Nov 8, 2023Liked by Sara Petersen, Virginia Sole-Smith
Super excited about this podcast, great first chat Sara and Virginia!!
I relate HARD to the push/pull tension of perfectionism. If I can’t detach entirely, I do try to be aware about it (is it also perfectionistic to notice your attempted detachment from said perfectionism?!?).
Lately, the main way I struggle with this is in being a “good” sick person. I’ve been dealing with a (non-visible) chronic illness that has halted my life a bit so when I go out and see people I wonder if I look too well or too unwell and do I need to calibrate one way or the other? But what does it even mean (like a Victorian orphan? idk) and I know it’s ridiculous yet I can’t get these thoughts out of my head.
Oh I can so see this. Because if you look too well, people don't take it seriously. But if you are in Victorian orphan mode, they dismiss you in a different way... Gah. Plus the pressure to be an A+ Person With X Condition -- similar to my belief I need to be an A+ Medical Mom at all times.
Nov 9, 2023Liked by Sara Petersen, Virginia Sole-Smith
So much to think about, thank you!
I kind of think that if we lived in a world that valued people simple because they are people we might not need self confidence because we would feel innately valued. Maybe we wouldn’t need to perform to access power in the world. Obviously this is not our reality, but your conversation made me think about how I may perform because I want to be seen and valued since there isn’t much else that validates my work as a mother.
Nov 8, 2023·edited Nov 8, 2023Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
I'm SO excited about this! I am a big fan of both of your work, and as I've been thinking about motherhood the last few years, your voices have helped so much to combat the "good mother" narratives all around us. (I'm the question asker from Burnt Toast's "how did you decide to have kids" thread :) Now that my partner and I have decided to "try" in the next year, I am suddenly inundated with this motherhood perfectionism, and I still have my IUD in! There's so much noise about preconception nutrition, fitness, pelvic floors (???) 'natural' vs medical birth, one million opinions on what products to buy, not to mention how to navigate your marriage, career, childcare, money, and everything else. And then, of course, also calls to "trust your instincts." As soon as my algorithm got wind of my interest in birth, it has been a firehose that is making me consider fully stepping away from social media. Plus my usually lovely GP just said, "get your nutrition right for a few months before you start trying, you don't have to worry about anything unless conception is difficult." Which is hard for a teachers' pet type who wants to get an A at pregnancy. Can't wait to hear more of these conversations!
Oh my gosh I SO RELATE to this and am also so relieved Instagram wasn't a thing when I first got pregnant! I have a vivid memory of reading one of the Dr. Sears books and taking note of Martha's "pregnancy salad" which involved broccoli and cottage cheese. It was FINE but it just made me think of pregnancy as this thing I could "excel" at in pretty unhelpful ways. I love your GP by the way! And holy shit firehose is exactly right.
I don’t feel like Insta became big for me until the pandemic, at which point I had a 3 yo and 9 mo. I was reading Alpha Mom website with my first kid in 2017 and I was a devotee of Amy Corbett Storch’s pregnancy calendar with my second kid, and spent a lot of time reading her blog especially about the transition from 1 to 2 kids.
Instagram didn’t become a thing for me until 2020 when my daughter was an infant. And I love a lot of the content that I found there, but there are things that make me feel bad when I look at them.
I’ve gone back to school for music education and in the last few months I’ve had every single professor to tell me to “be more confident,” to the point where I started to feel like it’s a moral failing (I know it’s not). I do not feel confident the first time I do something. I’m at school to learn and practice. It feels really inauthentic to pretend to be confident to essentially make others feel better. “Performing confidence.” And it’s very different from self-confidence. I have self-confidence. My worth isn’t connected at all to how I do. It’s so weird to me that people think anything can be fixed by “being more confident!” Load of BS.
Nov 8, 2023Liked by Sara Petersen, Virginia Sole-Smith
I’m not totally convinced that adaptive perfectionist striving is a bad thing. If you are striving towards a goal and your mistakes aren’t causing debilitating self worth issues, is it a problem? I would think maladaptive perfectionist striving would be the bad one? Maybe I misunderstood the linked article. :) Love all of this by the way - read it/listened to it this morning and I’ve been thinking about it all day.
Oh good catch — adaptive is the functional one. Still, so interesting to think then about perfectionism/striving as a necessary and useful survival skill…
Loved this conversation, and I'm looking forward to future episodes!
Some things that really resonated with me:
- Sara's point about perfectionism morphing into optimization.
- The complexity around parent education on social media (hits very close to home!). I, too, loved Dr. Becky's reminder, "My own kids don't have 'Dr. Becky' as a mom."
