Letting Go of Perfectionism One Step at a Time
Anyone who has read Anne Lamott recognizes her vulnerability in her storytelling. Lamott’s publisher describes her as a person who:
“Writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus. But armed with self-effacing humor – she is laugh-out-loud funny – and ruthless honesty, Lamott converts her subjects into enchantment.”
Another subject Lamott often writes about is perfectionism, and as an EF coach, this subject hits close to home. So many of my students struggle to get work done because of this oppressive force.
In my experience with neurodivergent students, perfectionism behaves like a dangerous beast, a devil that attacks students and leaves them wounded. It shatters their confidence, robs their energy, and short circuits the drive to finish it and turn it in on time.
To the outside world it looks it may not look like perfectionism. Instead, it may seem like procrastination, laziness, apathy.
But on the insider, there is pain and feelings of not feeling competent to do their work.
This is where I feel my own work starts as I can personally relate to once being a perfectionist and never feeling good enough
It is a battle of the mind.
When I work with students and their parents, our job is to team together on two fronts: gaining the skills students need to overcome their unique hurdles and building the cognitive and metacognitive framework to battle these emotional foes when they surface.
This work is hard.
It takes courage, honesty, strength. I ask students, are you ready? I know you can do this and are YOU ready to do the work. Because that’s what’s it’s all about.
Being open and ready to do the work is key. Putting yourself out there, just a little. Risking a little to be vulnerable to try something new that might just work so that we can let go of the old ways that don’t work and find the new ways that do.
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.
This is the work.
I enter it with each student.
Each family hoping we get there.
Little by little.
Karen Rodriguez
I help individuals learn how their brains work, identify executive functioning challenges, and build long-term systems to help them get work done.