Your perfectionism probably isn't about you wanting to be perfect. It's about fearing what others think. That anxiety erodes your self-esteem and traps you in a loop. The way out is sensing progress, even small movement forward, which counteracts the feeling that you'll never be good enough.
A lot of perfectionism is actually not about your perfectionism. A lot of perfectionism comes from there's this high bar of standard that other people have set and I'm scared I'm not going to meet it. And so I have anxiety, I worry about rejection, I worry about judgment, I worry about social comparison. All those things are other people oriented. And it causes me angst, right? And again there's heightened levels of angst and there's long going angst. Like the more social angst I have about not being able to meet somebody else's needs. Well, the higher and the longer that goes, the lower my self esteem is going to be, right? Think about that. The heightened stress, stuck self loathing or social angst I feel and the longer it endures, the more it's going to drop my down my self esteem. So that's why getting progress is really important in people's lives, right? Because when I don't sense that, I'm going to feel these. When I don't sense progress, I'm going to feel these. When I don't sense progress, I'm going to feel these. You can have progress and these can be part of that. Certainly they're not all mutually exclusive. But if I don't sense a sense of progress, it's gonna be like I'm never gonna meet their needs, they're never gonna do better. Why try? And we become resigned.
