Hello, hello and welcome back to the Tiny Pod.
This week I want to talk about perfection, which feels
especially important at this time of year.
At Christmas and during holidays, birthdays, family
events, perfection creeps up because the nervous system
believes, existentially, that if this goes wrong, something bad
will happen. Anytime we have an event or as
parents have a school holiday, or we travel with someone we
love, we want everything to be perfect.
Perfection is not a preference. It is stress response.
It's anxiety inducing, it's uncomfortable, it actually takes
us out of the moment so we can miss the moment.
It adds pressure. And it's all driven from our
nervous system being dysregulated in fight or flight.
From this sense that we will not survive if we fail.
We will not survive if we are seen as human or flawed.
Perfection is actually the opposite of intimacy, of
connection, of presence, of fun, of joy, because it steals our
presence and it hijacks our ability to just enjoy the
moment. The word perfection comes from
the Latin perfectare, meaning to complete, to finish, or to make
completely done. In its earliest sense, something
was perfect when it was whole, when nothing essential was
missing. Over time, especially under
religious, moral, and capitalist frameworks, the meaning shifted
from wholeness to faultlessness, from being to performing.
When people chase perfection, what they're often really
longing for is completion, safety, and belonging.
But this doesn't come from Polish, it comes from
integration. Perfection was never meant to
mean flawless, It meant complete.
And we don't become complete by erasing parts of our self, we
become complete by including them.
Perfection isn't about joy. It's about avoiding shame,
rejection, abandonment, or danger.
For many of us, early childhood experiences taught us mistakes
led to criticism, mess led to withdrawal of love, imperfection
led to conflict, and relaxation led to chaos.
So the nervous system learned I must control the environment to
stay safe. Being human wasn't safe, but
looking perfect was. I grew up in a home that was
chaotic, full of hoarding, mess and overwhelm.
That was the real environment. But when people were coming
over, there was an urgent, frantic transformation.
My mother would panic and shout at us.
We'd hide her bags of stuff, close off rooms so strangers
could enjoy a version of our home we never lived in.
Their comfort cost us a whole day of stress, and when they
left, the performance ended and the chaos returned.
Perfection wasn't care. It was theatre.
And often that's what perfection is.
Pretence. A brief illusion of control
layered over a nervous system that never gets to rest.
Being human is delightfully imperfect, and safety doesn't
come from hiding the mess, it comes from not having to
perform. I was in someone's house
recently and their front room was museum level Immaculate.
And I said curiously, how do you do this with an 8 year old?
And she replied oh she knows not to come in here.
And I remember thinking, that's not a regulated environment,
that's a managed one. When children learn that certain
spaces are for appearance rather than living, they also learn
that belonging is conditional. Their safety depends on not
disturbing the image. Her mother literally uses
sellotape to get crumbs out of the cracks in the kitchen, and
that's impressive level cleaning standards.
But also, I'd rather read a book.
I'd rather play with my kids. I'd rather build a life.
Perfection often looks like care, but it's frequently care
directed at surfaces. It tidies the room while
exhausting the people inside it. A home that's too perfect is
often calm on the outside and tents on the inside.
Children don't need Immaculate rooms.
They need rooms that can survive living.
I don't want a house that looks untouched.
I want one where people feel free to touch.
Children don't remember perfect days.
Children feel truth in their bodies.
They remember how regulated you were, whether stress filled the
room, whether you laughed when things went wrong, whether
mistakes were survivable. A perfect holiday with a
dysregulated parent is far more frightening than a messy one
with a present parent. My mother would be shocked when
I invited people with young children to come and stay in my
house panicking. What are you going to do?
They'll break everything because to her, body, children and
objects equal threat. Damage equals danger, and mess
is loss of control. I told her that's exactly what I
built my home for. To be broken, to be used, to be
enjoyed. And with two boys, my kitchen is
basically an indoor sports court.
Breakages are just part of the job and I always say not worth
ruining A childhood over. A spilt drink led to a beating
in my childhood, so in my home it just leads to a tea towel
mopping it up. Objects are replaceable,
childhood is not. Joy in our house matters far
more than image, and their safety matters more than stuff.
Adults who still flinch at mess were often children who learned
to freeze. I am raising my children in the
opposite of perfection culture. Their nervous systems know I can
move, I can spill, I can exist loudly, and I am still safe.
The freedom they feel in their bodies is the opposite of the
fear I felt in mine. As a child.
I was in a constant state of hypervigilance.
