I'm not perfect enough to be a perfectionist

Or am I?

During one of my many, many GP appointments regarding my anxiety, I was asked if I “considered myself a bit of a perfectionist” by a GP. To this I answered, truthfully at the time, that no, I didn’t think I was. As my knowledge and self-awareness has grown, I’ve realised this was not, in fact, quite true.

The issue was that I had the wrong idea about perfectionism. The perfectionists I recognised were hard, hard workers. They would draft and redraft until something was as good as they wanted it to be. They would work hard on themselves, often to the point of eating disorder, to ensure they were the corporeal form they envisaged. They were high achieving, top of the class. Their work was… well, perfect. Absolutely nothing here could ever describe my own experience. Easily disheartened, threatened by things I had to “try” at, far too easily tempted by a treat. And not top of the class. Very good, but never excellent. Top 10, but rarely top 5. Let down by my organisational skills, my self-esteem and my handwriting, all things which would inform my later diagnosis of dyspraxia.

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I didn’t think I was a perfectionist because nothing I ever produced was perfect. I never felt I worked hard enough at anything, never achieved exactly what I wanted to achieve. I was called “sloppy” and “careless”. So no, I wasn’t a perfectionist. However, I was plagued by doubts of not being good enough, of never working hard enough of, always falling short of what I perceived to be the level I “should” be at.

It was only when studying for my master’s that I came across different theories of perfectionism. The perfectionism I saw to be fact was “self-oriented perfectionism”, characterised by people who are motivated to do well through their own hard work. Also known as adaptive perfectionists, these are the people who set the standards many of us can never live up to. I think there are actually very few true self-oriented perfectionists, but those we do see leave an impact on us, especially if we are the other kind.

I read about “socially-prescribed perfectionism” and suddenly it clicked for me. This sort of perfectionism is all about what you perceive other people to be doing, and what you think society should think of you. I was always comparing myself to others. I always thought I should just “be” better, and that if only I worked a bit harder, if I was only that little bit more intelligent, then I would achieve what I felt I should be achieving. This sort of perfectionism (alongside “other-oriented perfectionism”, which is where you expect perfection in others) is known as “maladaptive”. Unsurprisingly, those of us who are socially-prescribed perfectionists are often pretty unhappy with our lot, prone to anxiety and depression and that lingering feeling that we’re just not good enough.

So, as it turns out, I am “a bit of a perfectionist” after all. At first I took this the wrong way, I thought that I was “the very worst kind of perfectionist”, somebody who doesn’t work hard enough and yet expects the end product to be perfect anyway. Goal-oriented rather than task-oriented. I actually said these words to people several times: “I am the very worst kind of perfectionist”. I mean, even my experience of perfectionism wasn’t perfect enough for me.

I realise now, and it took me a long time to realise this, that the problem is not how hard I work or how much effort I put into things, it’s that the standards I set for myself are far too high. Due to my neurodivergence, I actually do have to work harder than other people to achieve a similar goal, and I do this almost without realising because it’s what I’ve always done. And sometimes I can’t do it, I’m too tired, I’m too busy, I have too many things on. And sometimes I just don’t meet my own expectations no matter what I do.

This has really come to the fore recently as I prepare to sit the Graduate Record Exam for entry to US grad programs. I knew I’d have to work hard at the quantitative side of the paper, as I have always been weaker, and thus less interested in maths, as I have an underlying weakness in non-verbal reasoning. However, my verbal reasoning scores in past tests have been consistently high. “I’ll sail through this” I thought, “I know words. This is my thing and I’m good at it”. As it turns out, as ever, I’m ok, but I am not exceptional, and I think I should just “be” exceptional. I think the fact companies make their millions from selling preparation packages and vocabulary flashcards for the GRE sort of passed me by a bit, because I’m again in a situation where my expectation of myself is that I should be excellent, and I’ve become disheartened before I’ve given myself the chance to, you know, actually revise and work hard at it.

I’ve had this problem my whole life. I found GCSEs relatively easy. The work I turned in was good, and I easily achieved the grades I was happy with (half As and A*s, half Bs. Again, not exceptional, but I was pleased with them until I found out other people in my year had got A*s across the board, and that the threshold for a certificate at the awards evening was 8 As and A*s). So I progressed on to A level. I would say sixth form, particularly lower sixth, was one of the worst times of my life. I was depressed, I didn’t really go to school much, I was navigating my first relationships with highly unsuitable people, because I had been so unpopular as to have never even been looked at before then. And on top of all this, probably unsurprisingly, I wasn’t doing “well” any more.

I was averaging Cs, my essays weren’t up to standard. I didn’t seem to link “going to school” with “doing well”. I lowered my expectations, stopped googling Cambridge. Put a raft of ex-polytechnics on my UCAS form and begged my teachers to raise my predicted grades from Ds to Cs. And I felt like a failure, but I didn’t know how to change that. I was too disheartened, convinced I was actually “thick” after all.

I got into university, which was “the making of me” as they say. Despite a few wobbles and upsets, I mostly thrived on the freedom of university life. And I loved my subject, I loved lectures, and I was alright at writing university essays, as it turned out. The thing I hadn’t realised here is that I was happier, and thus I had once again begun to “try”. I was still disappointed when I didn’t get a first, but I rationalised that a little less occupation of university buildings, an earlier diagnosis of dyspraxia, and maybe a bit more time in the library might have got me over the line.

The dyspraxia diagnosis, though. Life changing. In typical poor executive function style, I waited until the end of second year to seek the diagnosis. I was diagnosed quickly, and by third year reasonable adjustments were in place. And I started doing well. I started to realise that my A levels were not the full story of my academic capability. It was a bit too late for a top grade, but it was, again, good enough. And this continued many years later when I returned, this time to a Russell Group, to complete my MSc. There, a tutor opened my eyes to what I was capable of academically. I still, however, thought I was falling short. In the first year I had a meltdown because I “literally didn’t know any sociology, like none at all, I didn’t even do it for A level, how am I supposed to write a sociology paper”.

As I prepare to put myself forward into a situation where I may face rejection, and where I am competing with people I see as being much better and brighter than myself, it does me good to reflect on the impact perfectionism has left on my life. I will always compare myself to others (difficult not to when you surround yourself with Oxbridge educated geniuses of intellect you could never achieve), but I at least know a lot of my self-doubt, shame and academic fear is because I will never feel I am working hard enough and will never think I’m as exceptional as I should be. I don’t think I will ever lose my perfectionist streak, I just have to stop it from causing me to become disheartened before I’ve even had the chance to achieve. I do need to work at things. And that’s ok.