What often looks like the pressure to be perfect, is simply accumulated trauma and fear. How this occurs is simple. A child is consistently placed into fear….until the panic and terror based metabolic pathways are already full to the brim, within the nervous system. Now with that much perpetual terror, a perfection based coping mechanism develops, not because the trauma victim really wants to be perfect, but because their stress pathways can’t take anymore negative electricity running through them. The flight or fight hormonal response of the “perfect person” has already been burnt to the ground by some sort of constant panic. Basically there’s no more room in the nervous system to take any more panic, fear or terror……….so the trauma victim makes it their job to make everyone else fall in love with them. Be the most liked person in the room, they’re never attacked…….and then I’ll be safe.

This brings about a very smiley, out going, people pleasing sort of personality, who never stops making everyone else happy…..WHEN THE PUBLIC IS WATCHING……and then a complete collapse of that personality occurs when privacy away from the public is found. So huge energy expenditures toward everyone else in the world, to make sure they’re perpetually happy…..and then a complete energy exhaustion situation when Mr. or Mrs. Perfect returns home to safety, and shuts the door on the outside world. Sound familiar? So all these people do is give their energy away all day until their tank is empty. Their entire life focus is to be perfect, so everyone loves them……but again it’s not because they really want to have perfect skin, the perfect breasts, the perfect hair color, the perfect bum, the perfect legs, the perfect car, the perfect family, the perfect life, the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect group of friends etc. They do it because any sort of real world conflict, debate, argument or disagreement would devastate their already terrified and hyper stressed metabolism. When you’re stressed to the brim already, one extra drop can literally send you to the hospital.

You’ll also notice that the “perfect people” don’t really have any personal long term goals, other than wanting to please you and make sure everyone thinks they’re “a nice lady” or “a good guy”. They often don’t have any real large overarching dreams or aspirations because pleasing you is their day to day mission, so thinking beyond their need for immediate safety from attack is illogical. Big smiles, eyes are empty, soul is missing. I see them everyday and sometimes there’s nothing left to them. I feel for these people. I feel for all people living in this society where children are constantly used as physical currency at the government, societal or religious toll booth…..so the parent can gain some sort of benefit inside our perverse and inverted society. The shit we put our children through has no benefit for the child of course in the majority of cases. Only the parent benefits.

The person wanting to be perfect has lived an extremely traumatic childhood and has never really matured into their full adult selves because of how immense stress inhibits the mental maturation process. They are literally children in adults bodies. I’ve found more women like this than men and that’s no shock down here on planet mental asylum where our completely insane living conditions devastate all children in one way or another, females more so than males. The childhood fear that causes this immensely dysfunction coping mechanism, most likely would have passed from this person’s life, but it became so ingrained, it just stuck with them…..as most dysfunctional coping strategies do. Saying that, trauma, fear and panic are so common in our society toward children, that no one really notices. It’s like asking a fish what water is. The fish will say, “what’s water?”. They can’t even understand the question, if it’s all they know and they literally swim in it every day. That’s what it’s like asking an adult today what child trauma is. It’s everywhere.

I counsel over Skype on breaking free of dysfunctional and self sabotaging living patterns. If you ever need some help, I can see if I can fit you but I’m really full already. I hope the article helps a bit.