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If you’re terrified of making mistakes, you’re likely a perfectionist. While many accept mistakes as a key part of growth, perfectionists tend to form a deep sense of meaning around them, which may or may not be true. For example, if I make a mistake on a test, that must mean I’m not brilliant. Or, if I have a bad game, that must mean I’ll never become a great basketball player. In perfectionism, mistakes speak to one’s essence (which is overgeneralized), revealing how flawed or rotten it is.
Fundamentally, then, it feels as though one is either great or isn’t. So, the great ones make no mistakes while the ordinary ones always do. This mentality is a form of black-and-white thinking. It may be true that those who are more naturally adept make fewer mistakes and may learn a skill more quickly than their peers. But most of us can handle that. Perfectionists, however, equate greatness with life-satisfaction — a fix for all of their problems. A perfectionist may say, “If I’m great, people will like me. I’ll finally fall in love and be happy.” Often, behind it is a deep interpersonal loneliness or sense of emptiness, accompanied by the belief that people are only attracted to those who truly matter, to greatness, which perpetuates a drive that periodically fills the hole.
Mistakes, then, serve as reminders of how distant that vision is. Many of our perfectionist patients speak of life as though much of it resembles a high school hierarchy, with the great ones always perched on top. Character is hardly considered when ruminating over why they aren’t well-liked. Some think happiness lies in beauty, others say in athletic achievement, and there are those who believe it stems from brilliance. While there’s some truth to this, as these individuals tend to swallow up most of the available attention, all they really have is some limited form or degree of influence.
But influence can’t permanently silence your inner chatter, which lives as long as there’s any degree of self-doubt, nor does it always, or even often, win people over. At bottom, perfectionism is a fixation on acquiring more power, over oneself and others; it’s hardly associated with anything resembling rapport. If one is perfect, it’s believed, one earns everyone’s respect, silences their inner critic, and can always predict how others will respond to and treat them; it provides one with the liberty to live life on one’s own terms — all of which is incredibly naive. I often ask my perfectionistic patients, “What do you think it will do for you?” In my own career as a writer, I used to believe that being featured in a well-known publication would give me the ability to decide on what I want to write about, help me earn much more money, win the admiration of fellow writers, and cause them to shower me with praise. I say all of this with some degree of embarrassment because most of that never happened and was never going to happen. And how did I respond? I harped on my mistakes, which I considered the source of my chronic unhappiness.
While attaining some degree of influence, I always needed more. So, none of it ever filled my void. The reality show WWE Unreal exhibited a great example of perfectionism. Professional wrestlers Lyra Valkyria and Becky Lynch wrestled each other at an important show, but in a sub-par match, largely because Lyra, plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, made several mistakes that she couldn’t recover from. After the match, visibly distressed, Lyra asked Becky to critique her performance. Becky, seeing that as a sign of perfectionism, rejected her plea. To the camera, Becky maintained that she knew Lyra’s mindset too well, remarking that “it’s good for progress but terrible for mental health.” Instead, she told Lyra how highly she thought of her. Lyra, in turn, asked Becky to yell at her, but she refused, stating, “I would never yell at you over a wrestling match.”
Becky used Lyra’s mistakes as a way to connect with her. While also upset about the match, since she’s a perfectionist too, Becky saw perfectionism’s misery in another, someone she deeply cared for, and helped widen her perspective. Arguably, it wasn’t Becky’s talent that made her so likable; it was her willingness to minimize its importance for the moment and for another, and to focus on someone clearly needing help. In that moment, it didn’t matter who was great and who wasn’t; the viewer even stops considering each person’s talents or relative status. Becky was likable because she was compassionate, selfless, and interested instead of interesting. By minimizing wrestling, she implied that her greatness just didn’t matter much either. It would be naive of me to argue that it’s completely irrelevant, since much of her success and the respect she’s afforded are based on her talent. However, her influence stemmed from helping another silence their inner critic — the lesson being that while talent is wonderful, it fails, on its own, to build connections.
That episode solidified the rivalry to viewers, without which, I believe, it would’ve been forgotten even if they had a classic match. You could tell how much effort it took for Becky to suppress her own disappointment and to forgo redirecting blame for her own share of mistakes onto Lyra, essentially scapegoating her. Becky’s perspective, as well as Lyra’s willingness to hold herself accountable, helped her consider Lyra as something other than a liability. And that was truly honorable.
