Meditation & Perfectionism

Hello. My name is Claire.  And I am a Recovering Perfectionist.

Hello Claire.

Being a spiritual seeker who is also a recovering perfectionist can be a tricky tight rope to walk sometimes.  It requires a vigilance to be sure that my habitual nature to mold and shape myself into some version of worthiness and adequacy (that’s what perfectionism is about after all…) is not spilling over into my spiritual life and practices.

Perfectionism is pretty insidious though, and sometimes it can slip in without even the most astute observer being the wiser. This is especially true in spiritual development because on the outside what the person is fine-tuning in themselves generally is agreeable and even likable to most others that no one (even sometimes the individual herself) notices that the spiritual virtue has been lost on a larger, over-riding goal for perfectionism of the ego to create a sense of self-worth.

Take for example compassion.  It is said that a regular meditation practice can yield a greater capacity for compassion.  In fact there is a researcher named Dr. Richard Davidson who is the founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison who has looked at the neurobiology of compassion in the brains of regular meditators.  You’ve probably heard of him; he’s one of the researchers who has been studying the brains of Tibetan monks while they are meditating.  Read any of his articles about his research and I guarantee you will be meditating the next day- it is that compelling.

But here’s the trapping for a recovering perfectionist like me, rather than viewing this compassionate mind training research as just another advantage of a meditation practice that has long ago proved beneficial to me (and those around me), I could twist this information into a reason to mold and shape myself into a better version of me in order to make myself more useful and productive in the world- or in other words, more worthy.

Now, the wise part of me of course knows that growing compassion is not an exercise in perfecting ourselves.  Though in meditation the analogy is often used of sea glass, we are not smoothing out the rough edges of the glass through day after day of sitting meditation because those edges are bad or wrong in some way. We are doing it because it allows for a smoother ride. It is like putting shocks on a car that has none, and I have personally found that to be true.

Yet having said that, as a recovering perfectionist, if I am not mindful, I can easily fall back in to the habit of engaging in anything, in this case spiritual practice, to nurture my fantasy of what a new and improved version of myself would be rather than growing in self-acceptance and authenticity, which is ironically what compassionate mind training teaches us.

There is a principle in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain tradition of nonviolence toward all living things which is called ahimsa. I’ve heard this concept applied to us recovering perfectionists who have been caught using our spiritual practices, like meditation or yoga, as a means to change ourselves into something good enough or better.  Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chodron describes this pitfall as a micro-aggression toward the self, and remembering the principle of ahimsa to avoid the loss of the integrity of a spiritual discipline.

I must point out the paradox here as well. Despite what I just told all you perfectionists out there to look out for in order to maintain your commitment to having a healthy meditation practice, I will say this, I find that if I keep my perfectionist habits in check, my meditation practice can be an antidote of sorts for the perfectionism itself.

At the last mindfulness retreat I attended the group leader quoted paraplegic yoga teacher and author Mathew Sanford who says that you cannot practice yoga regularly and not become more compassionate. And to this, I would say the same thing about a meditation practice.  I just don’t think it’s possible to sit through minute after minute, hour after hour, week after week, year after year of meditation practice and not become what Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield says Ram Das calls “a connoisseur of your own neurosis” that is embedded in compassion for self and other.  Meditation practice and compassionate mind training are one and the same, for me anyway.

It is like the poem by Derek Walcott calledLove after Love.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life. 

I think what is hard for the recovering perfectionist to remember too is that this meditation practice that yields increased compassion, and in turn is the antidote for perfectionism, is not effort. It is a discipline, but not effort.  In fact, it is effortless. It is grace.  If you show up and engage in the practice, the rest will take care of itself.  And as a recovering perfectionist, I can tell you that that is a very tough one to buy into.  We think everything requires 150% effort. We think if we did not get the results we wanted then that is because we need to try harder, do better, work more.

During these moments, however, we need to remember the words of 20^th century Psychologist Carl Rogers who said, “"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

How has your meditation practice impacted your perfectionist habits? Has meditation increased your capacity for compassion?