I don’t know when being successful stopped being something I wanted and became something I felt like I needed to prove. Maybe there wasn’t one moment. Maybe it happened slowly, through years of accomplishing something and immediately hearing what I could have done better. Moments that should have made me proud became reminders of where I still fell short, and somewhere along the way, wanting to hear “I’m proud of you” turned into expecting a critique instead.
I love my mom, and I want to make that clear because relationships between mothers and daughters are rarely simple enough to divide into someone being good or bad. I know she loves me. I know she wants me to succeed, and I know some of the pressure she has put on me probably came from believing I was capable of more. But knowing why someone pushes you does not erase what being pushed constantly can do to you. For most of my life, I have felt like nothing I do is ever quite good enough in my mother’s eyes, and somewhere along the way, her expectations became my own. Now I am a perfectionist, a control freak and a workaholic, and I don’t think those things appeared out of nowhere.
In high school, I was on the executive board of almost every club I was involved in. I always had something to do, somewhere to be or something I was responsible for. I liked leadership, being involved and being the person people could depend on, but I also liked having proof that I was doing something with my life. Every title was another accomplishment and every responsibility was another reason someone could look at me and think I was doing well. Looking back, I wonder how much of that was me trying to build a version of myself that was impossible for my mom not to be proud of. If I worked hard enough, accomplished enough and became impressive enough, maybe eventually there would be nothing left to criticize.
Then I spoke at my high school graduation. I was class president, so I had to stand in front of my graduating class and give a speech. Out of everything I had done throughout high school, it should have been one of the moments I was proudest of. I had spent years involved in nearly everything I could be involved in, and there I was, graduating and speaking in front of everyone. I stumbled over my words a little, and afterward, that was what my mom pointed out. I don’t remember being told how proud she was that I had gotten onstage or hearing much about what I actually said. What stayed with me was that I had fumbled over some words.
Maybe she never intended for that comment to stay with me. It did. It reinforced something I think I had already started learning: no matter how much goes right, someone can still find the thing that went wrong. Eventually, I started finding it first. That is one of the things people misunderstand about perfectionism. It isn’t believing you are perfect. Sometimes it is believing there is always something wrong if you look hard enough, and I always look. I can finish something I worked on for hours and immediately identify what I should have changed. I can receive ten compliments and remember the one criticism. I can have a conversation that went completely fine and spend the entire night wondering if one sentence sounded weird. Criticism feels familiar to me in a way praise sometimes doesn’t.
College only gave me more things to prove. I am a first-generation college student, something I am incredibly proud of, but being the first has also come with pressure. There was no blueprint waiting for me when I got here. I have had to figure out classes, internships, careers, networking, leadership and what comes after graduation while actively living it. I don’t want to simply say I went to college. I want to feel like I did something with it, so I work constantly. My schedule stays full because being busy gives me evidence that I am making something of the opportunity I was given.
Last semester, I made the President’s List. I was so proud of myself, and when I told my mom, she asked why I hadn’t made it before. I don’t think she realizes how much that question affected me because I heard something much bigger than the words she actually said. I heard that even this wasn’t enough. I had reached something worth celebrating, and somehow we were already talking about what I hadn’t done. Instead of simply being proud that I had made the President’s List, I was left wondering why I hadn’t always been that version of myself.
The same thing happens when I win something. I can receive an award or get exciting news, and despite everything, my mom is still one of the first people I want to tell. Sometimes I send her the text and she hearts it. That’s it. Maybe that little heart means everything I want it to mean to her. Maybe it means she is proud of me, thinks what I did is amazing and sees how hard I worked. But sometimes I want her to actually say it. I want “I’m proud of you” without a correction or question attached to it. I want an accomplishment to be allowed to exist before we start talking about what could have been better.
