My name is Chris, and I’m a (recovering) perfectionist.
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Warning: This is an honest account of some of my struggles with mental illness and includes references to things that readers may find upsetting, including attempted suicide.
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When I was about 15, someone in my year at school (let’s call him John, not his real name) said something to me that, although I didn’t know it at the time, was perhaps one of the most insightful observations anyone has ever made about me.
“Chris, the problem with you is that you are addicted to praise”.
At the time I remember feeling pretty angry. The idea was absurd, offensive even; it really got under my skin. I was a straight A student, I won numerous academic prizes every year and I never got into trouble. I always considered myself a high-achiever but I never saw my achievements and the praise that came with them as anything other my deserved rewards for working hard and doing the right thing. I couldn’t stand the thought that everything I had done represented a problem, let alone an ‘addiction’!
By this point, I had become adept at ignoring all of the ways that the universe had been trying to show me that, perhaps, John was right, so I pushed aside the comment and doubled down. Academic success and achievement were my sword and shield, protecting me against everything the world threw at me. I won more and more prizes, achieved top grades in my GCSEs and A-levels, was accepted into one of the most academically rigorous colleges at the University of Cambridge and left school the top of my year.
That’s when everything began to unravel.
I went into my first year at university high on my success at school and ready to continue in the same vein. I had my heart set on one thing, and one thing only: graduate with a first. I could sense after my first supervision (the process of being individually interrogated by an expert in the field on that week’s topic of study and having the essay you wrote that week dissected in minute detail) that things weren’t going to be as easy as they had been at school, but I was confident that I would ultimately succeed in achieving a first in my first year exams. I spent hours in the library, reading and taking notes, drafting and re-drafting essays and becoming an expert in the socio-economic causes of witchcraft persecutions in the seventeenth century. By the time exams rolled around, I was exhausted, but knew that soon it would be done and that I would have achieved the success I had been working so hard towards.
Except I didn’t.
Looking at the class list pinned up on the outside of the main University building where all exam results are published, my heart sank as my finger scrolled down past the list of people who had achieved firsts and in to the names in the 2:1 category. There it was: Christopher Bond, 2:1, for all the world to see.
I was devastated. I started crying and couldn’t stop. It felt like I hadn’t just failed, but that I was a failure.
Soon though, the crying gave way to anger, not at the examiners or my tutors but at myself. I hadn’t worked hard enough, I hadn’t revised thoroughly enough. This was all my fault; I had let myself down.
So, I doubled down again, and the next year worked even harder, put in even more hours studying and wrote even longer and more detailed essays. And guess what: I still got at 2:1 in my second-year exams. My mark was higher this time, tantalisingly close to the boundary of getting a first, but still, for me, not close enough. I was wrung out, exhausted and despondent, but I still thought: “Ok, just dig a bit deeper next year and you’ll do it.”
I entered my final year with the grim determination of someone gripped by an obsession. This was the year I was going to do it. I was also nervous. The entire result of my whole degree rested on my performance in my final exams. Everything up to this point had been practice, a warm up to the main event. It was like going all in on a pair and hoping for four of a kind to turn up on the river.
This time, however, everything went off the rails. Having worked throughout the summer researching my dissertation with mixed success, I arrived for the new academic year burned out and anxious at my lack of progress. Within a week, my girlfriend at the time told me she thought we should break up, as she knew I would be wanting to focus on my academic work. By the middle of term, I had fallen into a deep, paralysing depression. I couldn’t get out of bed, my mind felt fogged and I would cry for what felt like hours. By December, my whole being had collapsed along with my dissertation and an abortive attempt at suicide forced me to take a leave of absence until the next academic year.
Taking time out gave me space to breath, to stabilise my depression with medication, counselling and regular exercise and to decompress from what had been a pretty hair-raising experience. By the start of the next academic year, I had bounced back and was ready to return and enjoy by final year. I told myself would work hard, but I wouldn’t chase getting a first-class degree at all costs. So, that year I loosened up a bit, went to the gym more, found a group of really close friends and actively tried to have a life outside of my academic work.
Ironically, this was the year I finally achieved a first.
Looking back though, this is what I imagine it would be like for an alcoholic who had been sober for six months to suddenly have the taste of a cold beer. It was exhilarating. I felt like I had superpowers. And that was all it took.
Just like that, everything I had done to create a sense of balance between work and the rest of my life began to slowly drip away. Over the next seven years, through law school, my legal training contract and working as a solicitor at top corporate law firms in London, I lost more and more perspective, became more and more obsessed with “success” at all costs to justify my being and rebuilt my defences against criticism through sacrificing everything to work and trying to do everything to avoid being less than perfect. The same downward spiral took hold again. I took pieces of constructive feedback out of all proportion and frenetically attempted to dig even deeper and work even harder to banish the idea that I had fallen short even in the smallest way. When people tried to show me how to improve, all I could hear was the voices inside my head saying: “You are a fuck up and a failure. Nobody’s ever going to respect or love you.”
Throughout my life, hard work and achievement had been my drug of choice to numb myself to my complex web of emotions and deepest fears of rejection and abandonment, but now I was approaching overdose territory. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but I was losing control, and losing it increasingly quickly. My behaviour became more erratic, I struggled to control feelings of anger and self-loathing, losing my temper at those around me (including those closest to me). The quality of my work was dropping like a stone.
Suddenly, I was back in that dark place I had sworn I never wanted to return to. Everything in my life had collapsed. I was left feeling completely overwhelmed and was free-falling back into depression and thoughts of ending my life. I went back onto medication and re-entered therapy, and for the first time I really committed to the process beyond a handful of sessions. This time, I knew it wasn’t an option not to. For the first time, I have really listened to what my mind and my body had been screaming at me for the best part of 20 years and have tried to embrace rather than deny my inner emotional turmoil. It has since taken me nine long, slow months of this deep and often painful introspection and soul-searching, together with a false recovery followed by another cycle of overwork and a relapse into burnout and depression (thankfully the cycle was much shorter and more obvious this time) to help me begin to recognise the situation for what it really is.
So, here goes.
My name is Chris, and I’m a workaholic, a pathological perfectionist and a praise addict. I have been since my childhood. This is the start of my journey towards a sustainable relationship with achievement, one where I can still do the things I want to do but which that doesn’t tie my entire identity and sense of self to a need to be perfect. As the cliché goes, this is not the end of the process, nor is it the beginning of the end, but it may just be the end of the beginning.
To all those who I have hurt as a result of my actions and inactions while trying to satisfy my addiction, I apologise from the bottom of my heart.
To those who have supported me through my darkest moments and have helped to pick me up all the times I felt that I couldn’t go on, I will be forever grateful.
To all those reading this, thank you for taking the time to read my story; my aim is to continue to write about mental health issues as part of my ongoing process of recovery and to (hopefully) give some kind of help to others who are struggling with mental illness.
And lastly, to the child inside me, feeling desperately alone and just wanting love, I love you and you will always be enough.
