Understanding the fear behind our need to get everything right, and how EFT can help you pave your way forward without the pressure to be perfect
Why does perfectionism feel so hard to switch off, even when you know it’s holding you back? The need to get things exactly right is often driven by the fear of criticism, judgement or not being good enough. Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or tapping, offer a simple way to uncover the fear beneath perfectionism and help you feel safer being seen, even when things aren’t perfect.
The Need to Get It Right
When I was a student, I would take notes in class and then sort them out afterwards, rewriting them neatly each time because it would help me remember what was said and I would have a tidy, perfect folder. But if I made a mistake, perhaps swapping two letters around, missing a word, or having to cross something out, I felt utterly dejected.
I felt overwhelmed by the compulsion to start all over again and, on most occasions, I gave in, took a blank piece of paper and started to copy the whole page all over again. Usually, I would make a new mistake almost right away, like missing a word or, worse, making exactly the same mistake that got me to rewrite the whole thing in the first place. Rather than just shrug and keep going, I would take another sheet of paper and start again. It could take several attempts to complete a sheet of clean notes.
Perfection Is Time-Consuming
Looking back, it seems disproportionate to trash a whole piece of work I had just spent time editing just for a small mistake like a letter in the wrong order, a missing word or a crossed-out line. It would still have been possible to understand the meaning of what I had written. But at the time, it felt like making mistakes just writing meant I was really lacking, and I envied those around me who kept striking out words or applying Tippex and would carry on as if this was of little importance.
I now realise how time-consuming the whole process actually was. It was such a waste of time, since after I graduated, all those colourful sheets with cleanly highlighted sentences, the notebooks and folders all went in the bin, and I felt a lot of glee about it.
A Realisation
At the time, though, starting again didn’t feel like a choice. It felt necessary. The page had to be right before I could move on.
I never thought of this as fear. I believed it was all me, part of who I was. I alternated between thinking that I had high standards and thinking it was a reflection of a certain inability to do things right in the first place. It took me a long time to understand that what I was calling “high standards” was really just another disguise for the fear that had been part of my life since I was a small child. In reality, I was afraid of not being good enough as a student, and keeping the tidiest notebooks and devoting time to them made me look like I was.
See, this is the thing with perfectionism: it can be difficult to recognise. It can look like caring, being conscientious, having high standards or wanting to do a good job. But underneath, there can be a deeper fear: that getting something wrong means we are not good enough. The mistake becomes more than just a mistake. It feels like evidence that something is lacking in us. And when a small mistake carries that much emotional weight, starting again can feel like the only way to put things right.
Behind the Perfectionism
It is difficult to let go of something if you don’t realise what is behind it. On the surface, perfectionism appears to be a quality, the desire to push for better. But the issue is that we are actually stopping ourselves from moving forward.
We may tell ourselves that we are being careful, thorough or responsible. But if we look a little deeper, we may find that we are trying to protect ourselves from something we don’t want to feel, such as a sense of failure.
It isn’t only about the fear of making a mistake. It can also be worries about being criticised, disappointing someone or being seen as not good enough. Getting everything right can give us a sense that we are safe from those feelings, even if it means spending far more time and energy than the task itself requires.
And sometimes, we don’t even realise that fear is driving us. We simply know that we can’t seem to leave things alone until they feel right.
How EFT Can Help
Rather than trying to force ourselves to stop being perfectionists, we can use EFT, or ‘tapping’, to explore what is underneath our need to always get everything right.
Tapping can help us acknowledge the fear and make connections with past events and emotions that may still be influencing how we react today. By bringing these feelings into our awareness, we give ourselves a chance to release some of them and create more helpful responses to new situations, work pressure and the challenges we face.
A starting point is to notice what happens inside us when we make a mistake. Do we feel anxious, frustrated, disappointed or ashamed? And how do we respond to those feelings? Do we immediately want to correct the mistake, start again or hide it?
These reactions can give us clues about what the perfectionism is trying to protect us from. They can help us understand that what feels like a need to get something right may actually be a response to something we are afraid of feeling.
With EFT, we can acknowledge those feelings rather than trying to push them away. We can consider the possibility that we don’t have to be perfect to be good enough. We can make a mistake without it meaning that we have failed.
We will always make mistakes. Perhaps this is part of the beauty of life. We don’t have to get everything right. But we can learn to recover more quickly and decide whether something really needs correcting or whether we can simply move on.
Daphne
EFT is a great tool that can help with a variety of issues, including the need for perfection we’ve explored here.
If you would like to have a chat about a belief that’s holding you back and aren’t sure if EFT can help, do not hesitate to contact me.
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