- The "confidence gap" BS that ignores systemic issues. I feel the same way about so-called "imposter syndrome."
Other musings while listening:
Wondering what you all think about the concept of being a "recovering perfectionist." I'm not super comfortable with co-opting language from addiction recovery (though there is an actual diagnosis of "clinical perfectionism" in the DSM-V under the OCD category—but I don't think most people are referencing an illness when they). But I do like the concept that it might take conscious ongoing effort to break decades-long patterns.
One other "perfect motherhood" trope came up for me when hearing stories about early postpartum days: the pressure to have "natural childbirth" and, at the very least, to avoid a c-section at all costs. Is that still front and center for new moms today? I was pregnant with my first more than twenty years ago, and I was hell bent on a "natural" childbirth, took an expensive Bradley Method class, labored at home for a day before going to the hospital, and then felt like an absolute failure when I had to have a c-section. I was *briefly* determined to try for a VBAC the second time around, but I ended up happily and gratefully scheduling a c-section.
Ohhh I think that pressure around childbirth is alive and well! Or it sure was 10 years ago when I had my first. I didn’t personally subscribe with my second (now 6) but it’s still in the water.
On “recovering perfectionist” — I also don’t love borrowing addiction language but am stumped by how else to describe the experience of trying to let go of something that no longer serves you but is difficult to shed…
Oh gosh this was huge when I had my first kid (see above mention of Dr. Sears). Given the preponderance of "natural childbirth" videos shared online through momfluencers, I'm fairly certain this pressure is still a thing.
I'm constantly unpacking and re-packing my relationship to perfectionism and I struggle constantly. Sometimes I wonder if my perfectionism is an attempt to prevent my children from having the same issues I have. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't want my kids to feel any pain emotional or otherwise... ever. I don't want them to suffer with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, or addiction. I don't want them to have to persevere through grief and childhood trauma like I did. I thought if I were a "perfect mom" I could create a world in which nothing bad would ever happen, but then our youngest was diagnosed with brain cancer and then he died and I could no longer protect them from trauma. Most days I do pretty good, but when perfectionism creeps in I struggle to forgive myself.
I love everything you guys do and I'm really looking forward to this series!
Oh my gosh Emily I'm so very sorry about your son. Sending you so much love and I so empathize with wanting to shield our kids from emotional pain. Feeling their secondhand pain is uniquely difficult as a parent.
I grew up, pre social media, within a culture that encouraged everyone to "reach for the stars, be your best self." It was, and still is, a distortion of the idea of "self actualization" on steroids. Previous generations were expected to become upstanding and decent members of their community. And to conform to many social mores. The 60's brought about a new emphasis on one's own interests and needs. Thus, self-actualization. But the 80's and 90's were about striving for success and money. It was no longer enough to grow into yourself. Now you had to be your "best," you had to over come the social constraints that restricted you and win your stardom in whatever arena. All of American society was swallowing this trope and striving for greatness. If you didn't achieve this greatness then you were nothing. It became a massive pressure for perfectionism in all aspects of one's life. Motherhood was of course no exception.
Here's where what I have to say might get uncomfortable.
As a young adult, I was fully on board with perfectionism and as a result constantly felt inferior, a failure, never enough. I certainly never held my friends to this unkind standard of perfectionism. I was loving and forgiving of human imperfection in friends, but couldn't seem to extend the same empathy and compassion to myself. And then I had an epiphany. If I was holding myself to standards of perfection that I wouldn't expect of others, then wasn't that a bit...arrogant? To unconsciously believe that I could achieve what I did not expect in others? It was as though I viewed myself as the brightly colored fish in a giant swirl of silver sardines. This epiphany, that there is an element of arrogance in perfectionism, helped me let it go.
When you let go of the hope that you might be that golden fish in the swirl of silver you gain a lot! First, you gain community. Now you are one of many lovely fish swirling through the waters of life. You can identify with them. This can be a real buffer against loneliness. Second, you can drop the endless pressure for perfectionism. Ironically, this actually frees you to pursue your interests since you no longer need to obsess over them. But that's just a side win. The real wins are ditching the hypercritical inner voice and gaining community in a new and deeper way.
The giant swirl of silver sardines! I LOVE THIS. And you're so right - holding ourselves up to impossible standards is not very self-love friendly and it does belie a hidden hubris that I hadn't considered before.
It was recognizing the hidden hubris that helped me let go of perfectionism. And I think it's important to talk about what we gain when we let go of perfectionism.
