Neil

When we identify our worth with our work (“I am what I do”) we naturally are reluctant to face challenges and take risks without self-protective defenses. If you believe that a judgment of your work is a judgment of yourself, then perfectionism, self-criticism, and procrastination are necessary forms of protection.

You feel like a victim whose life is controlled by others who make the rules. And you affirm your refusal to accept the rules by speaking about the unpleasant task in the victim’s mantra—“I have to.” “I have to pay the parking ticket. I have to have the presentation ready by Friday. But if I were in charge I wouldn’t do it. If I were God there would be no parking tickets.”
As a powerless victim you feel you can’t openly rebel, because that would mean risking the probable consequences (anger and punishment), as well as losing the side benefits of the victim role (self-righteousness and martyrdom).

If you maintain extremely high standards for your performance and are critical of your mistakes, you will need to defend yourself from risky projects where the chances of failure are high. Perfectionism and self-criticism are, in fact, the chief causes of fear of failure.

But a failure to a perfectionist is like a small cut to a hemophiliac.

But a failure to a perfectionist is like a small cut to a hemophiliac. It doesn’t seem like much to a robust person, but it can be fatal to someone whose system is overly sensitive.

The need to procrastinate as a protection against criticism and failure is particularly strong for those who feel they have to succeed at one specific goal, seeing no acceptable alternatives. Those who gain their sense of identity from many areas are more resilient when failing in any one area.

In such a predicament, procrastination can serve as a delaying action and as a way of getting you past your perfectionism. If you delay starting your work, you cannot do your best and so any criticism or failure will not be a judgment of the real you or your best effort.

To avoid procrastination, she would need to create a contract with herself that whenever she made a mistake, she would remind herself of her worth, quickly forgive herself for not being perfect, and rapidly start over. In other words, Elaine learned to accept herself as being perfectly human.

3. success means advancement to increasing demands and a fear of ultimate failure sometime in the future.

Fear of success can be seen as a fear of delayed failure: if you succeed in one task you’re sure to be moved right on to a new competitive arena where failure is even more likely.