Trying to be understood
I’ve been thinking about my own relationship with perfectionism, and how I put a lot of effort into trying to say just the right thing. Into phrasing something in just the right way to avoid any possible misunderstanding, and how much of my time that takes up.
And yet, I don’t think it’s perfectionism in the way that some people describe it. Maybe I’m getting hung up on the word “perfect” (ironically), because I don’t actually feel like I need things to be perfect, or “just right”, or “this way only.” It’s more of a feeling that if I don’t say exactly what I mean, people will misunderstand me, and therefore they won’t get anything out of it.
My fear isn’t that it’s not good enough, it’s that it won’t get across what I’m actually intending and therefore no one will get anything out of it at all.
So I’ll rewrite articles, edit endlessly, or redo videos over and over until I’m saying exactly what I intend to say, in just the way that I intend to say it. Often with many explanations, and caveats, and cautions of “don’t take it like this”, because my fear isn’t that it’s not good enough, it’s that it won’t get across what I’m actually intending and therefore no one will get anything out of it at all. It will be entirely useless and then all of that effort will have gone to waste.
That fear is almost all dirty pain, by the way. It’s based in real misunderstandings that I’ve had, but adding much more meaning onto it than necessary. I know intellectually that it’s not, in fact, true that no one will get anything out of it ever if I don’t say perfectly what I intend. That’s the part that’s dirty pain.
That fear has been relaxing over time, especially in the last year or so, and I’ve been gradually getting more comfortable with letting things be not exactly the way I intend. Letting them into the world even when they don’t perfectly (oop, there’s that word again) capture my meaning. (But even with that semantic slip, “perfect” is not how I typically define what I’m talking about.)
I’ve been posting videos that aren’t polished and pretty. I’ve been publishing articles that are only around 90% of the way that I want them, and it’s been scary to do that. Yet I’m still getting good comments. I’m still getting people saying that it was very helpful and that they got something out of it, and that’s calming the part of me that is deeply afraid that nothing will work at all unless it’s fully expressing my intended meaning.
Being misunderstood
Because here’s the thing, when I was growing up I was misunderstood a lot, and I tried to compensate for that by assuming that it was my fault for not explaining myself well.
When I laid out what seemed to me to be a logical explanation, I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t get on board with it, so I generally assumed I simply didn’t explain myself well enough and that’s why they weren’t in agreement. I didn’t understand that the emotional complexities and subconscious decision-making that drive people’s behaviors have nothing to do with logic.
(I also vastly overestimated how much of my own actions were purely logical, but that’s a topic for another post.)
Because I was so often misunderstood, my default strategy was to explain myself better. That became my go-to defense mechanism for a lot of things in life; explain myself better and find a way to say it just right. If I could just get the right combination of words, in the right order, it would make everything better. I understand now that it doesn’t work that way, but a part of me still believes that it should and keeps trying to get the words just right in order to feel safe; safe letting that article go, safe putting that video into the world, safe being around other people, safe existing.
I understand now that it doesn’t work that way, but a part of me still believes that it should and keeps trying to get the words just right in order to feel safe.
Over the last year, I’ve noticed people keep telling me, usually unsolicited, that they’re getting a lot out of the content I’m putting out there. Even when it’s not “just right”, even when it’s not perfect, even if it’s not exactly how I intended to put something out there: people are still finding it useful. And that’s when I talk to that younger, misunderstood part of me, and reassure her that she’s doing a better job now at being understood, advocating for herself, and explaining things.
Which is true. I am so much better at communicating now than I ever have been. So that younger part of me is beginning to trust me more and more, trust that it’ll be okay, trust that it doesn’t have to be just right, and that lets me put out more content that actually helps people (like this imperfect piece, for example), rather than getting stuck on perfecting just a few items.
