Letting Go of Perfectionism: Reflections from My ChatGPT Self-Anaylsis

I use chatgpt to help me organize my thoughts with my writing, meal planning, grocery shopping, and anything and everything. The other day I was curious to see what response I would get if I asked chatgpt what it knew about me or what it thought about me. 

After giving me some basic facts about myself, it asked me this: "If you want, I can tell you the blind spots I’ve noticed too—the things you might not see about yourself. That part’s a little spicier."

Here is the follow up.

" 1. You sometimes second-guess after you’ve already nailed it.

2. You hold yourself to “super-mom” standards without calling it that.

You want to be fully present for your kids, be great at your work, eat healthy, keep a household, write, hike… The list is basically Olympic-level, but you sometimes treat it as if it’s the baseline."

It felt like a little bit of a sting. Let me tell you why. I know I am a perfectionist. This is not new information. I can relate to Brene Brown so much because I read her books and thought she was talking about me. The first time I read Daring Greatly, I cried as it just reached to my core. I was on an airplane and was trying to hide my tears, but I'm sure people around me could see them. 

I like how she said she was an overcoming perfectionist. If there was an AA for perfectionism, I think I would be attending weekly. 

It started off as a child feeling like my academics needed to be perfect. Who was I trying to make happy? No one put pressure on me to get a 4.0, but it was a standard that I had to live by. It didn't matter the class I was in, an A was the expectation. I would cry when I got a score I was not happy with. My mom would tell me that she didn't care, but she just wanted me to do my best. That never fully internalized. Even as a college student, I felt like I was disappointing someone with my a low grade. 

Let's go forward to grad school. I was the busiest I had been in my life. I was doing my internship, trying to complete my readings, take notes, complete my homework, have a social life, get adequate sleep, and I could list on all the things I was trying to accomplish. 

One day at my internship at an adult day care center, I was in charge of knowing the location of an elderly man with Alzheimer's. I got distracted by something, and then I didn't know where he went. We went looking for him, and he was luckily safe. The manager of the adult day care center talked to me about how important this task was. I told her how stressed I was. I was behind in what felt like everything in my life at the time, and I couldn't function. I started to not be able to breathe and was crying. They helped me recenter, and told me to go home and get some rest. 

That was the moment where I realized I needed to reel in my perfectionism. The standards of what I thought I could do was not achievable, and it was not a failure on my part. It was due to this impossible nature of my self imposed expectations. 

I tried to let things go. If I didn't finish a reading, attend a social outing, or get something in on time, life would move on. And it did. It was always a battle though to remind myself that I was okay if I couldn't fit in all that I wanted to do during the day. I started a new practice during grad school to help with my time management where I would prioritize what needed to get done. That helped me let go of things, and help me see what I did do. 

I thought I had combatted my perfectionism until I read number two on the feedback from chatgpt.  It made me realize that perfectionism just transferred from being in my academics to my parenting. I know that my kids are happy, they are nutritionally fed and have all their needs met. My kids know they are loved, and they are starting to have more of a sibling relationship. It has been so fun to watch my kids bond with each other. 

But, I sometimes don't feel like my parenting is enough and have to prove myself that I am not a failure.  Who am I proving it to? That question was my answer. I don't need to prove to the world that I am a good mom. There is no test to take to prove your worth. 

I know I am not the only one who has felt this way or struggles with this currently. 

I remember when I had my second child, I was really struggling with feeling like my capabilities were diminished. All of my time and energy was feeling drained, and I felt like this once productive human didn't exist anymore. I had to do a major mind shift that being productive was not the main goal. 

My friend told me a story where she was feeling overwhelmed. Someone told her during this time, "you don't have to report to someone about what you did that day to prove your worth". 

I needed to hear that too. My once productive self was not the most important self. It didn't make me have worth. I had worth simply because I exist. 

So, here I am writing this blog post about trying to defeat this perfectionist mindset. It's like that annoying song in Inside Out, do you remember that song that keeps repeating in Riley's head? I think that's how my perfectionism works. I sometimes recognize it when it comes, and I will have a constant check to make sure I'm re-evaluating my own standards. 

So when my perfectionism comes back tomorrow, hopefully I can tell myself to not let it creep in. I can just be me. And that is enough.