Dear Therapist:
Lately I’ve been noticing how much pressure I put on myself to do things right. Even small things, like cooking for Shabbos or writing a thank-you note, start to feel stressful—like there’s one correct way to do it, and if I don’t get it perfect, it reflects badly on me. I end up procrastinating or overthinking things that really shouldn’t be so complicated.
People probably see me as responsible and on top of things, but inside, I often feel tense and worn out. I think I have a hard time realizing what the difference is between trying to grow and being driven, versus being perfectionistic. How does a person know when healthy ambition has crossed the line into something unhealthy?
Response:
As you imply, there is a balance between a healthy drive and an unhealthy obsession. When we think of obsession, it may conjure images of intense focus and an inability to move on. Although you may experience this at times, it sounds like your primary concern is less intense—but perhaps more pervasive.
Certainly, some of us are highly obsessive about numerous things, but I’ll distinguish between focused obsessiveness (like repeatedly checking if the door is locked) and a more general, pervasive obsessive way of thinking.
Obsessive thinking is often driven by anxiety. Let’s reverse-engineer a theoretical process. If I feel anxious about cooking, I’ll feel a strong urge to do it “right.” But my anxiety about cooking doesn’t seem to make sense. Perhaps I’m just generally anxious, and my conscious mind needs something specific to latch onto—like cooking, at the moment.
So, what causes the anxiety in the first place? Many of our anxieties are rooted in childhood emotions and insecurities. As a child, I might have felt out of place or insecure. I may have had little control over circumstances in my life. These feelings could have coalesced into a sense that I wasn’t good enough. And since I couldn’t clearly identify this sense of inferiority, it began to generalize. I felt not good enough in many areas—and so I developed a need to be perfect in those areas. I needed to get excellent grades, be accepted by the “in” group, and always be “on” socially. As I grew older, the particular areas may have changed, but the underlying need to be perfect persisted.
As logical, thoughtful people, we try to deal with our issues practically and logically. But when our issues are unconsciously driven, we typically miss the mark. In our example, my logical focus is on my cooking anxiety. So, I ask myself why I’m anxious about cooking and try to remind myself that there’s no reason to be. Of course, this approach doesn’t work very well. Maybe I recognize that my anxiety is broader than just cooking, so I try the same strategies elsewhere. That doesn’t work either—and it becomes frustrating to consider all these separate problems, ironically causing me to feel even worse, wondering whether something’s wrong with me. But if I can instead recognize the root of the anxiety—the belief that I’m not good enough—I can begin to work through it.
Sometimes the cause of our issue becomes fairly obvious once we realize that there’s something beneath the surface. Other times, insecurities have been obscured or repressed because they felt too painful to acknowledge. If you find it difficult to identify your underlying fears or insecurities, a therapist can help guide you through that process—so you can begin to move past them.
-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW
psychotherapist in private practice
Woodmere, NY
adjunct professor at Touro University
Graduate School of Social Work
author of Self-Esteem: A Primer
www.ylcsw.com / 516-218-4200
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