What Perfectionism Is Actually Trying To Protect Me From
Yesterday morning, on my son’s first day of preschool, he ran headfirst into the corner of our kitchen cabinet and split his eyebrow open.
Blood.
Screaming.
The thud of the impact was so forceful, my stomach still turns thinking about it.
My son is an anxious, deeply feeling kid, and he was already nervous about starting preschool.
I had put so much thought and care into making the transition as easy as possible for him.
We had picked out a new stuffed animal as a comfort for nap time.
We had filled in his “first day of preschool” sign to take photos with.
His bags were packed and labeled, the paperwork was all filled out, every tiny detail I could think of had been anticipated and handled.
I had a vision of the morning being fun and celebratory.
I wanted him to feel excited, supported, and prepared as he stepped into this enormous new chapter of his little life.
Instead, the entire morning immediately descended into chaos.
We were trying to stop the bleeding and determine whether he needed urgent care.
My 16-month-old was also home sick with a fever.
We were calling the school to tell them we would be late while simultaneously trying to comfort two upset children and gather everything we needed to leave the house.
Eventually, the bleeding stopped.
We determined that he didn’t need urgent care, loaded everyone into the car, and arrived at preschool about an hour late.
The drop-off was horrible.
He was so upset.
The morning I had imagined - this meaningful milestone I had put so much care into creating for him - had completely unraveled.
While everything was happening, I was in survival mode.
There wasn’t any space to feel.
Once Ben and I got back into the car after drop-off, all the feelings I had been holding back began to surface.
The first thing I felt was anger.
I was angry that nothing had gone according to plan.
Angry that I had invested so much energy into making the day special and none of it seemed to matter.
Angry at my husband.
Angry at the entire situation.
Anger often arrives first for me when I’m feeling something deeper.
It gives all the energy moving through my body somewhere to go.
It gives me something to do with the helplessness.
Then my perfectionist part entered the conversation.
It began searching the morning for mistakes.
There must have been something I could’ve done differently.
I should have…
Ben should have…
For a moment, my mind tried to convince me that if I searched hard enough, I might find the exact place where I had failed.
But this time, I recognized what was happening.
It was a freak accident.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
There was nothing I could have planned or done differently to prevent it.
And without a mistake to find, there was nothing for me to fix.
That was when the truer feeling broke through:
Heartbreak.
I was deeply sad that my son’s first experience of preschool began with pain, fear, and chaos.
I was grieving the version of the morning I had imagined for him.
I had cared so much.
I had done everything I could.
And I still couldn’t give him the experience I wanted him to have.
That’s when I noticed something about my perfectionism I hadn’t seen quite so clearly before.
My perfectionist part wasn’t only trying to make the day go well.
It was trying to ensure that I would never have to feel what I was feeling in that moment.
The heartbreak of caring deeply, doing my absolute best, and still being unable to control the outcome.
Perfectionism offers me the illusion that if I plan carefully enough, remain vigilant enough, and anticipate every possible problem, I can protect myself and the people I love from painful experiences.
And when something painful happens anyway, perfectionism offers me another illusion:
That it must have happened because I (or someone else) did something wrong.
Blame can feel strangely safer than helplessness.
If something was my fault, then there is something I can correct.
I can analyze what happened, identify my mistake, and promise myself that I’ll do better next time.
But if no one is to blame, then I have to confront a much more vulnerable truth:
Sometimes painful things happen, and I cannot prevent them.
Sometimes I will care deeply, prepare thoughtfully, and do my absolute best.
And the outcome will still break my heart.
There is no amount of vigilance that can guarantee that the people I love will never get hurt.
There is no perfect plan that can protect my children from every frightening, disappointing, or painful experience.
And there is no way to live a full human life without occasionally having to feel grief, helplessness, and disappointment.
And yet, for many of us who are deeply feeling and highly sensitive, simply allowing ourselves to have those feelings can be incredibly difficult.
We’ve often spent our lives receiving the message, directly or indirectly, that our emotional responses are too much.
You’re being dramatic.
It’s not that big of a deal.
Other people have it so much worse.
Why do you let everything affect you so deeply?
Eventually, we learn to say these things to ourselves before anyone else gets the chance.
We minimize our experiences.
We compare our pain to someone else’s.
We try to determine whether what happened was objectively “bad enough” to justify our response.
Even as I was reflecting back later that day, I noticed a part of me saying:
Come on… It was a cut on his eyebrow and a difficult preschool drop-off.
Other people would brush this off and just move on.
But emotional regulation does not mean convincing ourselves that something shouldn’t affect us.
It means allowing ourselves to actually feel what is there without first deciding whether the situation was “big enough” to justify it.
Ben was able to take the rest of the morning off.
After the drop-off, we went for a long walk, and I let it all out.
Through tears, I processed the grief of the morning we didn’t get to have and of what had been overshadowed by the chaos:
My first baby entering a whole new chapter of his life.
I let myself feel how heartbreaking it was that I couldn’t give him the experience I had imagined.
I stopped trying to fix the feeling, explain it away, or convince myself it wasn’t that serious.
I just let myself be sad.
And Ben listened.
He didn’t try to talk me out of what I was feeling or remind me that, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
He understood why it felt like a big deal to me.
He heard the heartbreak underneath the anger and validated that it made sense.
(This is one of the approximately one million reasons I’m grateful I married him.)
Then he offered me a metaphor that helped me see the morning differently.
He said it was like I had been directing a show.
I had devoted myself to the rehearsals, the preparation, and every detail of the production.
Then, during the opening act, the lead actor fell off the stage.
It was awful.
It wasn’t part of the plan.
It upended the beginning of the show.
But the actor got back up.
The show continued.
And all the preparation that came before that moment still mattered.
A few hours later, I could already feel the intensity of the emotion beginning to soften.
Not because I had decided it wasn’t a big deal, but because I had allowed it to be as big a deal as it felt to me.
I’m beginning to understand that healing my perfectionism may not mean caring less or becoming unaffected when things don’t go according to plan.
I think it’s about showing my perfectionist part that I can handle the feelings it has been trying so hard to protect me from.
That I can care deeply, do my best, and feel the heartbreak when the outcome isn’t what I wanted.
My son’s first morning of preschool didn’t go the way I had imagined.
The opening act went terribly.
But my lead actor got back up.
And the show will go on.