Perfectionism – a socially glorified survival mechanism of c-PTSD

Hey, brave soul!

We all know that feeling, that whatever we do – everyone else seems fine with it, but we cannot shake off the feeling, that it is utterly rubbish. Or at least it is imperfect to its core. Meanwhile, we also know the praise and the acknowledgement some people seem to earn as easily, when they finish their tasks and projects. But what exactly are we witnessing here? Is it truly just that our projects and tasks results are “bad”? Let’s dive into today’s blog and maybe shed a bit of a different light on perfectionism, and it’s two-faced characteristics.

• Psychology Today on Perfectionism in c-PTSD cases
• Leonpsychology.ca on Perfectionism
• ClevelandClinic.org on Perfectionism

From my experience, perfectionism can get caused by the following things:

What is a “Tiny Trauma?”
A tiny trauma, which I have heard first of by Dr. Meg Arroll in her book “Tiny Traumas” (*not sponsored, yet an absolute reading recommendation*), is what people often deem “not enough to be a big trauma” or “not enough to seek therapy” as I recognized it.

You can imagine it like this:
All of us have once or more times managed to cut ourselves on paper, right? A very tiny cut, that hurts a lot in the first few minutes and faded within the next few minutes to come. The day after, you will likely have forgotten about it.
Now, imagine all the tiny paper cuts you had in your life – and will have – will all land on the same spot. That would ge pretty deep into your skin and maybe even deeper. This accumulation of tiny “pain bringers” is what makes Tiny Traumas so important, yet vastly overseen. They look like nothing, they get framed as “not relevant” and “just shrug it off”.

But now think that each cut is a sentence by someone in school, who was mean to you or to someone around you. “You stink!”, “You look weird.”, “Your Art is so bad!” They are only one-liners and maybe never something followed up after that, but the cut is there. And it hurts. It burns, and it will be there, no matter how many times we tell the kid/ourselves, that it was just a mean comment, and we should ignore it, or let it slide.

• The accumulation of tiny traumas over a longer period of time
• The impact of a great exposing in front of other people
• The ground shaking, mental and/or physical experience of being hurt by a guardian/parent, after not living up to their expectations
  

Before we will dig deeper into how this correlates with our trauma survivors, I have curated 2 lists that you should read through because I think they might help you understand yourself better, or your loved human being.

In the next two sections, you will find examples for the aspect of judgement and the aspect of fear. I have decided to divide them because I think it helps understand the causal connections a bit better in how perfectionism evolves.

The aspect of judgement is the one thing that the other person does, that starts the entire chain of reaction. It is, so to speak, the one external thing that happens, that can kickstart the development of perfectionism.

Here are some judgement aspects that I have seen over the time:

1. Judgement of one’s Qualities as a Human being
   • F.e parents being the aggressor towards their child, racism, classism
2. Judgement of one’s Quality as a worker in a business environment
   • F.e your team leader being critical of your work progress, tied to what you need to deliver in your position
3. Judgement of one’s Expertise in general topics
   • F.e when you try to explain to your grandma something that you are actually an expert in, but she just answers “you are not a doctor”. (Yes, this was personal, can you tell? :’D)
4. Judgement of one’s Appearance & Body
   • F.e the classic “Am I pretty enough for my crush to like me?”
5. Judgement of one’s Interests
   • F.e the moment when you show one of your new friends, your favourite music or TV show.
6. Judgement of Ambitions
   • Fe. the typical artist’s journey. Aka, your family thinks you are crazy for trying to pursue this career.

When it comes to the aspect of fear, I want to highlight the internal reaction/answer to the judgement we have read about before. The internal aspect can develop, even without someone hurting you in the first place, this is something I deem important to understand. What I mean by that are judgemental baselines, that we evolve by ourselves, if we only have a slight crack in our self-esteem.

For example: You can live in a very healthy and nurturing family, but being surrounded only by very successful people at colleague for example, may cause you to develop feelings of being not good enough, or the inner expectation you need to live up to their standards. Simply not getting the same grades, or just not getting them with the “same ease”, may already plant the seed of self-destructive insecurities. Sometimes everything around us can be supportive and nice and helpful – but fear is this one thing, that can spark itself into existence without anyone doing something bad or harmful with us.