For me, I think my perfectionism is less driven by wanting to be the rainbow fish among the silver sardines as it is by the anxiety that if I don't hit every target and do everything flawlessly, catastrophy will ensue. Not as much now, but certainly when I first became a mom, I thought that if I didn't feed my kid the right food, or give him the right toys to play with, or give him my undivided, perfectly attuned attention for every waking moment of his day, etc. etc. etc. then I would permanently cause harm to his developing brain. Similarly, even the pressure to be perfect professionally has had more to do with fears that if I'm not the best, I won't have economic stability. So I would say fear more than arrogance has been the root of perfectionism for me.
Yeah, I get it. There's all this stuff we're "supposed" to do to make everything come out okay. And as women and mothers, we are the ones given the default responsibility of making everything work. Sometimes behind this lies the myth of control. We Americans really, really like to believe that we can control our comes. We try to control our health with foods. We try to control our finances with education. We try to control our children's future with constant, endless over involvement. Because this is what we've been told we must do. Otherwise we'll die of cancer, end up a bag lady, or our kids will become drug addicts. As a woman with an internal locus of control, I believe in my ability to effect my life's outcome. But...there are many things in life that we do not control. That is one of the hardest lessons of parenthood. It comes back and bites you again when you're middle aged and your body begins to fail you despite all those salads and workouts.
Here's the good news. Kids are really pre programmed to grow into themselves. They need our love and presence. They need food and watering of various kinds. They run into challenges and need our not too involved support. They need our protection from high pressure culture. But...we can also sit back and take pleasure in watching them grow into themselves. It is a perspective that is far more respectful of the child as an individual than the idea that we adults are responsible for somehow generating their greatness. I'm not saying we don't need to be involved. Kids need parents who care enough to be involved. But we can let loose some of the maneuvering to control the outcome. To do that we have to reject the illusion of control.
Just chiming in to say that I loved this first episode AND that 15$ for the whole series is a perfect holiday gift for friends (a great price point and not too many episodes!)
Thanks for letting us know Annie! Still waiting to go up on Apple podcasts (in a very IMPERFECT move, we submitted early this morning hence the time lag), and once it's up there, you should be all set with Overcast! It should be there soon!
Super excited about this podcast, great first chat Sara and Virginia!!
I relate HARD to the push/pull tension of perfectionism. If I can’t detach entirely, I do try to be aware about it (is it also perfectionistic to notice your attempted detachment from said perfectionism?!?).
Lately, the main way I struggle with this is in being a “good” sick person. I’ve been dealing with a (non-visible) chronic illness that has halted my life a bit so when I go out and see people I wonder if I look too well or too unwell and do I need to calibrate one way or the other? But what does it even mean (like a Victorian orphan? idk) and I know it’s ridiculous yet I can’t get these thoughts out of my head.
Oh I can so see this. Because if you look too well, people don't take it seriously. But if you are in Victorian orphan mode, they dismiss you in a different way... Gah. Plus the pressure to be an A+ Person With X Condition -- similar to my belief I need to be an A+ Medical Mom at all times.
Gah yes, tis one of many mindfucks
So much to think about, thank you!
I kind of think that if we lived in a world that valued people simple because they are people we might not need self confidence because we would feel innately valued. Maybe we wouldn’t need to perform to access power in the world. Obviously this is not our reality, but your conversation made me think about how I may perform because I want to be seen and valued since there isn’t much else that validates my work as a mother.
Ohhh yes yes yes.
I'm SO excited about this! I am a big fan of both of your work, and as I've been thinking about motherhood the last few years, your voices have helped so much to combat the "good mother" narratives all around us. (I'm the question asker from Burnt Toast's "how did you decide to have kids" thread :) Now that my partner and I have decided to "try" in the next year, I am suddenly inundated with this motherhood perfectionism, and I still have my IUD in! There's so much noise about preconception nutrition, fitness, pelvic floors (???) 'natural' vs medical birth, one million opinions on what products to buy, not to mention how to navigate your marriage, career, childcare, money, and everything else. And then, of course, also calls to "trust your instincts." As soon as my algorithm got wind of my interest in birth, it has been a firehose that is making me consider fully stepping away from social media. Plus my usually lovely GP just said, "get your nutrition right for a few months before you start trying, you don't have to worry about anything unless conception is difficult." Which is hard for a teachers' pet type who wants to get an A at pregnancy. Can't wait to hear more of these conversations!
Oh my gosh I SO RELATE to this and am also so relieved Instagram wasn't a thing when I first got pregnant! I have a vivid memory of reading one of the Dr. Sears books and taking note of Martha's "pregnancy salad" which involved broccoli and cottage cheese. It was FINE but it just made me think of pregnancy as this thing I could "excel" at in pretty unhelpful ways. I love your GP by the way! And holy shit firehose is exactly right.
