The Myth Of Effortless Perfection

I’ve recently been reading Susan Cain’s excellent Bittersweet. Do I still use the word reading if I’ve been listening to it on audiobook? Should I say listening? Whatever the correct word, I’ve really enjoyed it.

There is a section in the book where Cain talks about her upbringing and the fractious relationship that she had with her mother. 

It reaches a particularly troubling point while Cain goes off to college. While she had expected college to be this time of freedom, liberation, new friends and experiences, it was still overshadowed by her mother’s presence.

And one of the biggest difficulties for Cain was her inability to talk to anyone about this. She felt like everyone else had these easy lives and carefree experiences and yet she was the only one suffering 

Last week I interviewed Colleen Reichmann on the podcast (which you can listen to here). And what struck me was the similarities in Colleen and Cain’s stories. 

No, colleen didn’t have an overbearing mother, but she did have similar expectations as Cain about what would happen when going off to college.

She mentioned that she had this idealised vision that it would be instant best friends that would be best friends for life. And that college will be the best years of her life.

But despite these hopes, college turned out to be very different. 

Colleen went to college with an undiagnosed eating disorder and was then rooming with others who had their own disordered relationships with food. She couldn’t get a handle on how to use alcohol in any reasonable way and was affected by the constant binge drinking.

She also suffered from intense loneliness because she didn’t find a group of friends straight away or connect with those living closest to her.

Freshman year for Colleen was one of the darkest years of her life and she said that her life simply imploded. 

And just like Cain, she was unable to open up to those around her and felt very isolated and alone in her struggles.

Effortless Perfection

In Bittersweet, some 30 years after graduating, Cain goes back to Princeton, the same university that she studied at. She meets up with some current students and a university counsellor to find out what it is like for students these days.

What she finds is that things haven’t improved and if anything, they have gotten worse. Each of the students she speaks to is struggling but doing so in silence. The counsellor mentions for each student that they see, they feel like the only one that is struggling.

Cain talks about the phenomenon known as effortless perfection.

The phrase was first coined in a study by Duke University in 2003. It is the pressure on students to be smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful and popular all without visible effort. Things like: 

Acing exams but appearing to never study

Drinking copious amounts of alcohol but never appearing drunk

Looking stylish and well dressed, but it’s as if that is how you roll out of bed

Effortless perfection is also referred to as duck syndrome. It originates from the idea that a duck can look calm and at ease while gliding along the surface of the water yet, just below the surface, they are furiously paddling just to stay afloat. 

As an onlooker you can’t see the intense and constant work of paddling, you only see the serene and tranquil gliding.

The idea of effortless perfection, because it’s a term that came out of research done by Duke University, is often associated with college students. Those in their late teens and early twenties.

But really, this isn’t age specific. I’ve worked with clients in their late teens through to those in their late 60s and they can equally be affected by the effortless perfection myth. And it affects them in two ways.

Firstly, they are trying to keep up their own appearances and appear like the duck when seen from above the water.

They are known as the healthy one by their friends because of how they eat

They’re regularly told by others that they wish they could exercise as they do

They are complimented on their dedication and willpower

People ask for their advice on food, exercise, supplements and health

Friends comment on their house: the gardens, furniture, artwork, fixtures and fittings

They holiday in lovely locations

They have career success

They have cultivated a story about their life. Or if they didn’t actively cultivate it, people have made assumptions that haven’t been corrected. 

Secondly, they believe that others are living the life that they are only pretending to live. They feel like others have:

• More friends and deeper connections with these friends
• An easier time in relationships
• More ease in social situations
• Fewer worries and anxiety
• A less complicated relationship with food and their body

Now, some of these things may be true.

Living with an eating disorder or disorder eating can impact one’s ability to make and sustain friendships or to feel comfortable in social situations.

These could even predate the disorder and having a temperament toward worry and anxiety can be part of the reason the disorder started in the first place.

But the reality of how easy and uncomplicated everyone else’s life is is false.

Yes, there is a continuum, where some people struggle more than average and others have a comparatively easier time. But the one certainty of life is that we will all experience loss, hardship and times when everything just feels too much.

Feeling Your Feelings

In my conversation with Colleen, we talked about the importance of feeling our feelings. And that issues with food and body can be a way of distracting and avoiding this.

She mentioned that a past therapist had asked her the question “If you weren’t constantly thinking about your food and your weight, what would you be thinking about? And how would this leave you feeling?” 

While this question didn’t have an immediate effect, it sat with her. She realised that there were so many things that her issues with food and body were allowing her to avoid. 

And I see an overlap here between the eating disorder and the pursuit of effortless perfection.

In both cases, there is a disconnect between the appearances that are being kept up versus the reality of the situation. 

There is also clearly an upside to keeping up these behaviours, however destructive. It can keep you from having to truly open up and show the real you in all its messiness.

As Colleen mentioned, the eating disorder felt preferable to the thoughts and feelings that would fill the void if the eating disorder was no longer pleasant. 

Well, at least it did for a while.

But at some point, this changed and she was able to recover. She learnt to feel her feelings and that there were other ways to cope with life other than an eating disorder.

So, if you need to hear it, I would love to remind you that:

It’s completely normal to struggle and to find life challenging.

Understandably, it is tough to open up, especially if this hasn’t been modelled for you growing up. Likewise, it can be overwhelming to be in touch with feelings and emotions. More so if you were actively told to suppress them.

It makes complete sense that you feel ambivalent about parting ways with behaviours that you’ve been praised for. Even if these behaviours are now causing lots of pain and suffering, it can still be difficult to let them go. Because you are unsure if you really want to let go of something that still provides a benefit.   

Would You Like Help?

Are you stuck in a place of trying to keep up the façade of effortless perfection?

Or feeling like a failure, because everyone else seems to have their shit together except you?

Is your relationship with food and your body both a friend and foe? Keeping you numb and distracted but reducing your life in the process? 

If you answered yes to any of the above but would like things to be different, I’d love to help.

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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