That does not, and I repeat this as many times as needed, this does not mean that your fear is “made up” or “just in your head”. Fear is a real, and one of the most important feelings a human can have. If you experienced any of the things below…you know what this also means? It means that something is of uttermost importance to you. And this it’s nothing I would ever deem a bad thing. Fear grows with importance, and only gets in check with continuous events of trouble, that you go through successful. And no, having a smooth sailing, does not manage to keep fear in check, it simply delays your own growth.

These result in fears of various kinds, like these:

1. Fear of external Expectation → What are the others expecting from me?
2. Fear of internal Expectations → I managed to this perfect last time, I must keep up, else I am worthless!
3. Fear of Punishment → What happens if I don’t meet the expectation?
4. Fear of Comparison → What if they compare me to person XYZ?
5. Fear of being displayed as a low-performer at work → What if I get framed as “worthless”
6. Fear of Likeability → What if they don’t like my character?
7. Fear of physical Appeal → What if they don’t like my appearance?
8. Fear of failing → What if I fail this task?
9. Fear of social displaying → What if the rest of the class see’s me like this?

Even though, I am convinced that by now you will have plenty of examples already laid out on your minds’ desk, I have listed a few ones, that might be worth to read through. Maybe you will find friends of you in this list, or your partner, or a family member.

• A parent favouring one kid over the other
  • A very nasty feeling of being of lesser value as a human being, for no understandable reasons
• Parents enforcing perfect school results from their kids
  • Especially with sentences like “I am working two jobs so you can go to colleague!” this becomes an emotional wound
• A teacher giving disproportionate praise to “perfect” students
  • Comparison between students, based not on their overall human qualities or knowledge, but single snapshots of performance, f.e test / exams
• A love-interest partner, speaking repeatedly highly of other people and their way of treating / caring for their significant other
  • Comparison in quality as partner, vs other couples
• A friend who is just not as interested in you, unless you go to your extends and give it your all
  • Perfection in service → friendship goodie points
• A boss at work giving payment raises and praise only to those who outperform and outshine everyone else
  • Comparison between what should be teammates, which turns them into work-force-enemies
• You are the only youngster at your workplace, maybe 20 years old, and your coworkers are all long-time employees with decades of expertise.
• You are in a sport club, and you are the smallest / the largest one.
• You have plenty of “pretty” friends. (Pretty in terms of this year’s social beauty standard / trend, *snort*)
• You are in a family full of successful people.
  • As mentioned above, if everyone around you is successful, it raises the idea that you must keep up with them, to not fail them and be part of the circle.
• You are born in a low-income family.
  • Even if certain media reports seem to paint a picture that nobody wants to work any more, if you come from poverty, this is traumatic in of itself, yet being low-income is the weird wobbling between being able to feed the family – yet struggling to exceed the bare minimum of living in most of the years months.
• You are the firstborn child.
  • Being the firstborn comes with various its own problems, but seeing the change in your parents’ behaviour, energy levels and work-load when another baby gets born, can cause trouble in a young kid’s mind – leading to the idea that they do not want to be a burden to their parents, so they oftentimes try to “help out” and be as unproblematic as possible. Plus that they are often “the big brother/sister” which comes with various self expectations & expectations from outside. This is not a rule set it stone, but one of many development paths a firstborn can take.
• ….& the list could go on and on and on.

As you might know by now, on this blog we talk about complex-post-traumatic stress-disorder, in various ways. Perfectionism is, in fact, not only linked to c-PTSD, but can also occur in PTSD, which is the classic variant, with a limited set of triggers, most often based on one traumatic event. If you want to read more about c-PTSD, you can do that here. And if you wish to read about the differences between PTSD and c-PTSD you can do so here.

Okay, so – let us finally answer the most important question:

Why is perfectionism linked with c-PTSD and why should be question what we see, when we recognize us being hypervigilant with our surroundings, extremely people-pleasing and try to be always in control with situations?

Well, as you might already guess by now: perfectionism is a skill, or maybe even a tool for survivors. Many survivors have learned, that when they make mistakes, their life becomes painful for the next hours, days, weeks. The two poles of “I made a mistake” and “I will get punished”, has been pushed so close together, that the brain basically cannot think of one, without the other. Especially in people who have had guardians/parents who were capable of not only punishing, but also “nodding things off as okay” or even “praise”, this perfectionism I found grows forceful. Because the brain now has the super strong connection of “If I get this done right, the outcome will be better!” – which is heavy to write down, let me be honest here. Someone who gets punished, no matter what they do, eventually gives up on trying. But someone who is ping-ponging between the monstrous aspect of people, and maybe something that you can even claim to be a loving side,…that is cruel.

