Learning to tread lightly

You can thank my counselling tutor for this one.

Last week at therapist training, my tutor said something that’s stuck with me.

I was talking to her about how I was struggling when practising therapy. To pass, we have criteria we must achieve, like ‘Establish the client’s needs and expectations when agreeing to work together’.

Before each practice session, and often during it too, I’m anxious. I want to do a good job, I want to be empathetic, but the perfectionist in me also wants to pass that criteria. I’m acutely aware that I’m being assessed, that I have something I must achieve beyond simply listening to and gently guiding my classmate. I have a course to pass, marks to get.

I explained to my tutor how I find myself focussing on the fact I am being assessed, and that I know it links to perfectionism. She then said:

“Perfectionism is just another form of self-harm.”

The tutors for therapist training are all therapists themselves, so whilst we do learn the skills and theory needed to provide therapy, we’re also kind of getting constant therapy at the same time. This definitely felt like one of those moments.

Perhaps you might have picked the word ‘self-sabotage’. That sounds a little lighter, a little less serious, a bit more like we are useless villains in a cosy murder mystery. ‘Self-harm’ is a far stronger word, one we often associate with pain, with our darkest feelings.

But perfectionism is self-harm. It harms us emotionally, it harms our dreams, it harms our work and relationships and self-esteem. It felt a little like fate, then, to see this post from Dr Jen on my Instagram feed. Perfectionism is insidious.

Sometimes it does serve us. My perfectionism definitely started in school, and it helped me achieve good grades and the results I wanted. But then when other things got in the way of my studies, when depression made it impossible to write an essay, let alone read the book for that essay, perfectionism became the stick I put in my own bike wheel.

I would be working, knowing I was unwell, knowing I was dissatisfied with the results, but powerless to change that, and my perfectionism would hate me for it. I wanted it to be perfect, but perfect was out of reach.

It’s okay to want to do the best you can do, but that doesn’t mean it has to be perfect. Maybe that’s because perfect doesn’t exist (*cough* it doesn’t) or maybe that’s because perfect just isn’t achievable for you right now, or ever. Maybe you’re unwell or busy, or maybe you just do not have the right wiring in your brain or the right metabolism or the right dexterity to achieve perfection in whatever that thing is.

Because if you set perfection as your goal, you are setting yourself up to fail. And what is it that perfectionists hate? Failure.

By wanting to do well whilst practising counselling, by wanting to pass so badly, I was setting myself up to fail. You cannot be present with a client, you cannot truly listen to them, if you are still listening to your inner perfectionist. And the same is true for anything - you cannot be happy in your relationship if you are worried about being the perfect partner; you cannot be the perfect painter if your perfectionism makes you shake with nerves.

You are causing harm to yourself. Whether that’s by damaging your confidence, your inner peace, your drive or those myriad goals and achievements.

In Madeleine Dore’s ‘I Didn’t Do the Thing Today’, one piece of advice that pops up again and again is the idea of holding things lightly. Hold your work, your dreams, your expectations lightly. Give them wiggle room, space to move and morph. Perfectionism gives you a vice-like grip. Instead of a winding, switch-backing path to the summit, it gives you a sheer drop and a threadbare rope bridge. One wrong move and you’re toast.

Failure is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end. If I don’t pass that particular criteria, it doesn’t mean I can’t try again. I will have plenty of opportunities to do it right, or rather, to do it well enough. I will also have plenty of moments where that inner perfectionist slips their feet into my hiking shoes, but I will hold those moments gently and be kind to myself as I untie the laces - and punt my perfectionist off the mountain edge. 

The path will curve, it will meander down before it winds upwards again, but the most important thing is that I continue to move, to tread lightly with a bounce in my step, onwards.

Thank you as always for reading. I’d love to hear from you, especially if you’re a recovering perfectionist. How do you manage it? How do you stop yourself putting that stick in your own wheel? Tell us your imperfect ways.