THE DARKNESS OF PERFECTION
16 AUGUST 2022 (12 MIN READ)
Deep inside all of us exists this desire to be perfect, to be the best version of ourselves possible and achieve our dreams in the most perfect way. To some, this is a desire locked away inside of them that is repeatedly ignored, out of a fear of responsibility, but to many others, it’s a lifestyle, criticizing oneself when they are less than perfect and only giving themselves love if they do something perfectly. What keeps people stuck in this mess is the fact that perfection, in society’s eyes, is seen as something worthy to strive for, even exemplary. For instance, consider the praise of perfect athletes, such as Michael Phelps or Tiger Woods. However, perfectionism is the fastest road to misery and self-hatred, as you can see by following the stories of both of those athletes after their glory days. Phelps became suicidal and Woods not only became a serial cheater while married to his wife, but also received two arrests for driving under the influence of narcotics, and almost ended his life during one specific crash. Considering stories like these, why do so many of us still desire to be perfect? But more importantly…
What’s the cost of perfection?
Killing all the good in you.
Which is an interesting duality: constantly demanding the best in yourself will destroy the best in you.
THE PROMISE
Let’s begin by tackling the question about why we strive for perfection. The answer to this question lies in three specific areas: the false allure of being the best, the idea of escaping your shadow, and a misunderstanding of the end result of perfection. In terms of the allure, a part of us deep down wants to be the best version of ourselves possible. And we think that this version involves us being “perfect.” But is perfection really the best we have to offer? In the form of never making any wrong moves and always being incredibly kind. Yes, at face value, but we don’t necessarily understand the cost of getting there. In order to arrive at the destination of perfection, we have to throw away all the “bad” sides of ourselves in favor of the one we perceive to be good. This “bad” side can be labeled as our shadow: the darkness in us that’s always looming behind our backs. Unfortunately, what most don’t realize about the shadow is that unless it’s actively worked on and understood by some form of psychoanalysis, it operates through us unconsciously. This means that what we perceive to be the bad side that we are avoiding is really only a fraction of the equation. So, what happens to the shadow we can’t see? It fools us into believing that we are avoiding it through perfection, but in reality, our shadow becomes the strive for perfection itself. And this shadow is the most deadly of them all, because no one can be perfect. Therefore, if we only treat ourselves with kindness when we are perfect, then we are never kind to ourselves, only overly critical and mean.
What once started as an effort to be the light in you—the best you can offer—became a vehicle for your shadow to dominate your life without you even knowing. Although there is truth to the power of the darkness in all of us causing this issue, a cultural problem is also at the root of this collective deceivery: thinking that those we perceive as perfect had an easy road to get there. We look at the person at the beach with the perfect body, the six-pack or the hourglass figure, and we immediately shame ourselves and think that this person has so much of a better life than us. However, what we fail to realize is the immense amount of suffering it took to get that figure, both mentally and physically. Yes, some people do just have good genetics, but many don’t. For example, I’m at the gym at least five days a week doing grueling workouts. My diet is so strict that I cannot eat out at any restaurants. I dive into freezing cold buckets of water for minutes on end. But most importantly, I stand in front of the mirror repeatedly hating myself until I get the perfect figure I desire. With all of this mental and physical suffering, I am at only four out of the six abdominals, so I cannot even imagine what it takes to get to six. Although this is a reflection of a lot of trauma due to once being a fat bullied kid, that is the reality behind what you immediately perceive to be an easy, perfect life: a dedication to suffering and frequently criticizing oneself for an image of who they want to be. So, before you idolize those who are perfect and criticize yourself for not being more like them, try to understand what it took for them to get to that place. And once you truly get it, their perfection will start to look horrifically ugly. Once you sit with this ugliness, you will start to feel a whole lot better about your own life.
THE END OF THE ROAD
Being a perfectionist is like having a drill sergeant permanently sitting at the top of your head, aggressively criticizing you whenever you do not do something up to his standards. Although this sort of self-treatment may allow you to accomplish what you set out to accomplish, you will feel like utter garbage on the journey and you will not even appreciate the view once you get to the destination you desire. Upon this much-awaited arrival, the drill sergeant will immediately smack your head and make you focus on what’s next and how to beat you up to get there. If all you have been doing is listening to this bully of perfection and repeatedly getting hurt by him, then can you say that the accomplishments were even worth it? No. The achievements were a byproduct of being afraid to not adhere to the demands of that bully. And how can you feel good about your accomplishments if they only occurred because you were scared of a side of yourself? You don’t. You merely perpetuate a cycle of self-misery until you wake the fuck up and realize all you have been doing is getting dominated by a voice of fear. A voice so scared of telling you that you think you are not enough that they masquerade it as a devotion to perfection. And hopefully, within that dedication to perfection, maybe others will see you in a light that you can’t bear to see yourself in: being worthy of admiration. However, this strategy is a fast track to depression and serious burnout, because as you get closer to perfection on your journey, the demands of the sergeant will only get more intense. For example, if you originally set out to run a perfect 10k race, and you beat yourself up in grueling training to get there, what happens when you set out to run a perfect 20k race? The sergeant of perfection has to be twice as hard on you. As you can see, the level of intensity of perfection gets stronger the closer you get to it. And that’s because the closer you get, the more is demanded of yourself to keep getting better.
