When a person learns that being “the best” is what keeps them safe, perfectionism isn’t a personality trait — it’s a survival mechanism. Joe traces this directly in a coaching session: the participant’s drive to be top of her class, to always be “the good one,” originated because she needed to be safe from something. Being perfect was how she got love, or at least avoided harm.
“Criticizing a kid all the time is abuse. Expecting perfection out of a kid is abuse. And until you can see it and own it and feel it, it’s going to be a long haul to actually change that pattern.”
The word “abuse” matters here. Using softer language like “approval-seeking” doesn’t hit the system somatically — it lets the mind manage the insight without actually feeling it. Joe notes that acknowledging abuse isn’t about making the abuser wrong; wrong doesn’t solve the problem. Acknowledgment solves the problem. This can be held without shame — “there’s just all of this stuff that we’re swimming in through the generations, through our society, and I’ve clearly carried some of it.”
The perfectionism shows up everywhere in the session: in how she frames her question, in how she regulates her breath, in how she approaches the coaching itself. The pattern is operating even in the attempt to dissolve the pattern.
Related Concepts
- Perfectionism is a fear response that creates chaos
- Perfectionism is the critical parent’s voice
- Overachieving is survival mode
- Childhood criticism creates self-distrust
- Repair after mistakes is as important as getting it right
- The fixing mindset perpetuates the very stuckness it tries to solve