What Perfectionism is really doing to you
Whenever I read companies brand values on their website and see them claiming “striving for the perfect outcome for you (the customer)…” or creative jobs ads “should be pixel perfect…”, “flawless” or even scarily “we hunt for perfection”, my brain bias picks up on this as it used to be a deep rooted story and occasionally still haunts me.
Yes, I call perfectionism a shadow trait.
“It’s perfect!”
Now, some people just say “this is perfect!” when you’ve organised something for them, even just sorting out a meeting among friends. No harm done. For my part, I still hesitate to say this freely because I have been burned however in workplaces. I find perfectionism in the professional work or business place harmful for both the employer and the employee.
Because fear of failure on both sides is activating the freeze function of our nervous system, a chronic shutdown. Read more about the nervous system here.
This is a story from my perspective but I hope it can help you reflecting on ways if you’re prone to perfectionism. And for the employers, I hope that perfectionists terms are not thrown around wildly because in the end it doesn’t help anyone. By the way, in the video I make a distinction between perfectionism and excellence.
So in this video I’m sharing personal stories and introduce the unexpected members of what I call the Perfectionist Family.
Created by Christiane Holden
🎬 Behind the scenes
Last year, in a moment in the summer, I found myself reflecting on an old (and still a bit shameful) career experience: I had people-pleased like crazy, diving into a new role with excitement but also with ice-cold fear and unaddressed perfectionist tendencies lurking in the background. I hadn’t yet faced them, so of course, they came into full force to haunt me.
The more I journaled away, the more I realised something: perfectionism doesn’t show up in one way. It’s not just about wanting things to be perfect. Sometimes, it shows up as procrastination, people-pleasing, indecision or that familiar fear of not being enough.
So I thought I want to turn this wound into something creative. Like art therapy. I began sketching out a video idea – inspired by my love for Hotel Transylvania – and wrote a rough script with visual cartoon scribbles right there.
I then left it in the drawer for 6 months, not doing anything with it.
Funnily enough, in the meantime, I picked up Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, which I highly recommend. Ironically, I haven’t finished it. Not because it wasn’t good, it’s great and actually helpful. But I kept coming back to my version of the story. I wanted to tell it from my own experience.
“ Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness, will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
It’s ironic that I was working on the Perfectionist Trap video in my spare time as it’s a passion project and guess what happened in the last 20% with the nitty gritty of combining the videos together, adding sounds, going over scenes I left blank or didn’t like? I had to remind myself that I was literally making a video about this!
So, I stepped away, came back, kept going.
Healing, like creativity, is not linear.
if you had this habit for years, it’s not going away when you are facing it once.
Let’s be radically honest, even if we’re working with our shadows, we can’t remove them magically, they will always be there as part of our (life) story.
These tendencies may be rooted in years of emotional patterns – people-pleasing, fear of failure, chronic self-doubt.
But with awareness, you can start noticing when these patterns show up. You can pause, acknowledge them, and try tools like tapping, body scans, or therapy to reduce their power.
And as I mentioned, wounds flare back up. The Universe is testing you. It’s messy, it’s infuriating and sometimes it feels like falling several steps back.
That’s okay.
You’re not broken.
You’re human.
Just remember:
It’s an inside job.
No quick fixes
External quick fixes are just temporary relief. It’s plastering over our wounds and leaving us unhappy and still feeling trapped in the end.
The real shifts happen from within.
So, meet the Perfectionist Family (and How to Escape Them). I also share tools that go beyond a ‘I just need to fix my mindset’.
Watch Video here on YouTube