I don’t feel like Insta became big for me until the pandemic, at which point I had a 3 yo and 9 mo. I was reading Alpha Mom website with my first kid in 2017 and I was a devotee of Amy Corbett Storch’s pregnancy calendar with my second kid, and spent a lot of time reading her blog especially about the transition from 1 to 2 kids.
Instagram didn’t become a thing for me until 2020 when my daughter was an infant. And I love a lot of the content that I found there, but there are things that make me feel bad when I look at them.
I’ve gone back to school for music education and in the last few months I’ve had every single professor to tell me to “be more confident,” to the point where I started to feel like it’s a moral failing (I know it’s not). I do not feel confident the first time I do something. I’m at school to learn and practice. It feels really inauthentic to pretend to be confident to essentially make others feel better. “Performing confidence.” And it’s very different from self-confidence. I have self-confidence. My worth isn’t connected at all to how I do. It’s so weird to me that people think anything can be fixed by “being more confident!” Load of BS.
PERFORMING CONFIDENCE. Whew. Yes, what a weird expectation!!
Oh THIS is so huge. Feels very connected to guru/self-help culture too.
I’m not totally convinced that adaptive perfectionist striving is a bad thing. If you are striving towards a goal and your mistakes aren’t causing debilitating self worth issues, is it a problem? I would think maladaptive perfectionist striving would be the bad one? Maybe I misunderstood the linked article. :) Love all of this by the way - read it/listened to it this morning and I’ve been thinking about it all day.
Oh good catch — adaptive is the functional one. Still, so interesting to think then about perfectionism/striving as a necessary and useful survival skill…
Loved this conversation, and I'm looking forward to future episodes!
Some things that really resonated with me:
- Sara's point about perfectionism morphing into optimization.
- The complexity around parent education on social media (hits very close to home!). I, too, loved Dr. Becky's reminder, "My own kids don't have 'Dr. Becky' as a mom."
- The "confidence gap" BS that ignores systemic issues. I feel the same way about so-called "imposter syndrome."
Other musings while listening:
Wondering what you all think about the concept of being a "recovering perfectionist." I'm not super comfortable with co-opting language from addiction recovery (though there is an actual diagnosis of "clinical perfectionism" in the DSM-V under the OCD category—but I don't think most people are referencing an illness when they). But I do like the concept that it might take conscious ongoing effort to break decades-long patterns.
One other "perfect motherhood" trope came up for me when hearing stories about early postpartum days: the pressure to have "natural childbirth" and, at the very least, to avoid a c-section at all costs. Is that still front and center for new moms today? I was pregnant with my first more than twenty years ago, and I was hell bent on a "natural" childbirth, took an expensive Bradley Method class, labored at home for a day before going to the hospital, and then felt like an absolute failure when I had to have a c-section. I was *briefly* determined to try for a VBAC the second time around, but I ended up happily and gratefully scheduling a c-section.
Ohhh I think that pressure around childbirth is alive and well! Or it sure was 10 years ago when I had my first. I didn’t personally subscribe with my second (now 6) but it’s still in the water.
On “recovering perfectionist” — I also don’t love borrowing addiction language but am stumped by how else to describe the experience of trying to let go of something that no longer serves you but is difficult to shed…
Oh gosh this was huge when I had my first kid (see above mention of Dr. Sears). Given the preponderance of "natural childbirth" videos shared online through momfluencers, I'm fairly certain this pressure is still a thing.
I’m a grandmother and have so many of the same issues with being a perfect grandmother and wife. I guess it never ends!!
I've never hit "upgrade to paid" so fast!
I'm constantly unpacking and re-packing my relationship to perfectionism and I struggle constantly. Sometimes I wonder if my perfectionism is an attempt to prevent my children from having the same issues I have. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't want my kids to feel any pain emotional or otherwise... ever. I don't want them to suffer with anxiety, depression, disordered eating, or addiction. I don't want them to have to persevere through grief and childhood trauma like I did. I thought if I were a "perfect mom" I could create a world in which nothing bad would ever happen, but then our youngest was diagnosed with brain cancer and then he died and I could no longer protect them from trauma. Most days I do pretty good, but when perfectionism creeps in I struggle to forgive myself.
I love everything you guys do and I'm really looking forward to this series!
Oh my gosh Emily I'm so very sorry about your son. Sending you so much love and I so empathize with wanting to shield our kids from emotional pain. Feeling their secondhand pain is uniquely difficult as a parent.
