22: Moral Perfectionism

I’ve never been a perfectionist. I’ve never cared if my bed is made or my handwriting is neat or if a picture on the wall is hanging perfectly. I’m not bothered by things being a little “out of place.” So imagine my surprise to discover that my whole life is run by perfectionism–a different kind of perfectionism. That’s today’s topic on the show. Join me to find out more!

Show Highlights:

• How an 18-month-stint as a teenager in a long-term rehab facility turned me into a moral perfectionist

• How a militaristic 12-step program and an evangelical church forced me to examine every daily decision for pure, altruistic motives

• How this type of perfectionism told me that I had to be “good enough” to be loved and accepted

• How even self-improvement is approached differently with moral perfectionism

• Why it’s impossible to live with moral perfectionism

• The first step toward change: recognizing that I am a moral perfectionist who is trying to earn my worth through altruism and unselfishness

• Why you are not alone if you feel like a moral perfectionist

• An excerpt from my book, How to Keep House While Drowning, chapter 3

Resources:

Connect with KC: TikTok, Instagram, and Website

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. Today I want to talk about moral perfectionism. In the spirit of not being a perfectionist, you might hear some clanging in the background because we are trying to patch some holes so that the squirrels don't get into our attic again, I'm sorry about that. It just is what it is. Sometimes you have to embrace the not perfection. So what do I mean by moral perfection? Well, I've never been someone who has ever considered myself a perfectionist. I've never cared if my bed was made, or if my handwriting was neat. Or if a picture was hanging on the wall a little bit crooked. I've never needed a project to be done exactly perfect. I don't care if I get a pluses. I'm not bothered by things being a little out of place. So it was a surprise to me, when I finally realized that my whole life was being run by perfectionism. It was a different type of perfectionism. It's something that I call moral perfectionism. And I think there's a lot of reasons why this happened. But I'll just tell you a little bit of the story. When I was 1516 years old, I was in a really bad spot, I had a lot of mental health problems, I had a pretty severe drug addiction. And I ended up going to a psych hospital, and then a long term rehab. And while I was there, in the midst of learning how to live sober, there were a lot of things that I learned from that facility that were really helpful. I learned how to be honest, I learned how to connect with people, I learned how to build my self worth up from the ground. But there were a lot of things that I experienced there. That became extra baggage. For me, a lot of their approach to sobriety was about being an upstanding citizen, about being a God fearing person about being a good person, that if we could just learn how to be good, loving people who were not run by selfishness, but were run by altruism, and giving and serving, that that would keep the monster of addiction at bay. And I was there for 18 months. And when I left, I went to a 12 step group, and I am in general, a big fan of 12 Step groups, they are as varied and different as any other, you know, organization with these groups have no connection to each other. I happen to fall into a group that was very militaristic and required very weird things like you know, call me every single day. And tell me every time you were selfish that day, tell me everything that you were dishonest about whether you were dishonest by telling a lie, or you were dishonest by omission, or you were dishonest by just not being, you know, in your thinking. I also joined an Evangelical Church and had that same thing pushed on me where every single decision you make needs to be as the intentions, the motives, the effects, the impact, and the execution needs to be as pure as the driven snow. And if any of it isn't, you need to do anything you can to root that out. And so my type of perfectionism was about being a good person. But it wasn't even really about being a good person. Because it wasn't about being kind to people or trying to live a meaningful life. It was about all of this minutia that I thought told on me that I thought had to do with being good enough to be loved, being good enough to be accepted. And I would have proach self improvement in this way. Self improvement wasn't about making my life more full of joy and meaning for me, because I matter and I deserve those things. It was about making me a better person, so that I could be lovable so that I wouldn't be alone so that I wouldn't be rejected. And in that way, when I had a selfish thought, when I was rude to someone, it would eat me up for days and I had to go through this almost obsessive ritual to feel as though I had sort of made up for it that I had rebalanced. This sort of like karmic scale, I would, you know, say something rude out of frustration to someone and I would immediately get in my car, and I would race down to a homeless shelter to volunteer because I had to even up the scales. I was convinced that if I didn't stay on top of having pure motives, pure intentions, never thinking something selfish or judgmental, never doing anything morally wrong, that I wouldn't use again. I wouldn't drink again, I wouldn't be loved. And it's impossible to live that way. Because you get up and you go to your closet and you think, what am I going to wear today? Well, am I thinking oh, I'm gonna wear this I'll look shoot it up. Does that selfish? Am I just drawing attention to myself? Is it modest enough? Is it fashionable enough? Is being fashionable wrong? Well, but I want people to look at me and like me, but is that just selfish? Should I not be dragged? And I'm dressing for attention. And if I am dressing, you know, can I buy something? Was it ethically made, and is it wrong in my bad if I were this, it wasn't ethically made, and I can buy this, but it costs expensive and, and I feel guilty about that, because I blew my budget, and it was so impulsive of me, that's so irresponsible of me. I mean, every decision was like this, every decision had to be morally perfect. And if I bought that thing, and it had too much wrapping on it, I mean, it was just nuts. It was insanity. And so recognizing that my life was being run by moral perfectionism was the first stop for me was realizing I am not trying to be a good person. Because being a good person is a reward in and of itself, because the world needs more people like that, because there's some sort of recognition that that's how we're all going to get through this together, I'm being a good person, because that pushes off the crippling anxiety that I am worthless, and I am trying to earn my worth through altruism. And that informed a lot of the work that I do on this podcast and in the mental health sphere, about, you know, most things in life being morally neutral, and about learning how to get off the self improvement rat race, where, you know, because I was in this self, this moral perfectionism, I would read the self improvement books, and whether they were how to have boundaries, whether it was how to organize your kitchen, how to tidy up your life, how to get new habits, how to do these things, I was approaching all of those things from the same place, which was, I need to improve so that I can be doing good. And I don't mean doing good in the world. I mean, like, I'm good, I'm doing good. I'm not doing bad. And again, I don't mean my what I'm doing. I mean, like my status, like I'm doing poorly, or I'm doing well. That was the life that I lived. And so I wanted to leave you guys today with just a note that if you will feel that way, you're not the only one that feels that way. And I want to leave you with an excerpt from a chapter of my book chapter three, which is called the self help rejects, which describes some of the same stuff. The audio excerpt is courtesy of Simon and Schuster audio from how to keep house while drowning by Casey Davis, read by the author, copyright 2020 by Casey Davis 2022 by Katherine Davis, and used with permission of Simon and Schuster Inc. So without further ado, here's chapter three of my book, How to keep house while drowning. You can get it on Barnes and Noble. You can get it on Amazon, you can get it at local bookstores as well. And if you want to look that up if you're in other countries, you can go to www dot struggled care.com and click on the book tab.

