Issue #55: The three types of perfectionism

Which one(s) are you? Plus, how perfectionism affects our self-worth and our relationships with others.

A couple of weekends ago, I had a friend over for dinner. It was the first time I’d cooked for her, a situation where any sensible person would play it safe (let’s remember that cementing a nascent adult friendship is the thirtysomething’s equivalent of impressing your crush at the Year 7 disco).

Which renders my choice of a complicated recipe I’d never attempted before particularly baffling. Did I read the bit at the top of the page, which cited a cooking time of two hours? No. Did I scale down a recipe that was intended to feed six people? No. Did I heed the implicit warning in the single, three-star user review? No. Did I realise that the absolutely vital piece of equipment for this recipe is a food processor, which I do not own? No. Did I start cooking more than an hour before my friend’s arrival? I think we all know the answer to that.

Suffice to say, Shepherd’s Pie Gate, as it shall forever be known in my head – the recipe, if you’re wondering, was the kidney bean-based Waitrose dish cooked for me by another friend, a far superior chef & food processor owner, a fortnight ago – was not my finest culinary moment.

And yet, somehow, my new friendship remains in tact, even if it was circa 9:30 p.m. before we consumed anything that wasn’t red wine or fancy olives – and the long-awaited meal was… questionably edible.

Failing to be the perfect domestic goddess

My first takeaway – and this is one of those situations where a takeaway might have been a shrewd plan B – is: thank God for understanding friends and Pinot Noir (Alice, if you’re reading this, I still hope to redeem myself someday).

Beyond that, it made me think about perfectionism, and how it can get in the way of connection. Because I don’t hold myself to a perfect standard when hosting; although I have hosted many more successful dinners in the past, I am not the model solo hostess with the mostest. I struggle to multitask, and have poor time management skills, together with – as aforementioned – hubristic cooking tendencies.

But my failure to be ‘perfect’ in this vicinity doesn’t get in the way of me inviting people over to my flat. What’s more, it’s paved the way for certain kinds of intimacy: asking for and accepting help (all too often, my dinner ‘guests’ become ad-hoc sous chefs), showing fallibility, and developing a sense of ease around others.

There’s a part of me that yearns to become the domestic goddess who’s whipped up two different kinds of houmous like it was nothing, answering the door with an adorable flour smudge on my right cheekbone from the puff pastry I rolled out earlier for the hors d'oeuvres. I live in hope that, someday, I’ll be the 2023 disciple of Lady Rose Henniker-Heaton, the late author of The Perfect Hostess: Perfectly Charming Etiquette Advice (1931). But if that never happens? It’s OK.

If only that were my attitude towards the rest of my life.

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The three types of perfectionism – which one(s) are you?

A week after the cooking disaster, I interviewed Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap: The Power Of Good Enough In A World That Always Wants More for my podcast, Alonement (you can listen to the episode here). This was not a book I thought I needed. I know perfectionists. I was educated alongside them at my all-girls day school, with their neat ponytails, love of stationery and evenly-spaced handwriting, fingernails bitten down to the quick after receiving an A minus grade. I grew up in an airbrushed, perfection-centric society: women’s magazines front-covered by waif-like supermodels, Instagram feeds full of bikini models. Meanwhile, I thought I avoided the pressure – given my chronically-messy handwriting and more or less neutral body image.

I used to think of ‘perfectionist’ as a label; you either are one or you aren’t. Rather, according to Thom, perfectionism is something that affects us all, to little and larger degree – due to a combination of our social conditioning, together with our natural genetic inclination. He writes:

‘Recent research shows that we all have a certain intolerance for imperfection, whether that be in our work, school grades, appearance, parenting, sports or lifestyle.’

But our degree of perfectionism (and how it shows up) varies. One popular theory identifies three distinct types.

These are set out by psychologists Paul Hewitt & Gordon Flett. This is the Multidimensional Perfectionism Model that Thom quotes in his research:

1. Self-oriented perfectionism: Perfectionism directed towards the self; exceedingly high personal standards; critical self-evaluation after imperfect events

2. Socially-prescribed perfectionism: Perfectionism projected from external sources i.e. from environment; perceiving others to be judgemental of imperfection

3. Other-oriented perfectionism: Perfectionistic standards directed towards others

In the past, I’ve ruled myself out as a ‘perfectionist’ because I didn’t seem much affected by other people’s standards of perfectionism. Hence the handwriting, I suppose. When my Year 5 teacher held me back after class one day to tell me that I wrote my letter Ys back to front, I thought: cool… quirky. To this day, I still write them like that.

And yet, when reading about the other two forms of perfectionism, I felt a shudder of recognition. I may not be particularly affected by socially-prescribed perfectionism – but I’m intimately acquainted with the other two.

When you turn your perfection on others

Other-oriented perfectionism often occurs in romantic relationships; the trap of trying to change your partner. Sometimes, this feels innocent and reasonable, for instance, ‘Can you try to text more consistently?’.