The skill of perfection will now be used continuously, rigorously and almost religiously. This can occur in many different shades, but let us first ask what may come from being perfect with whatever you do or say:

• We either prevent things from happening…
  • like punishment, judgement, being an outcast, etc.
• …or we try to produce specific results.
  • like trying to win someone’s love and favour, by being the perfect student, partner, worker.

Depending on the age and severity of the trauma behind it, there might be various examples of how perfectionism shows up.

• Procrastination due to fear of imperfection
  • Delaying tasks out of fear that one might not hit the deemed quality/standard/expected result.
• Overworking and neglecting rest
  • Pushing oneself excessively, ignoring the bodies calls for rest, in order to “finish” things f.e.
• Avoidance of new challenges
  • New challenges bear new …well, uncertainties. And uncertainty is something the traumatized brain will try to avoid at all cost, given that said feeling most often was the precursor of a painful event.
• Excessive self-criticism
  • Harshly judging oneself for minor mistakes. Ask yourself “would I be so harsh with my loved one/friends?” If the answer is no, it is very likely that you are cruel to yourself regarding your self-expectations.
• Difficulty accepting compliments
  • The inner world deems whatever you do not good enough, and the only thing that seems to soothe the feeling, is external validation – yet, if clashes with what we feel about ourselves and our world. A really messy feeling-complex.
• Need for constant reassurance
  • The more traumatic the punishment was, the more we seek the external validation that our work / we are okay. This can extend as much, as that, a minor mistake will make us feel like we are not worth the air we breathe. Needless to say that this can have an exhausting impact on our relationships.
• Rigid organizational habits
  • Routines and organization give a sense of control, which is like a counter-pre courser to a maybe-happening-but-nobody-knows-yet-we-need-to-be-prepared-at-all-times-event. The more control you think you have, the less fear can grow. At least this is what we tell ourselves, not mentioning the anxiety that rises quietly in the background and the stress this puts us in, to have everything organized and under control at all times.
• Over-preparation
  • Spending excessive time preparing to ensure flawless execution – strikes similar to the organization habits, yet I want to mention it as a different aspect, given that this may also take place when you care for someone else. F.e when you plan and execute a birthday party.
• Black-and-White thinking
  • We’re often viewing situations in extremes – there is either success (which is nothing to cheer about, it simply did not fail – according to our brains), or disastrous fail.
• Not being able to celebrate one’s success
  • Think of the last situation in which your anxiety was through the roof because you wanted task X to be successful at all cost. After you have accomplished this, be honest – how long did your happiness last? If you say either, a few minutes, before your brain was onto the next task already, or not that much, it just felt like a relief that it is finally over → chances are high that you are very cruel to yourself at that moment, aiming for a black-or-white success.

Okay, let’s be honest – we all know that this world evolved around how well we do, yet the full extent of this can be a bit blurry. So let us see in what fields of life, a good task result will actually bring us further in life:

Creative jobs: “Perfect” art gets shared, liked, bought. It is a paradox in itself because art is favourite by people differently, yet the industry sets a standard and suddenly, everything else gets deemed bad, by normal everyday people who are most often not artists themselves.

Social media: Pretty feeds and flawless content = more attention and followers because the algorithms often favour these.

Housekeeping: A clean home gets praise. A messy one? People silently (or not) judge, as the home is a status symbol and a representation of a person’s overall skill of keeping their life together.

Parenting: “Perfect” parents get applause. Real, struggling ones get advice they didn’t ask for, or even judgement that can go from an unfriendly gaze all the way to heart-wrenching assumption about someone’s life.

Looks & style: If you “look the part”, you get compliments, dates, even jobs. It is known by now that pretty-privilege is a thing, and even though it comes with its own bag of struggles, it brings you further in many situations.

Speaking/writing well: Being articulate gets you taken seriously. Someone who has a speaking disadvantage, may it be from being not a native speaker of that language, or being disabled, will make people take you less as an expert or important.

Health & fitness: Fit bodies get admired, and social media with all its person cult cultures is proof of that. Dating apps, heck! They are proof of that – you get goodie points just for looking fit. No, the fact if you are fit or not does not even come into play.

