Many of us are plagued with the desperate compulsion to be perfect. We operate in a world where we are taught that anything less than total flawlessness is utter failure. This includes school grades, job assignments, household chores, measuring up to what you assume peers or partner expectations are and meeting parent’s demands.

This need to be perfect creates ongoing anxiety and can cause physical symptoms such as stomach pain, headaches and lethargy. The perfection end goal is one that is never clear. The bar is always getting raised and your arms keep reaching, but nothing is there. You don’t know what it feels like to be perfect because you have never been able to reach that level. Emotionally you don’t understand that no one is without faults even though you comprehend this intellectually.

You feel driven to make no errors in the process and when a mistake is inevitably made, you viciously tear into yourself. You call yourself all kinds of obscene names and relentlessly stomp on your heart.

We become exhausted at the need to be perfect and look for relief. Some of us exercise and others abuse substances to keep the emotional pain at bay. We go through a cycle in this need to never make mistakes.

You have a work project that is assigned or you have decided to complete a task on your own. You become overwhelmed at the very beginning because you are so worried you will fail and let others down. Your concentration is thrown off by your anxiety and the pressure that mounts inside becomes a huge demonic force. Your desire to show everyone how skilled you are, that you are better than anyone else at this job only causes more anxiety.

When you complete the task, you are not satisfied with it even though you have been so diligent. If someone offers constructive criticism of your work, it will be experienced like a knife through the shoulder blades combined with a kick in your stomach. You are hurt and that wound usually turns to anger that you take out on yourself or your best friend or lover.

I have been a psychotherapist in the San Francisco Bay area for over twenty five years I treat children, teens and adults. This fixation with flawlessness is a very common affliction that usually originates in childhood.

It can happen by a parent telling a child with all A minuses in school that if she just tried harder, she would have all A’s.  A child whose parent(s) never praise her can also learn to believe that whatever she accomplishes is not good enough and is always seeking approval from her parent(s) even long after she has entered adult hood.

Those that have been physically, emotionally and/or sexually abused have a need to be perfect.  They have been vilified, violated and beat up.  They are in a constant state of fear and out of this trauma, they have created this false belief that in order to be loved, they have to be perfect.  This belief comes into play when faced with the trauma or worried about when she will be abused again.

Focusing on the drive to be perfect is an ingenious way of not being overwhelmed with being triggered by memories of the actual trauma.  However, this method to maintain concentration loses its use when you are out of traumatic situations.

At the point when you are free of being violated by others, holding on to the need for perfection will cause feelings of extreme emptiness and confusion.

If you had a parent who constantly ordered you around, demonstrated no warmth, offered no praise and was perhaps a substance abuser; you may come to believe that in order to be loved, you have to be perfect.  In spite of all the effort you put into pleasing your father, he never told you if your work measured up.  He was quick to scream at you if he believed you didn’t clean the house to his specification or if your skirt was too short.

If you had a parent who never let on how she felt about you no matter what you did, this could leave you with the need to be perfect.  You may come to believe that since she never had any comments; that she didn’t love you and the only way to obtain love was to be perfect.

This sense that the only path to obtaining parental approval and love by being perfect is experienced by all the situations described above.

Another common experience is the lack of receiving unconditional love from parents.  Unconditional love is loving someone without any hidden agendas, overt rules or subtle obstacles to jump over in order to gain emotional affection. You are loved for being who you are, not for what you do for others.

Many of us receive conditional love meaning that you will be loved if you do as you are told or what you think will please your parent.   An example would be if your mother told you that if you got straight A’s that would make her happy.  If you do so, she smiles at you and offers a hug for your hard work.  If you don’t get A’s in every subject, you will notice the disappointment on your mother’s face and body language; this will make you feel awful.

Out of this conditional love, you learn that the only way to be loved is to be perfect.   Many of us don’t know how to give unconditional love to others nor to ourselves.

Unconditional love is not the same as codependence.  That doesn’t mean that you don’t strongly set limits for your child or end a relationship with a partner if those actions are required.  It doesn’t mean that you allow them to abuse and take advantage of you.

Unconditional love does involve giving ultimatums and following through with them if they are not adhered to.  This will help this person grow if they learn they cannot act out egregiously and they have to be accountable for their lives.

Other examples of unconditional love:  Cleaning the house even though it is not your turn because you know your loved one is exhausted; Cease keeping track of whose turn it is to do chores because keeping score is not the same thing as mutual love; Taking the time to really listen to your child when you are too wiped out to even stand; Smiling as your child tells you about her day and not interrupting to tell her how she can improve; Accepting that your partner is not perfect and he makes mistakes-he’s a work in progress; Learning to accept that you are not perfect either and that is one of the aspects of life that makes us human-learning to love your imperfection and that you are OK regardless.

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