My nervous system was wired to try and manage threat by
managing appearance. I would constantly reapply
makeup, look in any reflective surface, awkwardly tug my
T-shirt as if a perfectly placed T-shirt would somehow increase
my value or my sense of safety when the opposite was true.
Perfection did not create safety and being just right never
insulated me from harm because the safety I was searching for
doesn't live on the surface. I am totally relaxed going into
any room around anyone because I don't want to be perfect, I want
to be real. I don't want to impress, I want
to connect, and I don't want to be the best.
I just want to be myself. Instead of anxiety, there is
ease. Perfection kept me scanning.
Realness lets me rest. In letting go of perfection, I
gained myself. Perfection prioritises
appearance. Regulation prioritises
relationship, regulated people are trustworthy, relaxed people
are magnetic, and presence outshines Polish every time.
Perfection delays living fully. Perfection says I'll live once
everything is sorted. I'll enjoy this once nothing can
go wrong. But that moment never comes.
Life happens anyway. Regulation isn't about calming
down. Afterlife happens.
It is about being resourced while it's happening.
Perfection steals presence and postpones aliveness.
If you're exhausted by trying to get it right, that's an
invitation home to yourself and your body asking for permission
to be human. Perfection is often grief that
hasn't been allowed to speak, the childhood that felt unsafe,
the family we wish we had had, and the version of life we hoped
would finally feel safe. So we try to manufacture a
moment that will redeem the past.
But no event can do that, and the disappointment of an
imperfect Christmas can often feel oversized because it was
never about that day. But when someone says I just
want it to be perfect for everyone, what they're often
saying is I don't feel safe enough to let this be human.
But safety is not things going right.
Safety is knowing you'll be OK when they go wrong.
When we are regulated in our nervous system, we allow rest
without fear and create room for things not to go as planned
without feeling we failed. Freedom is knowing you can
disappoint and still belong. Perfection is amplified by
social media and our modern culture.
When people compare themselves to highlight reels and feel less
than, it creates nervous system hyper arousal.
Your nervous system interprets comparison as survival threat
and sets off a warning signal throughout the body.
Perfection invites envy, judgement or detachment.
Imperfection invites empathy and relational closeness because
vulnerability and imperfection are the currencies of
connection. Perfection is outward focus,
external validation, seeking and protects shame, unmeetably high
standards and the masks people wear to try and be accepted
socially, while it quietly removes authenticity,
vulnerability and the possibility of true connection.
As Anne Lamott wrote, perfectionism is the voice of
the oppressor, the enemy of the people.
It will keep you insane your whole life.
Perfection is the opposite of intimacy.
Intimacy requires flexibility, repair, humour, tolerance for
mess. Perfection needs control, image
management and emotional suppression.
Perfection creates distance, not closeness.
It consumes every thought about doing it right and avoiding
shame steals attention from connection and time away from
spontaneity, play and creativity.
Perfection is a mask, and masks always create distance.
But when we let the mask fall, intimacy and authenticity arrive
instead of being present. Perfection is often a rehearsal
for the imagined judgement of others in the future.
If I fail now, I'll be remembered faultily later.
Perfection is living in your own mental prison, performing for
imaginary others, not real humans.
When we try to make things perfect, it's often an
unconscious attempt to control the experience of others, how
they feel and how they perceive us.
Perfection is trying to predict human emotion, which is
impossible as humans are by their very nature unpredictable.
No two people respond the exact same way, and the more you try
to control, the more tension you create.
Perfection doesn't just steal joy, it steals energy from the
people around you. The more perfect you try to be,
the less real engagement you create.
Chasing perfection feeds a false sense of self.
We mistake the curated version of ourselves as who we are, and
perfection and joy are separate systems.
Joy is spontaneous and emergent, not engineered.
You can't schedule joy or decorate it into existence.
Joy happens in the gaps where perfection isn't policing us.
Perfection lives in the future, presence lives in the now, and
you cannot inhabit both. When we're chasing the perfect
day, the perfect Christmas, we're monitoring instead of
being, managing instead of relating, performing instead of
playing. So even when the moment arrives,
we miss it because we're busy checking whether it's perfect.
And that is why people feel oddly flat after events they
have worked so hard for. The most memorable moments of
our lives are rarely the polished ones.
They're the ones where we were present enough to feel, to
laugh, to repair and to be human.
Perfection doesn't create magical, lasting memories.
Regulation does. This Christmas, don't aim for
perfection. Aim for safety, for presents,
for love and time together to be felt and remembered.
Perfect is the enemy of the good, and that's all any of us
are here for, to have a truly good time with people we love.
Happy Christmas, I'll see you next week.