  Chapter Three, for all the self help rejects. Marie Kondo says to trifold your underwear, the admiral swears making your bed will change your life. Rachel Hollis thinks the key to success is washing your face and believing in yourself. capsule wardrobes, rainbow colored organization, bullet journals. How many of these have we tried? How many did we stick with? If you're like me, the answer is probably none. Why is it we rarely stick with them? I've already talked about the role of shame and first motivating and then ultimately demotivating us But there's more. First, any task or habit requiring extreme force of will depletes your ability to exert that type of energy over time. The truth is that human beings can only exert high energy for short periods. As someone in the addiction recovery world, I often think of a phrase we use when someone is attempting to maintain sobriety through sheer force of will. We call it white knuckling sobriety. Because it brings to mind a person whose only solution for restraining themselves from drinking is to grip the edge of their chair so tightly their knuckles turned white. And those of us who have been around a while, know that no one stays sober long that way. In addiction recovery as in most of life, success depends not on having strong willpower, but in developing mental and emotional tools to help you experience the world differently. Second, many self help gurus over attribute their success to their own hard work without any regard to the physical, mental or economic privileges they hold. You can see this when a 20 year old fitness influencer says we all have the same 24 hours to a single mom of three the fitness influencer only needed to add effort to see drastic changes in her health and so assumes that's all anyone is missing. The single mom of three however, is experiencing very different demands and limitations on her time. For her, she needs not only effort, but also childcare, money for exercise classes, and extra time and energy at the end of the day, when she has worked nine hours and then spent an additional five caring for kids and cleaning house. You can see this when a thin, white rich selfhelp influencer posts choose joy on her instagram with a caption that tells us that all joy is a choice. Her belief that the decision to be a positive person was the key to her joyful life reveals she really does not grasp just how much of her success is due to privileges beyond her control. Someone who is affected by serious mental illness or systemic oppression has a lot more standing in the way of a happy life than a simple attitude adjustment. And third, different people struggle differently. And privilege isn't the only difference. Someone might find a way to meal plan or exercise or organize their pantry that revolutionizes their life. But the solutions that work for them are highly dependent not only on their unique barriers, but also their strengths, personality and interests. For example, when it comes to my home, I've never been able to just clean as you go. When I try to I find myself stressed, overwhelmed and unable to be present with my family. Instead, I rely on dozens of systems I've created that helped me keep my home functional. And I still usually have dishes in the sink and clutter on the floor. However, when I sit down to write, or to work on my business, everything flows naturally. Sometimes I have to push myself slightly to get over a hurdle. But the hurdles always feel surmountable. I actually have to set a timer to remind me to look at the clock because I get carried away and lose track of time. I feel creative, energized and rewarded. At the end of the day. I have a dear friend who runs a similar business, and we often use each other as a sounding board and support each other. She often calls feeling stuck because she knows what she needs to do to grow her business but struggles to get it done. It seems like you can crank out seven videos for your social media and the time it takes me to do one. It takes me so long to figure out what to say and to get over my self consciousness she tells me she also keeps the cleanest house I have ever seen. One day she said to me, you know, Casey, the way you feel about your business is the way I feel about my home. I can virtually float through my home tidying here putting something away they're doing a little housework as I see it all while enjoying my life and keeping a very clean home. It feels natural, and it only takes a bit of effort. But when I sit down to run my business, certain aspects of what needs to be done make me feel paralyzed, unmotivated and overwhelmed. It takes extreme effort for me to power through and I usually have to set up lots of external systems and accountability to get it done. Main point my friend and I are simply strength oriented and stuck in different ways, with no discernible reason to which we can point. Because of this, my advice for getting things done at work won't help her at all, mostly because it amounts to drink a big coffee and just make yourself do it and then wait around to be inspired about what to do next. And her advice for getting things done around the house is useless to me. She once told me light a candle and think about how good it will feel to get some things done around the house. What I suspect many people doling out productivity advice, focus on areas where they're naturally gifted areas where all they needed was a little push or a couple of tips to get themselves unstuck. Unlike coffee and candles and believing in yourself. The principles in this book can be customized to your unique barriers, strengths and interests.