The Perfectionism No One Talks About

Hi lovely souls!

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve last written. Life has been a little wild in the most beautiful, challenging, & deeply honest way possible (more on this later). I finally feel like I have some words to share. Someone who loves me very much has reminded me lately of 6 words:

You don’t have to be perfect.

So, this is me, attempting to release my inhibitions like I’m in a Sara Barellis music video and defer from over-editing, over-justifying, and over-analyzing myself until awareness feels more like a cage and less like an old friend.

Ironically, I have spent the last 30 years of my life convinced I wasn’t a perfectionist because I don’t consider myself to be a “Type A” kind of person.

Then again, ask anyone who knows me (truly knows me) and they can probably confirm the following:

1. I am extremely hard on myself.

2. I often put over-emphasis on my choice of words to the point it sometimes leaves me feeling quite stuck.

3. I treat transitory periods of my life like roadblocks to master instead of an invitation into stillness and reflection.

4. I forget that I don’t have to be perfect to be worthy.

And these are just a few things. I’m sure if I sat long enough I could come up with a much longer list. But I’m not really in the mood to write lists and I promised myself I wouldn’t over-edit this, although it would make for a rather ironic post, don’t you think?

Anyway, something I’ve been sitting with is the sneaky way perfectionism can show up for highly sensitive souls. It doesn’t always fit the stereotypical textbook definition. I don’t have (or desire) to have a spotless home or color-coordinated to-do lists. I wouldn’t consider myself to be someone who loves productivity and being the “most” efficient at everything I do.

In fact, I often day dream about living in a small cottage in the middle of nowhere, where the most stressful task of the day is deciding whether or not to frolic in the open field or go for a swim at sunset.

Tricky ways perfectionism shows up for the highly sensitive soul (aka me)

• I sometimes feel like if I don’t handle transitions of grief, or big feelings gracefully, that I’m doing it wrong.

• I sometimes silently hold myself to impossible emotional standards — like never wanting to burden others with my humanness.

• I tend to want to process everything right away — often to feel a sense of control over emotions or not unintentionally cause a misunderstanding, or worse, hurt someone’s feelings.

And perhaps the worst of all…

Believing that to deserve love, I must fully understand and fix my triggers, wounds, or sensitivities.

Ooof, is that not a sneaky perfectionism wound disguised as awareness or what?

And the thing is, none of these things make me more lovable. Nor do they make me less loveable. They simply make me human.

The truth that I often forget is one I think every human being has experienced at one point in their life:

Your worthiness as a human being just IS.

No amount of awareness, personal healing, or ability to do things “perfectly” will ever make you more worthy of a life that feels truly yours than it already is.

And no, this isn’t because you aren’t doing enough. The good news is that this is actually really liberating news!

Woo-Hoo! We don’t have to be perfect to be loved!

The bad news? Acknowledging and sitting with the truth that you have spent a long time living in a cage that you’ve had the key to walk out of the whole time is… well, not easy.

The key?

It’s you.

And the cage?

It’s not your fault, love.

It’s highly likely you didn’t build the cage you now find yourself in and yet you also have the awareness that it is no one else’s responsibility to dismantle that very same cage.

I think the biggest way we can begin to dismantle our cage is through acknowledging that it exists.

I was listening to Matha Beck’s audiobook ‘The Way of Integrity’ when she shared a quote that stopped me in my tracks:

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” — Linji Yixuan

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you go and murder the next Zen-Esque person you see on the street.

The concept behind this quote is simple:

When you think you’ve found the ultimate truth outside of yourself—whether it’s a person, a teaching, or even your own idea of who you’re “supposed” to be—you need to let it go. Because clinging to that illusion will only keep you stuck.

And this is because when we cling to an externalized version of ‘truth’, it prevents us from our truth. The truth that is our own inner voice when we stop outsourcing our innateness based on what we were taught we should be and finally allow ourselves TO BE.

I’ve realized that my perfectionism, in its sneakiest form, is my Buddha on the road.

The part of me that says:
👉 If you just understand yourself enough, you’ll be worthy.
👉 If you just process your feelings the “right” way, you’ll finally deserve love.
👉 If you just get it all “right,” you’ll be safe.

But no amount of overthinking or over-perfecting has ever brought me closer to wholeness. I’d argue in most cases it actually just makes me feel farther and farther form my inherent wholeness. And rather than seeing this as a sign of misalignment, I often revert to doubling down and trying ‘harder’.

And thus, the negative feedback loop continues infinitely.

I’m still learning how to break my own self-inflicted cycle. Some days it feels easy and simple. Other days it feels like I’m trying to learn a language no one else knows but somehow everyone speaks fluently in, except me. And I’m learning, slowly, both are okay. Neither makes me more loveable or less lovable. Just deeply human.

So maybe the work isn’t to fix ourselves. Maybe the work is to notice the inner voices that demand perfection, bow to them for trying to protect us, and then—gently, bravely—let them go.

Maybe the invitation is to stop meeting ourselves with conditions and start meeting ourselves as we are.