Jane Bluestein - The Perfection Deception: Why Striving to Be Perfect Is Sabotaging Your Relationships, Making You Sick, and Holding Your Happiness Hostage

Health Communications, Inc.

Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available through the Library of Congress

2015 Jane Bluestein, PhD

ISBN-13: 978-07573-1825-2 (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 07573-1825-8 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-07573-1826-9 (ePub)
ISBN-10: 07573-1826-6 (ePub)

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher:

Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch
Interior design and formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield
Author photo by Steve Bercovitch, Distinctive Images, Inc., Delray Beach, Florida

ePub created by Dawn Von Strolley Grove

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Part I: Welcome to Our Perfect World

1.Whats Wrong with Perfectionism?

2.The Culture of Perfectionism

3.Reality as Defined by the Media

Part II: Building a Perfectionist

4.Risk and Vulnerability

5.Safe and Secure

6.Shaping Our Reality

7.Building Our Identity

Part III: The Problem with Perfect

8.Through the Looking Glass: Living in a Distorted Reality

9.Living on the Dark Side: A Tendency Toward Negativity

10.Establishing Our Value

11.The Perfect Sabotage

12.The Perfect Relationship: Power and Perfectionism

13.The Perfect Stress for Body and Mind

Part IV: Getting Real, Getting Well

14.Living with Imperfection

15.Being Your Biggest, Baddest Self

16.Developing Psychological Strength

17.Connecting with Others

18.Moving Forward: Mind and Body

Notes

During the course of researching this book, I sent out several requests for specific information and experiences. My online network never failed to respond, and their voices are as much a part of this book as any print resource I discovered. I only regret that I could not include all of the contributions in the text of this book.

I wish to express my thanks for the responses, input, validation, inspiration, and encouragement that the following people shared through personal interactions, emails, interviews, conversations, surveys, written correspondence, media clippings, snail mail, phone calls, and posts on social media sites. This list also includes individuals who have provided support, information, guidance, or inspiration at various points during my journey. This book would not be the same without their generous and important contributions.

Whats Wrong with
Perfectionism?

A few weeks after I started work on this project, I ran into a friend I hadnt seen in a while. When he asked what I was up to, I said I was doing research for a book on perfectionism. He just stared at me. Whats wrong with perfectionism? he asked. Several others have posed similar inquiries, occasionally continuing with a tirade on shoddy workmanship and terrible customer serviceas though that were the only alternative. If you ask me [I didnt], we need a whole lot more perfectionism, one individual insisted.

Oh, silly people. Of course we dont. There is a very big difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection. Dedicating ourselves to doing our best and aiming for continual improvement is healthy and desirable. Hiding our naturally flawed humanness behind a deceptive image of perfection is stressful, exhausting, and ultimately crazy-making.

Oddly, the literature is all over the place on this topic. Ive seen a dozen or so self-assessment quizzesand at least as many definitions of perfectionism and lists of characteristics of perfectionistic people. Several theories tried to distinguish healthy perfectionism from neurotic perfectionism, often with an inventory of advantages of perfectionism thrown in. These comments raised some major red flags for me. Considering the risks of equating our worth and adequacy with our ability to maintain an illusion of perfection, I see this distinction as frankly misleading and dangerous.

So I want to be very clear about the basic premise on which this book is based: Perfectionism is not a good thing. Ive witnessed (and experienced) its toxic and corrosive effects on our thinking, our bodies, our relationships, our work, and our sense of worth. Its a handy mask for a fear of making mistakes or being on the receiving end of negative judgments and rejectiona disordered adaptation to a need for safety, approval, and a sense of adequacy, driven by a belief system that tells us were not good enough, dont have enough, or havent achieved enough. Its the voice of the Inner Critic that screams failure, loser, or fraud, regardless of the authenticity of our efforts, progress, or success.

Paul Hewitt, a psychologist who has been researching perfectionism for decades, has little patience with researchers who argue that perfectionismthe need to be or appear perfectcan sometimes serve as a healthy motivation for reaching ambitious goals. People who make that claim just ignore the fairly large literature that says that its a vulnerability factor for unipolar depression, anorexia, and suicide, he says. Hewitts website includes a quote by poet Alfred de Musset that says, Perfection does not exist. To understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; the desire to possess it the most dangerous kind of madness.

Happily, the majority of contributors and researchers agree. Perfectionism is a wound, writes psychologist Thomas Greenspon. It is never healthy, and it may never heal entirely. Author Anne Lamott calls perfectionism the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you very scared and restless your entire life if you do not awaken and fight back. Comedian Craig Ferguson observed in a television interview, I think perfectionism is a manifestation of self-hate. And author and blogger Penelope Trunk finds it amazing that people admit to being perfectionists. To me, its a disorder... Perfectionism messes you up. It also messes up the people around you.

Theologian F. Forrester Church views perfectionism through the lens of addiction, as dangerous and destructive as any substance or behavior. Whether it is for riches or thinness, fitness or knowledge or fame, the desire for perfection shuts out all other people and pleasures one by one. It is an addiction like cocaine: even more deadly in proportion to its purity. And sociologist Christine Carter notes that perfectionism is not a happiness habit... As a recovering perfectionist I can testify that perfectionism is the absolute bane of happiness.