How my perfectionism actually feels

So I have a problem. I became a perfectionist around age 12, and I’ve been at war with various, insidious little manifestations of it ever since.

I imagine it’s a lot like disordered eating, actually: people who haven’t experienced that for themselves cry “body image!”, while those of us who have experienced it know that it runs so much deeper, if it’s even related to that in the first place.

When it comes to perfectionism, indeed, a typical definition insists that we “accept nothing shy of flawlessness.” I don’t know about you, but at least on a conscious level, I am absolutely fine with things being reasonably shy of flawless! Seventy-five percent is good if you finish that degree or get that raise, is it not? A bad day is absolutely okay when you can do better next time.

Provided there is a next time.

…and, aha!

That’s my issue.

I don’t feel afraid of failure at face value. I feel afraid (terrified) that any particular failure (effectively, the first failure) might be the one failure that takes me over some threshold that no longer averages out to something safe and okay. I feel afraid that one mistake could, in fact, be the one mistake that means I don’t pass the class or keep my job or remain permanently non-annoying in another person’s eyes. There is no sense of more than one chance existing.

And it feels perfectly logical, too; like, “Shit happens, and that’s okay(!), but if I give it my…