Working with Perfectionism: An Overview of Shame and Perfectionism from an Anti-Racist Therapist

I’m going to get straight to the point in this blog today. This isn’t a cute topic but a heavy, uncomfortable one. And, I want to squarely put perfectionism within white supremacy culture (this is a helpful site to learn more). I’m talking about this from my perspective as a white therapist focused on eating disorders and shame. 

Perfectionism is a major issue in eating disorder recovery, in self acceptance, in building self worth, and in most issues folks bring to therapy. Healing perfectionism is a crucial part of the work I do with clients and I want to give an overview of how I view perfectionism and how I work with it. 

So let’s get into it. 

White supremacy is built on  disconnecting us from each other (and our bodies), creating hierarchies and obedience as ways to attain a sense of worthiness and belonging. The core shame of not being enough and not reliably belonging is one of the main ways white supremacy can operate and reproduce over generations. If our sense of belonging is perilously dependent on our adherence and obedience, and if we have no awareness or analysis of the systems and contrived rules that perpetuate this, we learn to internalize the constant risk of rejection. 

For people of color, this is more than just a mere risk; this is reality, a potentially violent and deadly reality. When we internalize the feeling that we are on the edge of abandonment, it turns into shame. It turns into “something is wrong with me”. We can think of this shame as what’s often underneath perfectionism. The base message of perfectionism is “I’m not enough, and therefore I’m not loveable just yet. I can attain love by being better, more perfect.” Perfectionism is trying to correct whatever the shame attaches to the most. So think of perfectionism as the behaviors connected to shame.

Perfectionism shows up in most therapy sessions with clients, even if we are working on a topic other than disordered eating. It of course shows up in body shame and the attainment of a perfect body type. It shows up in eating perfectly, whether that’s “clean” eating or restricting eating in various ways, and it shows up in Intuitive Eating also. I see so many clients who feel like they fail at intuitive eating and feel like there’s some perfect standard of intuitive eating they are supposed to attain. 

In therapy sessions, I often help clients zoom out to see where else in their life they feel perfectionism/shame. Typically, folks can find shame lurking throughout their day and we try to drill down into their core shames around belonging and being worthy of love. Sometimes working on something unrelated to eating/body image can help, since it’s all inter-related. This can look like working on childhood trauma, attachment wounds, codependency, or gender identity. I remember working with a client on her unrealistically high expectations of herself at work, and that being a main pathway to her core shames, ultimately opening up changes in her disordered eating behaviors. 

In general, working on shame or perfectionism absolutely requires self compassion. It’s important to learn how to talk to yourself like a kind inner parent, with gentleness and  kindness. Learning to validate yourself while building a greater understanding of the context in which you exist and operate is vital. My background is as a social worker, so I love to look at the interaction between the individual and environment- what’s the bigger context? What are the systems and structures that perpetuate oppression and how must  an individual behave to survive within them? Bringing in this analysis can externalize the shame we’ve learned to internalize. You can then become more aware of how this internalization has impacted your self concept and the ways perfectionism operates within you. 

I love using the exercise of creating a persona for this internalized voice. This can be a playful way to interact with a part of yourself that can feel overwhelming or even scary (and be a playful way to work with rage or grief too). I’ve had clients describe their internalized shame voice as an ever-present gnat, as a nasty grandmother pinching them to sit up straight, and as a character from Mean Girls.  Talk to this part, and get to know it. Approach it with curiosity, and explore what happens as you shine more light on it. The bottom line is shame/perfectionism will not heal without gentleness and without a parallel process of building alternative models of self worth. You can’t tear down the perfectionism that is your only source of worthiness without giving yourself another way to feel safe. So, explore your values and what you truly care about and respect about yourself and others.

Shame and perfectionism are tricky and I can’t promise they ever entirely disappear. But, there are for sure ways to quiet their voice and to reduce the control they have over your behaviors. It’s important to externalize these voices and to see how it fits into the lager white supremacist culture we live in. In this way, therapy can be a political tool in your arsenal.

For help finding an aligned therapist, there are several directories that are more politically and socially minded. Inclusive Therapists is a great resource as well as Therapy for Black Girls and Therapy for Black Men.

If you’d like to talk with me more about working with shame, connect with me here.