You might like to keep a diary for a couple of days, noting your levels of energy, focus and mood throughout the day, although most people I work with have a pretty strong intuitive sense of this already. For people who menstruate (and aren't on hormonal contraception), you might want to do this every week over the course of your monthly cycle to see how your menstrual cycle relates to your circadian rhythm.
Then, it's really a case of starting to adapt your schedule to your own rhythm. Have a lot of energy in the morning? Make sure you're using this for the things that matter to you most - don't waste it checking email and scrolling through social media. Feel low in the afternoon? Take a proper lunch break and maybe even a nap if you can, before getting back to work later on - I'm a huge fan of the 'split shift' in my working day.
If you're also doing awareness-building practices like the one I suggested above, you'll probably start to find it easier and easier to recognise your body's subtle cues. Hint - getting fidgety, thirsty, hungry, or if you're finding it hard to focus normally means you need take a break and get that body moving
authentic expression - free to be you
Authentic Expression is expressing your true self. Letting all your colours shine, both light and shadow. It's the courage to be real, raw, and imperfect in how you relate to yourself and others. It’s not abandoning yourself.
Authentic expression builds deeper connections, unlocks creativity and frees you from the exhaustion of pretending.
Right at the heart of perfectionism, there's shame. As Brene Brown describes, we then carry around this twenty-ton shield hoping to protect ourselves but all we end up doing is isolating ourselves from the world. We desperately want to be accepted for who we are and yet we rarely allow the world to see us that way.
Revealing your experience is an invitation for people to join you in your world, exactly as it is. It's a practice of making the hidden seen, the implicit explicit, and the unconscious conscious. Revealing my experience to myself, and then to others, builds on those practices of awareness and acceptance to say "this is me, right now, in all my humanity, strength and vulnerability".
This is not easy. There is a part of me that is terrified of revealing myself in case I'm rejected. But the irony is, when I don't reveal my experience, when I don't admit my own truth, I'm rejecting me. So I lose either way. But when I lean into that vulnerability, when I take that risk, I never fail to have the sense that it's okay. That I don't need that other person to approve of me because I'm okay with who I am - I'm standing by myself.
Now, not everyone will get this. There will be people who tell you that you shouldn't feel that way or who will try to 'fix' you. That's not your problem. Most likely, that person is deeply uncomfortable with those aspects and feelings inside themselves and they don't know to deal with it. You do not need to be fixed, you are not broken, and it's absolutely okay that you feel that way.
More often though, the experience I have when I reveal myself is warmth and open-heartedness. I know I love it when someone allows me to see them - it brings me so much joy to witness the aliveness in another person, no matter what flavour of aliveness that is. And nine times out of ten, I have a 'me too' moment. I realise that I am not alone in my experience. It's not just me. I'm not broken or messed up or doing it wrong because this other human can relate to my experience. It turns out we're all just humaning along together. The danger of silence and keeping it all in is that we start to believe we're alone and we're really not.
A great practice for the people pleasers
This is one of those practices that you kind of just have to do! I find the sentence stem "I'm noticing..." can help me name something that's true in the experience I'm having right now. You can start with people who you feel safe with and start with things that feel easy to share e.g. a physical sensation or a comfortable emotion. You could even practice with yourself and a journal. If you want more practice and support, please come along to The Living Room or one of my authentic relating courses. These are spaces specifically designed to help you practice these skills in a safe and calibrated way so you can then apply these skills out in the wild!
tender discipline - structure with compassion
Tender discipline invites you to open up to possibilities rather than be rigid in your focus. It allows for structure and spontaneity. The focus is on how you do your work - the quality of time and attention - rather than just the outcome.
Tender discipline is a deep "yes" to yourself. It's being devotional in your activities. It invites you to be gentle and graceful with yourself. To release yourself from the incessant pressure you put yourself under. To gift yourself the space to flourish, to feel, and to flow.
The embodiment of tender discipline is the ability the hold the polarities of focus and flow, structure and spontaneity.
To generate more focus, determination, passion, vitality, courage, and direction, try this
Engage more of your forward fire by leaning slightly forwards in your chair. Take 2 or 3 breaths into your chest, pushing and pulling the air. Focus your gaze on a single point. Feel the tone of your muscles and the heat and movement in your body - can you sense your heart beating in your chest?
What would it feel like to be a little more triangular?
Ask yourself “what needs to be done?".
To cultivate more flexibility, collaboration, acceptance, receptivity, empathy and ease, try this
Relax into your flow by sitting back, softening your spine, belly, jaw and gaze. Breathe slowly into the area around your stomach; emphasise the out-breath, perhaps with a sigh. Sense the fluidity of your body.
What would it feel like to be a little more circular?
Ask yourself “what needs to be accepted?".
To build a sense of stability, order, trust, structure, and reliability, try this
Ground yourself down into your roots by feeling your feet on the floor and your body on the chair. Relax a little more into this support. Breath slowly into your belly. Imagine yourself as a mountain or the roots of a tree.
What would it feel like to be a little more square?
Ask yourself “what is true?".
To tap into your creativity, spontaneity, humour, playfulness, and vision, try this
Lift up with your wings by sitting upright and allowing your head to be light on your shoulders. Bring your awareness to the top of your head and face; pay attention to the air moving at your nostrils. You can even imagine you’re breathing rainbows.
What would it feel like to be a little more spacious or shapeless?
Ask yourself “what is possible?".
*This has been inspired by Liz Peters and her book Own It! and teaching from Mark Walsh on the Embodied Facilitator Course.
There's Nowhere to Get To
I call myself a recovering perfectionist because recovery is a journey. It reminds me that this is not something I do once and I'll get over. I have to keep up these practices. But it's a journey without a destination. The whole point is to enjoy it along the way. I guess that's my way of saying don't take this all too seriously. Being a recovering perfectionist can be fun. You get to have fun. In fact, being able to laugh at life and at your perfectionism is a good sign that you're in recovery!
"We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played." ~ Alan Watts
Perfectionism can be sneaky and I sometimes catch myself being perfectionist in my attempt not to be a perfectionist! Perfectionism is not something to defeat or overcome. Seriously, stop battling with yourself! The most important guide for me on this journey is being kind to myself, or at least not being mean. Perfectionism is a survival strategy. At some point, these patterns have kept you safe; they've been helpful otherwise you would have never have bothered. And let's face it, perfectionism uses a huge amount of energy which you wouldn't waste if it didn't work for you at least some of the time. So please be kind to the parts of you that feel they need perfectionism for protection. Be gentle and allow your perfectionism to melt away. I'd love for us all to eventually put the shields down permanently but we can take our sweet time doing that. There is no rush.
Perfectionism is not a battle to be won, but a shield to be gently laid down, allowing you to fully embrace your authentic self.
It's okay to stumble, to fall, and to get back up again. Celebrate your progress, no matter how small, and be kind to yourself along the way. We are all perfectly imperfect, and that's what makes us truly extraordinary.
If you're ready to explore these practices further and embark on your own journey of recovering from perfectionism, I'm here to help. As an embodiment coach, I offer personalised support and guidance to help you navigate the challenges and celebrate the victories along the way. Read about my services to learn more about how we can work together. Remember, there are no prizes for doing this on your own.