You may be reading this and think, “Yeah, exactly! That sounds like a dedicated life. I’m willing to pay that price to achieve perfection!” To that I say, consider the end of the road, where you can finally tell yourself that you have achieved perfection. Look around the end of that road. Do you see anyone you love? Do you see your children? Do you see a lover who you have given your all to? Do you see yourself going out of the way to be kind to those around you? No. All you see is a brief twirl of delight, followed by you looking around with no one else to be seen, thinking, “what’s next?”
What’s next is that same experience over and over again until you realize it’s more important to be at the middle of the road with people you love than to be at the end all by yourself. Always think of that visualization of the end of the road when that voice of perfection is getting the better of you.
INHUMANITY
At the core of humanity, is the ability to not get things right. In other words, what makes you human is the ability to make mistakes. Thus, when we aim for perfection, in reality, we aim to not be human. And when we aim to not be human, we think we have the ability to transcend humanity, creating a large sense of entitlement due to an inflated ego. Within this state of desiring a God-like state, one will look down on normal humans, since they will all be making mistakes while the perfect one will avoid them at all costs. Not only will this mindset make a perfectionist deeply unlikeable, but it will make them unable to have friends that truly care about them, opting instead to have friends who only validate and gas up this unrealistic persona. Additionally, when we only expect perfection in ourselves, as explained in the previous section, we become very hard on ourselves all the time, as perfection is basically impossible to obtain. When we criticize ourselves all the time because we are not perfect, we transfer that habit to our perception and treatment of other people, either criticizing their behavior constantly in our minds or verbally, hurting their feelings in the process. This is why perfectionists make the worst friends in the world. And this brutal reality boils down to the fact that when we do not have compassion for ourselves, we fail to have compassion for others.
Although this alienation caused by perfection is bad enough already, the biggest problem stemming from thinking that we are beyond human lies in the fact that we avoid making mistakes. Mistakes can be deeply painful to make, but they reveal the largest truths that we have been avoiding: where the shadow in ourselves lies. For most, the personal shadow, or one’s repressed dark side, is hard to notice by just going through the motions of one’s day. We can only really see the shadow in all its darkness when we hurt the people we love. Once we have hurt someone we cherish, we are forced to look inside ourselves for where the darkness that caused it came from, and then come up with a plan to not let that side get the best of us. However, when we always refrain from making mistakes because we want to be perfect, we fail to see the shadow in ourselves, because humans only really notice their shadow when they make big mistakes. I am not advocating for emotionally hurting people on purpose or calling it a good thing, but I am calling it a necessary thing that humans have to go through to locate the darkness within their soul and heal it. Ideally, we could just look inside ourselves and find the darkness automatically; however, we are too blind to our own darkness as a collective for that to be the case. I wish it were different, but this is the plain truth. But why is ignoring our shadow through perfection such a big deal?
HIDDEN SHADOW
In essence, by destroying the shadow in ourselves—through doing everything we can to avoid or ignore it—we end up killing the good in us too. We have already learned about how an ignored shadow turns into perfection without us even knowing, having our lives controlled by it unconsciously. And how that perfection ends up making our lives miserable. So, here already exists one key truth about the dangers of destroying the shadow in the favor of perfection, which leads to a life of only darkness. However, a bigger problem lurks in the shadows: being ignorant of the trauma that created the darkness and how the avoidance of that trauma is making us desire perfection. Until we understand the mechanisms of what caused the trauma in us to want utter perfection, we will never be able to get rid of its control over our lives. Thus, the more we ignore the truth behind the curtains, the more we will find ourselves at its mercy without even knowing. But how can we find the truth behind the darkness of perfection? And what does it usually look like?
To begin with, the best way to find the reality behind the shadow is to feel the repressed pain in your body and allow it to guide you to the point of origin. If we truly sit down with painful emotions and become embodied with them, they have a beautiful way of telling us why they are there in the first place, if we let them. The problem is that we constantly repress the pain, making it impossible to locate the root. Most of the time, if you are always desiring perfection, then you were probably the child of a parent who only showed you love and affection if you were “perfect.” This means you only got affection if you were smiling and polite, or if you did incredibly well on a task that your parents wanted you to be good at. Furthermore, if you showcased the opposite of those things, such as being moody or bringing home a subpar grade, you were immediately met with hostility and shame.
This unfortunate treatment by your parents then became internalized as you only giving yourself praise if you were “perfect.” To overcome this deep wound, you have to sit with the extreme pain you felt as a child when you could not be loved for who you were, but only for an image of who your parents wanted you to be. Once you have spent a good amount of time dealing with the stored childhood pain, you must sit with the pain you have caused yourself from projecting the treatment by your parents onto yourself. Whenever you feel the voice of perfection rising to your psyche, picture yourself as that little kid, who just wanted to be loved no matter what they were doing. You need to become the person who both saves yourself and the broken child stored in your psyche from the dark tentacles of perfection.
Going back to the original point, if you do not become familiar with the shadow inside yourself and what’s causing it, then you will be at its mercy without even realizing it, slowly becoming encompassed by the deep suffering it constantly causes, losing all of yourself in the process.