I grew up, pre social media, within a culture that encouraged everyone to "reach for the stars, be your best self." It was, and still is, a distortion of the idea of "self actualization" on steroids. Previous generations were expected to become upstanding and decent members of their community. And to conform to many social mores. The 60's brought about a new emphasis on one's own interests and needs. Thus, self-actualization. But the 80's and 90's were about striving for success and money. It was no longer enough to grow into yourself. Now you had to be your "best," you had to over come the social constraints that restricted you and win your stardom in whatever arena. All of American society was swallowing this trope and striving for greatness. If you didn't achieve this greatness then you were nothing. It became a massive pressure for perfectionism in all aspects of one's life. Motherhood was of course no exception.
Here's where what I have to say might get uncomfortable.
As a young adult, I was fully on board with perfectionism and as a result constantly felt inferior, a failure, never enough. I certainly never held my friends to this unkind standard of perfectionism. I was loving and forgiving of human imperfection in friends, but couldn't seem to extend the same empathy and compassion to myself. And then I had an epiphany. If I was holding myself to standards of perfection that I wouldn't expect of others, then wasn't that a bit...arrogant? To unconsciously believe that I could achieve what I did not expect in others? It was as though I viewed myself as the brightly colored fish in a giant swirl of silver sardines. This epiphany, that there is an element of arrogance in perfectionism, helped me let it go.
When you let go of the hope that you might be that golden fish in the swirl of silver you gain a lot! First, you gain community. Now you are one of many lovely fish swirling through the waters of life. You can identify with them. This can be a real buffer against loneliness. Second, you can drop the endless pressure for perfectionism. Ironically, this actually frees you to pursue your interests since you no longer need to obsess over them. But that's just a side win. The real wins are ditching the hypercritical inner voice and gaining community in a new and deeper way.
The giant swirl of silver sardines! I LOVE THIS. And you're so right - holding ourselves up to impossible standards is not very self-love friendly and it does belie a hidden hubris that I hadn't considered before.
It was recognizing the hidden hubris that helped me let go of perfectionism. And I think it's important to talk about what we gain when we let go of perfectionism.
For me, I think my perfectionism is less driven by wanting to be the rainbow fish among the silver sardines as it is by the anxiety that if I don't hit every target and do everything flawlessly, catastrophy will ensue. Not as much now, but certainly when I first became a mom, I thought that if I didn't feed my kid the right food, or give him the right toys to play with, or give him my undivided, perfectly attuned attention for every waking moment of his day, etc. etc. etc. then I would permanently cause harm to his developing brain. Similarly, even the pressure to be perfect professionally has had more to do with fears that if I'm not the best, I won't have economic stability. So I would say fear more than arrogance has been the root of perfectionism for me.
Yeah, I get it. There's all this stuff we're "supposed" to do to make everything come out okay. And as women and mothers, we are the ones given the default responsibility of making everything work. Sometimes behind this lies the myth of control. We Americans really, really like to believe that we can control our comes. We try to control our health with foods. We try to control our finances with education. We try to control our children's future with constant, endless over involvement. Because this is what we've been told we must do. Otherwise we'll die of cancer, end up a bag lady, or our kids will become drug addicts. As a woman with an internal locus of control, I believe in my ability to effect my life's outcome. But...there are many things in life that we do not control. That is one of the hardest lessons of parenthood. It comes back and bites you again when you're middle aged and your body begins to fail you despite all those salads and workouts.
Here's the good news. Kids are really pre programmed to grow into themselves. They need our love and presence. They need food and watering of various kinds. They run into challenges and need our not too involved support. They need our protection from high pressure culture. But...we can also sit back and take pleasure in watching them grow into themselves. It is a perspective that is far more respectful of the child as an individual than the idea that we adults are responsible for somehow generating their greatness. I'm not saying we don't need to be involved. Kids need parents who care enough to be involved. But we can let loose some of the maneuvering to control the outcome. To do that we have to reject the illusion of control.
I would love to know how to avoid passing on this perfectionism to my daughter, if you all have thoughts on that.
Just chiming in to say that I loved this first episode AND that 15$ for the whole series is a perfect holiday gift for friends (a great price point and not too many episodes!)
Oh I love this!
Can’t wait to listen! I couldn’t find you in my overcast app (will listen here but just wanted to let you know!).
Thanks for letting us know Annie! Still waiting to go up on Apple podcasts (in a very IMPERFECT move, we submitted early this morning hence the time lag), and once it's up there, you should be all set with Overcast! It should be there soon!