But, let’s face it, there’s a more insidious inclination, one I suspect few of us are immune to, to regard your partner as an extension of yourself – and, consequently, they become a target of your own perfectionism. Perhaps this doesn’t resonate at all, which sounds really healthy (honestly, email me privately and talk me through how you do that). But it does to me – both in the way I’ve been treated by partners, and – ugly confession –  in the way I’ve sometimes felt in the past.

Other-oriented perfectionism is the theme of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Birthmark, in which Aylmer, a scientist, becomes obsessed with removing a birthmark on the face of his beautiful wife, Georgiana. In the end, Aylmer manages to successfully rid his newlywed wife of the perceived flaw, but kills her in the process. Oops. The Birthmark is a morality tale for everyone who’s ever thought, of a partner or would-be partner: ‘They’d be perfect if not for…’

When perfectionism gets tangled up with self-worth

Self-oriented perfectionism, meanwhile, involves a more nebulous high standard, governed by internal rules like, every piece of work I do must be perfect, or I must say something interesting in every conversation I have, or if I make a mistake it must mean I’m awful at what I do.

Those rules are then paired with intense feelings of shame and guilt when you ‘get it wrong’. Realising this made me think of the twinge of embarrassment I used to get – still get – whenever I spot a typo in this newsletter. Or when I come away from seeing a friend and realise I forgot to ask about their new job, or compliment the great trousers they were wearing. Or when I think about how I failed to get into a certain famous university when I was 18 (perhaps I’m not entirely immune to socially-prescribed perfectionism, then).

Shame thrives in secrecy and silence, writes Brené Brown – presumably, talking about it has the opposite effect. Looking at the above, it all looks liberatingly stupid. The reality is, no one will stop loving you because you make a typo (writes the woman who, earlier today, signed off an email ‘Francescea’, which I can only hope the recipient assumed was a diminutive word form, like how ‘Francesita’ would mean ‘little Francesca’ in Spanish). No one will stop being friends will you because you mess up a Shepherd’s Pie recipe.

At the root of it, perfectionism is about self-worth, suggests Thom. It’s about projecting one’s value, one’s loveability perhaps, on to something external to ourselves: ‘If this isn’t perfect, it shows the world I’m not enough.’

Perfectionism isn’t about perfecting things or tasks, nor is it about striving for especially high standards in, say, your assignments, appearances, parenting or relationships. It’s far, far deeper than that. It’s about perfecting ourselves, or to be more exact, perfecting our imperfect selves; going through life in defensive mode, concealing every last blemish, flaw and shortcoming from those around us.

-Thomas Curran, The Perfection Trap

The challenge, at least for me, is to walk the tightrope of embracing whatever it is I’m doing, while disentangling my self-worth from it – something I’ve been trying to do since recognising these perfectionist tendencies.

In moments where I struggle, it helps to think about the purpose of what I’m attempting (beyond placating the needy inner child demanding, ‘Love me! Love me!’). To plan a little better for that dinner guest next time, but more for the sake of feeding my friends well, rather than pretending to be a domestic goddess that I’m not. To enjoy the process of writing, rather than worry about each sentence. To be present in conversations, rather than second-guessing every word. It’s that curiosity that pushes me forward, past the perfectionistic fear and shame that threatens to hold me back.

Perfectionism, writes psychotherapist and author Moya Sarner, quoted in The Economist’s 1843 magazine, ‘makes for a thin life, lived for what it isn’t rather than what it is. If you’re forever trying to make your life what you want it to be, you’re not really living the life you have.’

When perfectionism shines a spotlight on all your perceived flaws or deficits, the best defence is to focus on what’s actually there: whether that’s noticing the positive qualities in a partner (in the case of other-oriented perfectionism) or indeed your own; celebrating your brave efforts to create, to connect, to fail and try again. Because, ultimately, real is better than perfect.

1. Would you consider yourself a perfectionist?

2. What kind(s) of perfectionism do you identify with: self-oriented, socially-prescribed or other-orientated?

3. In what ways has perfectionism held you back in the past?

4. What’s your best advice for countering perfectionistic tendencies?

Let me know in the comments section below.

Consuming…

Things cooked by people other than me for a while… including this buttery French feast at La Petite Ferme off Exmouth Market during a catch-up with my former book editor, Alison.

Trying…

Reformer Pilates! I haven’t defected from the yogi army – rather, my studio (Triyoga) has just started to offer the ‘tiny movements on a torture machine’ workout, and I’ve decided it might be the strength-building exercise I need to finally work my way up to handstands. Plus, it’s oddly addictive.

Reading…

A proof copy of Mongrel by British-Japanese actress and writer, out this coming February. Mongrel chronicles the intertwining narratives of three Japanese women, all bound by their heritage but from very different lifestyles (one grew up in Surrey, another is a concert violinist from the Japanese countryside). If you were to judge a book by its cover, you’d be forgiven in this case – it’s every bit as beautifully-written as it looks.

Also, I devoured Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character, her memoir about growing up with undiagnosed autism, on Audible (which you must listen to on audiobook, because the Scottish comedian narrates it like the pro she is).

Listening… 

To Kirsty Young’s Young Again podcast from BBC Radio 4 – where she asks guests what they would tell their younger selves. I particularly loved her episodes with Daniel Kaluuya and Jamie Oliver.