When Perfectionism Is Protecting You | Internal Family System Therapy
Counseling for Anxiety and Perfectionism in New York and Long Island
When your perfectionism is coming to protect
“Hi professor Charles, I’ve got the project done for you, but I need one more day to get it fully done”
Rebecca clicks “send “ on her email after reviewing her email three more times.
She sighs.
“My stomach is in knots. I’m so scared about disappointing him. I hope I will be able to please him”.
Rebecca gets up from her swivel chair she had been sitting on for the last three hours. She glances a look at herself in the mirror across the room and notices how hunched over her back is and how tense her brows look. She comes closer to the mirror and takes a closer look at herself.
“You're darn exhausted , aren’t you, little lady”? A voice says inside.
A smirk glimmers through her tired eyes, and then quickly fades.
“I am exhausted”, she says out loud , talking to herself
“But I’ve got it together.”
As she says that last sentence she straightens her shoulders and breaths in. Ah, it’s actually uncomfortable to stand this straight, she thinks to herself.
She slowly moves her tired achy fingers to her face and traces her soft wrinkles around her eyes, beginning at her brow line, circling down around her eyes and landing her pointer finger right between the two brows.
She unclenches her eyes and her face looks calmer.
The People Pleasing “Part” and Performance Anxiety
The pensive look is often on her face- both when she’s working and not working. And, when it comes to pleasing professor Charles, all of her pressure and performance anxiety “parts” come out.
Rebecca is a wise and skillful advisor at a prestigious college, and she works directly with professor Charles - someone who she has admired for all her years in college. When offered the job working for Professor Charles, she was half shocked, half excited while navigating a sliver of terror that came along with the worry that she may disappoint.
Rebecca’s been an overachiever all her life. An overachieving perfectionist.
She practically came into the world with OCPD- Obsessive compulsive perfectionist disorder. Since being a young girl of 6 years ago, Rebecca was always the one ironing out the table cloth and making sure the table was set just right. She later was a star student who excelled at almost all subjects. And even when she didn’t shine, she knew how to get on the good side of those she interacted with.
But what no one knew was the invisible yet immense pressure she walked around with.
It was hard to sense when her hair looked perfectly curled and her notes dotted just so-But if you looked a little closer, you’d see the intense stare in her eyes, and the hyper alert awareness she lived with. Rebecca is a high functioning adult and has almost all that she wants in her life. She’s got amazing resourcefulness and a pretty good schedule in place regarding her sleeping habits, her social network and making time to read and relax .
But sometimes her perfectionism becomes tiring.
Like this evening with the task she's completing for professor Charles. She has done most of her tasks but there’s this nagging voice telling her to perfect her forms, again and again.
Rebecca’s perfectionism is a “manager” - in Internal Family Systems/Parts Language terms .
A “manager” is a part of self that comes to help the person function well.
Perfectionism | A form of fierce protection
Managers are really good at helping us navigate life with more ease , and with skill. A manager helps keep big feelings, shame, insecurity and fears at bay so that we can go into “functioning and keeping it together'' mode.
Though managers are vital for living, Sometimes a manager can get burdened if it works too hard.
When a manager becomes fully burdened or exhausted- it’s job may turn into a “firefighter” part. Meaning, a manager and firefighter both come to help. Both are protectors.
If a manager (say in this case, the perfectionist) becomes active all the time, to the degree that Rebecca can’t sleep well anymore or starts having obsessive thoughts or feels weighed down by the perfectionism- then it becomes an intense form of protection and is in the firefighter territory.
How do managers come to be?
The terrified little girl’s fear + ways she navigated.
Managers come to help us manage big feelings and to tuck away memories, emotions and needs that aren’t conducive to functioning as a person. For example, in Rebecca's house, she saw that her brother who was highly emotional was seen as “annoying, needy and sloppy” and her parents looked down on him and had low hopes for him.
Now, though he was a great child, he was simply born with a more sensitive nature, and was born into a family of emotionally underdeveloped parents. Because of that, he was met with coldness and judgment for who he was instead of being offered the support and acceptance he needed so badly. Instead he struggled fiercely throughout his younger years until he found the right kind of support for him.
As a sibling, growing up with her Brother, Rebecca was afraid to ever be unloved or not adored in the way he was.
So her wise manager/protector part learned to shine and do her best to need very little and make those around her proud.
Now, beneath her manager, there lies a fear of being unloved or being seen as imperfect.
As you probably know, we are all imperfect, as we are human. However, some of us have learned to step in line more perfectly or more rigidly than others.
Perfectionism isn't always a bad thing…it can help us be efficient and organized.
However, there's a spectrum.
With Rebecca, her current terror { an emotion related to the exile part/fear of being seen as unlovable or not good enough } was peering out as she was wrapping up her work.
In her own healing in therapy or in her own self awareness journey - it’ll be helpful and important for her to get to know her manager part.
Internal Family Systems Therapy In New York
Realtime Counseling: Steps to Getting to Know Our Parts
Here are some steps that I take with clients, in supporting “Manager Role” in Parts Work (also known as Internal Family Systems Therapy).
Identify the part’s role and how long it’s been doing its job.
Appreciate the positive that's it’s provided. Thank it for its support.
Get to the core emotions - the feelings beneath the behavior.
{Only if it allows for that. If not - just stay with the part and keep getting to know it. Sometimes just getting to know a part and it’s job allows the part/ burden to soften a bit and it can offer some relief. If it is willing or able to share/talk/ show you some memories or share some of its feelings then you can slowly connect and get to work with the core emotions/needs/experiences.}
Resolve the emotional burdens carried, by processing fears/wounds/old beliefs.
Tuck all the part away and set up a time to check in.
We all have managers, just like Rebecca. And sometimes we have an overworked manager and that’s when we begin to feel stressed or wound up.
Simply getting to know your unique story and the burdens you carry and the common manager roles/parts can help you better navigate when stress comes up. Instead of getting tangled in confusion, getting to really grasp and “get” the behaviors, impulses, hopes and fears will allow you to better navigate the twists and turns of life.
So, if you’re noticing that you’re feeling out of sorts, or acting in a perfectionistic way, like Rebecca, this may be an invitation to you to get to know yourself better. If you’d like to learn more about Parts work/ Internal Family Systems, read here.
Or, grab a copy of our IFS Parts work Mastery Bundle.
Seeking Counseling in New York for IFS Parts work?
If you’re looking to engage in Inner Child work, or engage in IFS Therapy, Reach out for your free 15 minutes consultation!
Until next time,
Xx Esther & The Integrative Team