Perfectionism
It’s a Coverup
Perfectionism is attempting to create the illusion of complete competency,
while avoiding real intimacy,
which requires vulnerability.
Perfectionists are never vulnerable, unless they are crummy perfectionists.
They cannot be truly warm and caring because this would require accepting others as being okay even though they are less than perfect.
So, it is the perfectionist who prescribes pushups and sit-ups to himself and to his family.
This is not to say that pushups and sit-ups are not good things.
It is to say that it is an illusion to believe that love and acceptance from others come only when our bodies are made tough, lean, and chiseled.
Perfectionists believe that corner offices are attractive to intimacy.
Not hardly.
They are attractive to those seeking to obtain wealth and power through relationships as a means to an end.
In other words, perfectionists are easily played.
They can’t see the con because they are too busy trying to improve their own looks and skills — because, deep down, they are ashamed of their own imperfections.
How to make a perfectionist.
Somewhere in the past the idea was planted that the child was unlovable.
As he or she was created, they would never make the world’s grade.
This implanted poison may have come through the harsh, cold, and cruel words of others.
Had the victim only understood at the time that these words reflected more on the bully who spoke them, perhaps she or he would not have agreed to receive them, to take them into their own soul and use them as their daily mirror. They might have been able to see themselves with a hope and a future instead of as imperfect and flawed.
To some this resulted in despair, finding comfort in addictions, or ending their lives.
To others, it became their reason for living, to overcome the negative voices and to prove their detractors wrong.
The problem, of course, is that they strapped their verbal abusers to their backs and carried them everywhere they went.
Somehow they would show them they were wrong.
And sometimes they were able to do this.
The one called a loser, won the top office, the top salary, the top trophy spouse.
The one called ugly, won the contest, the contract, the signing bonus all because they severely controlled their own appetites, their own “weaknesses.”
What was not understood at the time was what was lost — the opportunity to have better relationships and the happiness and health they provide to individuals, families, and communities.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
