How to Tell the Difference Between Perfectionism and Passion as an HSP Before It Drains the Joy from What You Love

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to tell when your passion has quietly turned into perfectionism and how to get your joy back.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover the real reason passion quietly turns into perfectionism for so many HSPs, the invisible cost of tying your worth to what you create. A simple way to reconnect with the joy that started it all and create from a place of freedom Again, welcome to this edition of Self-Compassion Wednesdays, where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.

I’m very passionate about what I do, and. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy. If you’ve ever run a business, you know how demanding it can be, and there are so many things that you need to be good at to make the whole thing actually work. So this can actually quickly turn my passion for what I love to do into a place of perfectionism where I’m driving and pushing myself too far.

And especially at this time of year, I like to reflect and think about how am I balancing the drive with my self-care? And so this is what I want to reflect on today, the hidden danger of over identifying with your work. And I’m as guilty as anyone. It’s something that we fall into easily and it’s something that we can also step out of when we’re aware of it.

So how do you tell the difference between passion and perfectionism? I think HSPs often care deeply about things just naturally. This is our caring nature, our interest in depth, and our desire to do something meaningful. But when we start to identify with the outcome, then the joy starts to disappear.

What once may have felt meaningful can start to feel heavy or high stakes or full of pressure. Imagine for a moment that you’re holding a helium balloon and you feel the lightness of that the joyful, playful feeling. That’s what creating from passion feels like, and there’s a natural lift to it.

You’re curious, you’re engaged, even delighted by that creative process. Then without noticing, you may start to grip that string a little tighter on that balloon, and you may begin telling yourself, this has to be impressive, or it has to prove something about myself. Now what happens is the balloon isn’t fun anymore.

You’re tense. You’re focused on controlling it. You might even be terrified that it might float away, or worse yet might pop. The very thing that once lifted your heart is now a source of pressure and stress, and you can’t enjoy it anymore because you’ve tied your worth to how well it goes. So if you ignore this kind of pressure that you start getting drawn into, then you will start to lose connection with the passion that originally drew you in.

You’ll start second guessing your instincts, and you may even start procrastinating on your good ideas or quitting altogether. That’s a very common thing. I’ve had that thought many times, and this is just to avoid the pain of not having it be great, not having it be amazing, which again, has something to do with my worth.

I’m having to prove something. I’m gonna have to prove myself. With this, let’s say you’re an HSP artist who starts a new project. Maybe it’s a painting or a blog post or a an episode, like a podcast episode, something creative. And at first it flows. There’s a spark and you’re in it because you love it, but soon you may start imagining how it will be received.

Will people like this? What if it’s not as good as last time? What if I disappoint someone or myself and then you start tweaking and perfecting and revising. Not out of joy, but out of fear, and there’s a big difference. Revising and perfecting out of joy is one thing, but revising and perfecting out of this fear of people not liking it.

It’s a completely different thing now. The same brush feels heavy or the, the blank screen is daunting, or that lightheartedness that you were enjoying in the beginning starts to feel like pressure, and eventually you’ll start stepping away from that. You’ll start to abandon it and then you can end up beating yourself up for that as well.

This is the trap when passion slowly gets hijacked by perfectionism. And here are three common mistakes that people make in this regard. First, thinking that stress is just the price of caring. Oh, ’cause I care so much, I’m gonna have to deal with a lot of stress. That’s not necessarily true. Another is.

Over revising or over polishing projects until they lose their life. This is when I’m so focused on doing it right, that I forget what’s in moving, what’s inspiring. And you look at different art. There’s different kinds of art in the world, right? There’s very perfectionistic art and then there’s very loose art.

You can say even impressionistic art, if you can say that, where there’s something so connected to the artist when they’re creating it. They don’t even have to do all the details perfectly. So this tendency to over polish is fine to one degree, but the over polishing means that I’ve gotten into fear rather than, and proving myself rather than inspiration.

And then another mistake that’s easy to make is avoiding new opportunities. For the fear of not being amazing. So we just hold ourselves back. We just don’t even begin. And this just keeps us feeling small and not able to enjoy our creativity as HSPs. We are meant to care and we are built that way.

We’re meant to create, that’s our nature, but we’re not meant to suffer for that. When you stop trying to prove your worth through your work, joy will naturally return and your work will actually get better. Strangely enough, it’s ironic. So there’s a difference between creating from care and creating to prove you’re good enough.

One expands you the other tightens you feels like just a shrinking or closing around your chest. One feels alive and the other feels like pressure disguised as purpose. When was the last time you created something just for the joy of it without trying to earn approval or trying to get it perfect or tying your identity to the outcome?

This is what I want you to reflect on and see if you can find more of that and act. Use that as a reference for how you act in the future. The pain you feel when you get caught in perfectionism doesn’t mean that’s not the proof that you care. It’s a signal that something’s out of alignment. That’s all.

You’re not meant to suffer just to do something mean meaningful. In fact, that’s actually hurting more than it’s helping. It’s getting in the way, and the perfectionism can actually slow your progress rather than help you along. Imagine that you’re painting on a canvas with someone standing over your shoulder saying, don’t mess this up.

That’s, yeah. Then imagine painting it. With music playing and the sun coming in and no one watching, which of those two is gonna bring out your best? Same talent, same tools, and very different energy. And we can end up being the one standing over our own shoulders. So it’s the same thing here.

Your sensitivity lets you care deeply. And it is a superpower. It is one of the things that we are known for as highly sensitive people, but proving your worth, that has nothing to do with sensitivity. It’s not even your job. Your job is to create from something inside, buying that little inspiration and let it come out.

So how do you tell the difference between. Creating from passion or perfectionism. Both passion and perfectionism can look like they’re almost the same On the outside. You’re focused, you’re invested, maybe even obsessed with getting it right, but underneath they feel very different. And that feeling is the thing I want you to pay attention to.

When you’re creating from passion, it feels like there’s energy rising. As you work, there’s a sense of joy, curiosity. Even if it’s hard and you may lose track of time in a good way, you may want to share even if it’s not perfect. But if you’re creating from perfectionism, it feels different. It feels like tension on the body.

It feels like you’re being judged or graded or exposed. And the pressure to get it exactly right is always there. And if you don’t get it right, then you don’t wanna do it at all. Then there’s a constant inner voice saying, ah, that’s not quite good enough yet. This is when perfectionism is showing up. So to tell the difference, simply ask, is this still fun?

Just ask that. If no one saw this, would I still wanna do it? Am I trying to connect or trying to prove something? That’s your compass. Just because you feel joy doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it means that your energy is aligned. And when your energy is aligned, it’s fun. There’s an element of lightness to it.

Now, if you notice that you’ve crossed the line into perfectionism and it doesn’t feel good anymore, this doesn’t mean you failed. It just means now you’re aware of it. And noticing is the first act of freedom. So if your creative projects or responsibilities have started to feel heavy, and you’re finding it hard to remember why you loved them in the first place, but you really want to feel joy and momentum and clarity again, that’s why I created the Joy versus Pressure Clarity Guide.

It’s a two minute tool you can use anytime you feel stuck, anxious, or disconnected. To reset your energy and come back to your creative center. Check the first link in the show notes, or go to true inner freedom.com/joy-pressure and I’ll send you the joy versus pressure clarity guide.