Time management: Being “productive” = value. Taking things slower or even resting? Well, that must mean you are lazy and unproductive.

Relationships: Being the “perfect” friend or partner often earns more love and less conflict, at least if you believe social media posts and influencers. Today’s society and their hang on showcasing fake scenarios in which their partner, who does something incredible for them, totally spontaneously (with all the 5 set up cameras and lightnings in the background *caugh caugh*), really takes a toll on normal people’s perception of how a relationship should be.

Hobbies: If you’re good, people cheer you on. If you’re just starting? You might feel like hiding it because you have seen or experienced people being very judgy about your first small steps.

The truth is, the world runs on performance and to gather more of it,
people started to praise those who deliver performance with perfection.

It feels as if the results that are not delivered by the top-performers are neither appreciated nor honoured, at best. At worst, you get punished for it one way or the other, and this is how society silently got infected with a mind-melting thought pattern, that can only lead to one’s collapse. You cannot perform 120% with every task you have, and the problem doesn’t end here because what is todays 120% will be tomorrows 90% only.

• How do I know if my perfectionism is linked to trauma?
  • Are you feeling discomfort when you think about doing certain tasks? Are you getting really icky and nervous, when you shall present your result to someone? Or are you on the edge if someone watches you? The more of them are true, the more it is likely that a lot of your behaviour is your security system trying to protect you from harm, because of experiences. Remember: Tiny Traumas are a thing and trauma comparison is BS. You can drown in a puddle the same as in the ocean.
• What is the difference between high standards and perfectionism?
  • High standards are fine because you need to deliver and to do things right, and it is okay, to want the best for yourself and your loved ones – problematic perfectionism is when you get feelings of discomfort, if something is not done the way you want it to be. Or when you do things a certain way, out of fear of the reaction of others.
• Why is perfectionism so common in people with c-PTSD?
  • Because it is a survival skill that many of use learned to wield like a shield, to protect us from punishment by our aggressors. Doing things perfect might not have helped us gain praise, but it at least kept us a bit more “safe”.
• Can perfectionism ever be healthy?
  • High standards, yes. Perfectionism – Only in very, very, veeeery few instances I would say yes. Being a neurosurgeon, who needs to save a patient’s brain from an invasive tumour? Yes. Being a pilot who needs to control his aircraft in the midst of a storm? Absolutely. Being a normal everyday person who has a bit of laundry unwashed laying beside their bed, or who goes out of the house with a few chaotic hair strains? No. Absolutely not. Outperforming, outthinking, doing-all-the-things-before-someone-tells-you-to-at-work-because-you-think-you-must-complete-them? NO.

PERFECTIONISM IS THE SPIKED DOG COLLAR OF WHAT HIGH STANDARDS USED TO BE.

TL;DR (too long; didn’t read); Conclusion and Summary

Okay, let’s wrap it up, I know you have read a giant wall of text and if you carved through all of it, I am super proud thank you so, so much! Here are the most important takeaways:

1. High standards and perfectionism are not the same.
2. High standards turn into a problematic perfectionism, when you experience feelings of discomfort thinking about delaying things, not finishing something today, showing something to someone, their reaction to it, etc.
3. Perfectionism can come in various shaded and colours, but always roots in the judgment of people towards you, and the fears you developed out of it. In rare cases, being surrounded by many successful people can be a burden, especially if you cannot keep up with them as easily, which results in a judgment from yourself against yourself.
4. You can be a perfectionist, expecting the very best from yourself, or even push your expectations onto others, harming them even.
5. Perfectionism is a survival skill that survivors use to get a sense of control over a situation, which at least has the potential to turn the result of the situation into something less harming.
6. While being in the claws of perfectionism, we tend to forget to care about our wellbeing, or the people around is.
7. Society praises perfection, because of its performance-driven functionality in all kinds of aspects. (And we have lost the plot, treating people like machines.)

Phew, there we are! You have successfully munched through the giant offering of information! (Or you have read the summary~) In any case, thank you for doing so, and I hope it helped shed a light onto how perfectionism and trauma can work together and to help you maybe spot one or both of them in your daily life.

Given the length of this article, I will link you an article below, solely dedicated to battle your perfectionism!

https://sitting-with-my-demons.blog/how-to-deal-with-perfectionism-in-your-everyday-life

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I hope to see you at the next article and wish you a wonderful rest of the day!

~ Cheers, Alka.