I hate how badly I still want that. I am old enough to know my mother’s approval should not determine how I feel about myself, and I know I should be able to recognize my own accomplishments. But I don’t think you ever completely outgrow wanting your mom to be proud of you. Sometimes I still feel like a little girl holding something up for her to see, except what I am holding has changed. Look at what I made, what I did, what I won. Look at my grades, my internships, my leadership positions and everything I am doing. Look at who I am becoming. Is this good enough now?
Maybe that is part of why I cannot stop working. I call myself a workaholic because I genuinely do not know how to do nothing without feeling guilty about it. If there is empty space in my schedule, I fill it. If another opportunity appears, I want to take it. If there is something I could be doing, resting starts to feel irresponsible. Working makes me feel useful, accomplishing things makes me feel valuable and being busy gives me evidence. I can point to my calendar, résumé, grades, leadership positions and everything I have created and tell myself that I am doing something with my life. Underneath that is a quieter and much more difficult question: Am I doing enough?
My mother’s criticism did not stay my mother’s criticism. Eventually, it became mine. She doesn’t have to point out the mistake in the speech anymore because I will. She doesn’t have to ask why something wasn’t better because I have probably already wondered. She doesn’t have to tell me I could be doing more because I have probably already added three more things to my schedule. At some point, I stopped needing someone else to put pressure on me because I learned how to do it myself, and I am much harsher.
My anxiety thrives on that pressure. If something important is happening the next day, I can stay awake for hours rehearsing every possible version of it in my head: the good, the bad and the ugly. I imagine what I am going to say, what the other person might say and what I will say in response to something they haven’t even said yet. I prepare for awkward silences, rejection, misunderstandings and things going horribly wrong. Sometimes I even prepare for things going perfectly right because my brain immediately wants to know what could go wrong afterward. Anxiety convinces me that if I think through every possible scenario, I can control the outcome, and control has always made me feel safe.
That need for control explains a lot about me. If I plan enough, maybe nothing can surprise me. If I prepare enough, maybe I won’t stumble. If I do it myself, maybe it will be done correctly. If I check it one more time, maybe nobody will find the mistake. There is a part of me that still believes that if I can do everything perfectly, I can make myself impossible to criticize.
Except I am not perfect. Nobody is. When something inevitably does go wrong, I don’t always respond by working harder. Sometimes I completely collapse. That is the contradiction of being a workaholic that people don’t see. I can balance ten things at once until one of them goes wrong, and then suddenly I cannot do anything. One bad grade, one mistake, one criticism, one awkward interaction or one project that doesn’t turn out the way I imagined can make me want to give up for days.
My anxiety tells me I ruined everything. My perfectionism tells me there is no point if I cannot do it correctly, and my depression can take whatever energy I have left and make starting again feel impossible. Then I lie there thinking about everything I should be doing, which makes me feel guilty for doing nothing. The guilt creates more anxiety because now I am falling behind, and falling behind makes everything feel even more impossible. Eventually, I panic enough to start again, and then I work twice as hard to make up for the time I lost.
Most people only see that last part. They see the finished project, the leadership position, the internship, the grade or the award. They see the girl who somehow manages school, work, leadership and everything else. They don’t see the few days when one mistake convinced me I couldn’t do any of it. That is what makes perfectionism so deceptive. Sometimes it looks exactly like success.
I think about that a lot when I think about painting. I used to paint, and I was a damn good painter. More importantly, I loved it. Before everything had to contribute to a résumé or career, painting was something I did simply because I loved creating. I could sit in front of a canvas for hours and make something out of nothing. Then I started looking at my paintings the same way I had learned to look at myself.
Instead of seeing the entire painting, I saw the proportions that weren’t right, the shading that could have been better or the color that didn’t look exactly like the one I imagined. Someone could tell me a painting was beautiful, and I would immediately show them what was wrong with it. A compliment could not survive my own criticism. Eventually, painting became exhausting. A blank canvas used to feel exciting because I could make anything. Then it became terrifying because whatever I made might not be good enough. I painted less and less until eventually I barely painted at all.
I didn’t stop because I became bad at painting. I stopped because being good wasn’t good enough for me anymore.
