Pavel Somov - Present Perfect: A Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need for Control

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Pittsburgh, PA. After serving in the Soviet military and completing his undergraduate degree at Moscow State Pedagogical University, he immigrated to the United States to pursue a career in psychology. He received his doctorate from State University of New York at Buffalo. Somov is author of Eating the Moment.

Chapter 1

Once we become aware of what we are not, we begin to uncover and discover who and what we truly are When we realize our true nature, we enter into the sphere of the luminous Great Perfection.

Lama Surya Das

The body of your car is made of metal. The body of your perfectionism is made of mind (thoughts, feelings, and habits). Mind can change, and so can you! So roll up your self-help sleeves and jam the shovel of self-exploration into the ground of your being. Lets talk about perfectionism in general and your perfectionism in particular.

As a perfectionist, you like precision. In embarking on a self-help project, theres a good chance you want to know exactly what is wrong with you and what its called. In my clinical practice, perfectionists tend to request diagnostic feedback more than other clients. This makes sense: information is power, and, as a perfectionist, you like to stay in control. So, without knowing anything about you in particular and extrapolating only from the fact that youre reading this book, here is my best diagnostic guess. You may be a bit OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) but probably are not OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder, a far more debilitating condition than OCPD; think Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) in the television show Monk). Dont worry. Youre in good company. In their authoritative book, Perfectionism: Theory, Research, and Treatment, Gordon Flett and Paul Hewitt note that a strong case can be made for the claim that perfectionism is endemic to Western culture (2002, xi). Even though OCPD may sound like a diagnostic handful, its really just a way to describe a set of behaviors that can be seen as nearly normative for Western society. OCPD is just a framework to help you more clearly see the kinds of actions, attitudes, and thoughts that make someone a perfectionist.

Let me also throw this into the mix: chances are your prognosis is good. How can I assert that? Because perfectionists are a highly motivated lot, perfectly positioned for a self-help approach. My only lingering concern is for that type of perfectionist who tends to procrastinate, who might only skim through this book. If you think youre at risk for this, if you and I are meeting in passing, then I hope our minds will cross paths again, perhaps in a different book.

Getting back to the matter at hand: perfectionism, as the central feature of OCPD, is also characterized by such traits as excessive concern with details, an extreme devotion to work and productivity (at the expense of leisure), excessive conscientiousness, scrupulousness, thriftiness, inflexibility and rigidity in the issues of morality and ethics, reluctance to delegate tasks, and reluctance to relinquish control (Pfohl and Blum, 1991). However, what matters more than these symptoms is the motivation behind them, and we will get to that shortly.

In the meantime, let me note that perfectionism is mostly a result of learning, programming, and conditioning. I see it as an ingenious adaptation to a hypercritical, high-pressure, invalidating environment, a psychological self-defense strategy that unfortunately creates more problems than it solves. Most of the perfectionists I have worked with had perfectionistic or narcissistic (un-empathic and invalidating) parents. Aside from parental influence, the extent of perfectionism depends on the culture you live in. Some societies are more culturally perfectionistic than others. The so-called developed societies, for example, tend to emphasize efficiency, punctuality, a willingness to work hard, and orientation to detail. Of course, these are the very traits that may accompany perfectionism and OCPD (Millon and Davis, 2000, 174).

Perfectionism can be directed at oneself and/or at others (Flett and Hewitt, 2002). Self-directed (inwardly oriented) perfectionists are notoriously hard on themselves: if they make a mistake, they shred themselves to pieces in ruminating bouts of merciless self-scrutiny. While self-directed perfectionists are their own worst critics, other-directed (outwardly focused) perfectionists are tough on others and are easily frustrated by others imperfections.

The literature on perfectionism also distinguishes between generalized (or extreme) perfectionism (in which perfectionists pursue extreme standards across a variety of life domains) and situational perfectionism (in which perfectionism is limited to specific areas of life) (Flett and Hewitt, 2002, 16). Situational perfectionism is, up to a point, adaptive and useful. Indeed, some jobs have extremely narrow margins of error and require great attention to detail (for instance, surgeon, air traffic controller, accountant). However, when perfectionism becomes a way of living (rather than a way of earning a living), then you have a case of generalized or extreme perfectionism.

On January 6, 2009, CNN reported that German billionaire Adolf Merckle died by suicide, jumping in front of a train because his fortunes had declined from $12.8 billion to $9.2 billion in 2008. CNN offered the following explanation: The financial troubles of his companies, induced by the international financial crisis and the uncertainty and powerlessness to act independentlybroke the passionate family business man, and he took his own life (CNN, 2009). My clinical guess is that Adolf Merckle was a casualty of perfectionism, not of the economy. CNNs explanation of the reasons behind the suicide is replete with red flags of perfectionism. Lets take a close look at this psychological autopsy. The press release notes that the suicide was precipitated by the financial troubles of Merckles companies. Merckle didnt lose everything; he didnt go brokehe just moved down in rank from forty-fourth to ninety-fourth on the Forbes list of the worlds richest people. His fortunes declined, but they didnt vanish. This was a case of partial failure, not complete failure. But, for the all-or-nothing perfectionistic mind, partial failure means total failure. The press release indicates that Merckle was troubled by uncertainty and powerlessness to act independently. This is typical of perfectionists, as they are indeed threatened by the prospect of relinquishing control. Merckle, according to this press release, was a passionate family business man. The significance that I see here has to do with the typical blurring of private and professional. Merckles business was a family business, therefore professional failures were personal failures. But even if his business had not been a family business, Merckle, if he was at all like other perfectionists I know, would have probably taken his professional failings personally. Thats what perfectionists do: they live for success and depend on it for meaning.

Vincent Foster, the former Deputy White House Counsel under President Clinton, died by suicide and is another likely casualty of perfectionism. In an article on the destructiveness of perfectionism, Yale psychiatrist Sidney Blatt wrote that Foster was typical of numerous examples of talented, ambitious, and successful individuals who are driven by intense needs for perfection and plagued by intense self-scrutiny, self-doubt, and self-criticism (1995, 1005).