Magnet Quarterly // 5th Issue "Chasing Perfection"

Perfection Issue - Writer: Orkun Ozocak

Chasing Perfection...

We meet the embarrassment of failure at a rather young age and codify success as not making any mistakes. Our flaws and shortcomings are criticised by others, first and foremost by our family. Almost all of us have found ourselves being compared to others and forced to behave better by our parents, trying to adopt the characteristics and behaviours of people held in admiration. In our childhood, a period during which we feel the most vulnerable and defenceless against criticism, we try to deal with the feeling of embarrassment by being a “well-behaved kid.” We think about what people want to see and decide to be that; beneath this urge lies the desire to be strong, smart, attractive, or good enough to be loved. This is how our struggle begins to find favour in people’s eyes in that quest for perfection.

A Quest Rooted in Childhood

Before anyone else, we want our parents to love us and we desire to be their favourite. People whose needs for love, appreciation, and acceptance were not fulfilled during childhood often develop a sense of being neglected and worthlessness. Let’s think about the first relationships in which we create a bond with authority figures like teachers. Children who are pressured under authority make a bigger effort to satisfy others. When we try to define and evaluate ourselves through others, we channel our power outward and start making an effort to be perfect in the eyes of others. We become afraid of making a mistake for fear of being scolded and of taking initiative for fear of not being accepted. We lose our self-confidence because we believe we’re not good enough.

The Behavioural Tendencies We Exhibit

Throughout life, our behaviour is filtered by how things should be under the influence of parental schemes and culture, in the mental records kept since our childhood. Among the questions of “Who am I?” or "How/Who should I be?" an image is shaped by how we wish to manifest ourselves or to become. However, we start suffering when this identity is not realised. Suffering can be defined by general negative feelings such as emotions of anxiety, anger, guilt, or embarrassment, when we are not desired. We strive to become the person our parents want us to be because we do not want to experience this suffering. This instinct to please others and to be perfect becomes the whisper of a quest for perfection, when it makes us live a life we don’t want. Although the effort to make others happy stems from our need to find a safe place to take shelter, we are often left alone while looking for perfection. It is because the quest for perfection at its deepest essence is about not being sure of ourselves.

The Perfectionist's Dilemma

People who describe themselves as “perfectionists” worry that they are not good. Due to this deep fear, they try to look perfect for the sake of protecting themselves. This is where the dilemma lies as we try to defend our inadequacies with a shield of perfection, which over time, turns into complexes of perfectionism. On the other hand, being perfect in pursuit of our best selves is not possible. Think about how we react when we turn this into a race… When we feel that we are not good enough or believe that we will never succeed, can we really push on? We act like a kid who believes that he/she will never succeed in class, accepts that he/she will never gain the favour of their parents, and stops studying altogether. Unless we regard our best efforts as good enough or accept “good enough” as a success, we are bound to experience questioning, lack of motivation, procrastination, inclination to addictions, and depression.

The Comfort of Old Habits

Try to see the similarities between children, who focus on activities that fulfil their desires and urges (such as gaming) in this state of carelessness, and adults who become addicted to their wishes and needs when they cannot deal with their feelings. The search for a sense of comfort often takes us to our desires. Who knows, maybe what we are looking for is the perfect environment of the womb? Imitating the constant temperature of the womb at 36.5 degrees Celsius, we always look for this perfection in our relationship with others and the spaces we are in but never find it. This quest is a lifelong fantasy of perfection. This desire for perfection, which is mistakenly expected to bring peace when attained, is in fact a defence mechanism. In situations where the bonds of a relationship grow weak or break and when life gets tough or unlucky, i.e., in situations of uncertainty and anxiety which cannot be controlled by us, we idealise what is perfect as a defence mechanism and enter a state of delusion, which is as futile as dreaming of immortality.

Conclusion

When we find ourselves within this cycle, the only thing we need to remember is that the quest for perfection doesn’t have a “saturation point”. Relationships, business lives, family ties, or financial means which have become like items on a to-do list—whatever it is you want to be perfect, when you reach that point, you will certainly find a new quest because it is merely that. In order to end this quest, we need to find ourselves. Oscar Wilde underlined the importance of authenticity and the awareness of being our own selves when he said, “Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.” Each moment we are unaware of who we are, we define ourselves through another but what if it’s enough for us to just be ourselves? What can we really control by being a perfectionist?

I wish us all a happy life in which we can embrace the flaws that make us who we are…

Sincerely,

Clinical Psychologist Orkun Ozocak