That might be the part of perfectionism I resent the most. It did not just make me successful. It took something I loved away from me. And when I think about where I learned to look for imperfections so instinctively, I cannot help but think about my mom. My graduation speech could be an accomplishment, but there was the stumble. Making the President’s List could be impressive, but why hadn’t I done it sooner? An award could matter, but sometimes all I got back was a heart. A painting could be beautiful, but I could always find the brushstroke that wasn’t.
At some point, I started treating myself the way I felt evaluated growing up. I learned to look at the whole picture and immediately search for what could be better. That realization is difficult because I love my mom, and I don’t want to turn her into the villain of my story. I don’t think she is one. Maybe she believed pushing me would make me stronger. Maybe she saw potential in me and thought pointing out where I could improve was how she helped me reach it. Maybe when she thought she was saying, “I know you can do better,” she never realized I was hearing, “This version of you isn’t enough yet.”
Both things can be true. I can know that my mother loves me and acknowledge that I have spent years feeling like I had to earn her pride. I can appreciate everything she has done for me and admit there are things I wish she had done differently. I can love her and still have things I need to unlearn because of our relationship. Maybe that is one of the hardest parts of growing up: realizing our parents can love us deeply and still hurt us in ways they never intended.
I don’t want to lose my ambition while I unlearn those things. There is a part of my drive that belongs completely to me. I genuinely have big dreams. I like being a leader, working hard, creating things and knowing I am building a future for myself. I just don’t want to spend my entire life trying to accomplish something impressive enough to finally make myself impossible to criticize. That accomplishment does not exist. There will always be another goal, another person doing more, another thing I could improve and another word I could stumble over.
And maybe my mom will never react to my accomplishments exactly the way I wish she would. The control freak in me hates admitting that because it is one of the few things I cannot plan, perfect or work hard enough to change. But maybe growing up means realizing I cannot keep handing someone else the responsibility of deciding when I am allowed to be proud of myself.
I made the President’s List, and I am allowed to be proud of that without asking why I didn’t make it sooner. I spoke at my high school graduation, and a few stumbled words do not erase the fact that I stood there and did it. I am a first-generation college student building a life I had no blueprint for. I have won things, led things and created things. I have survived the days when my anxiety convinced me everything was going to go wrong and the days when my depression convinced me there was no point in trying again.
And I used to paint beautiful things. I just couldn’t always see that they were beautiful.
Sometimes I wonder if that is what I have been doing with my entire life. I have been standing too close to the canvas, searching for the crooked line, the wrong shade or the place where my hand slipped instead of looking at everything else I created. Maybe my mom taught me to look for those things, but I don’t have to spend the rest of my life looking.
I can love her without continuing every criticism in my own head. I can want her to be proud of me without making her approval a requirement for being proud of myself. I can work hard without believing exhaustion proves my worth, and I can make a mistake without letting one imperfect thing erase everything else I have done.
Maybe someday I can paint again, too. Not because I need to prove that I am still a damn good painter, not because anyone needs to see what I make and not because I need another thing to be good at. I want to paint because I miss the girl who could make something simply because she loved making it.
When I think about that girl now, I see all of her at once: the girl with the paintbrush, the girl on every executive board, the girl standing at graduation, the first-generation college student trying to figure everything out as she goes and the girl lying awake rehearsing every possible version of tomorrow because she thinks being prepared enough might protect her from getting something wrong.
I don’t think she needs to work any harder. I don’t think she needs another title or another award, and I definitely don’t think she needs someone else pointing out where the painting could be better. She has heard enough of that.
Maybe what she needed all along was to hear the thing she has spent years trying to earn: I’m proud of you. Not just when you win something. Not just when you make the list. Not just when the speech goes perfectly or the painting comes out exactly as you imagined. I’m proud of you when you stumble, when you make mistakes and even when you have nothing new to show me.
I spent years believing I needed to accomplish enough to finally hear those words.
Now I think the harder part is learning how to say them to myself and actually believe them.