Scrupulousity and Perfectionism among LDS

[bluebell]

14 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

From what I hear most Mission Presidents push something along these lines.

Mission goals were a ridiculous parody. A sham show most people eventually understood was a sham. The new missionaries and those who were (ironically) the most faithful and most trusting of leadership never realized that no one actually expected to meet the goals and beat themselves to pieces over it.

I remember one time my Zone and District and companionship met all our goals. We had worked really hard but we had worked hard before. It was a statistical fluke. We got lucky. We went to our meeting happy. We got to report success and were pretty much the only ones doing it. Following the Zone Leader happily reporting the results he went on to talk about how next month we were going to do even better and how we had to stretch ourselves even more. All the excited air went out of the room. It was back to being a sham. Mouthing words no one expected to happen to try to “inspire”.

I’ll be forever grateful that my mission president never pushed goals or ideas about exact obedience. He was refreshingly down to earth.  We set goals, but they were about just trying to help us do the work. Most importantly, they were only ever goals for ourselves and not goals for other people. The idea that you can set a goal for how many people you were going to baptize in a month seemed insane to me. And we still have to do it in our ward’s and stakes today. It is the one culture of the church that I cannot stand.

You can’t make goals for other people. At that point they’re just wishes.

[Senator]

41 minutes ago, Calm said:

It probably doesn’t have as much as expected since rates of toxic perfection go down with higher religious involvement. (See the quotes if the study is tldr)

I guess I need to read the articles, because I'm not understanding the disassociation.  

Take my mission experience for example.  Serving a mission could rightfully be classed as a "higher religious involvement".  Yet it was reeking of TP. So I don't understand.  Are we speaking in generalities, so my mission experience was just an outlier? 

Edited Tuesday at 09:12 PM by Senator

[Calm]

On 3/11/2025 at 10:56 AM, ZealouslyStriving said:

many ex members experience of TP in the Church was a product of their own making.

Not necessarily.  The Church could simply have a tendency to winnow out (not intentionally) perfectionists, however they were created, perhaps by lack of needed support.

Perfectionism shows up pretty early and I don’t see it therefore being as something most people have control over, even in the sense of making themselves strong or weak perfectionists.  Though morphing to toxic perfectionism may come later in life if one hasn’t been given the opportunities to learn coping skills to modify one’s perfectionism to make it work for one.

 From my own observations and a bit of research over time, I would say perfectionism comes mostly from nonChurch sources such as the more personal stuff like family dynamics, personality traits (which would be the source of behaviours we typically call “of their own making”, but those traits themselves are rarely intentionally self created), even genetics; and then social experiences of education (time spent in school is significantly greater than church and while church has the added ‘bonus’ of God’s approval attached to it at times, school gets presented as if you aren’t successful in school, your life will be at best blah, at worse a complete disaster), sources of community expectations (what roles are valued)  including work and other social communities one belongs to; of course the broader cultural messaging even without actual engagement we get through TV and movies, magazines, online sources, any form of advertising that convey attractiveness and success standards.  And then of course traumas experienced, especially in early childhood.

Church would be a subset of community expectations with some possible bleeding through to family dynamics if parents pick up standards from church….but they may not use the type of messaging desired by a faith community, so we need to be careful to separate out how a message is conveyed as part of the process, not just the message.  

In the case of the LDS Church, I would say in most cases the preferred conveyance as taught by the Church leadership is persuasion and love with some significant fear of loss thrown in.  The emphasis, whether positive or negative, from what I have seen is highly variable among members (what they choose to emphasize when they teach at church as well as how it’s taught in families). 

 I may have a more positive view of the Church’s methods though because my parents always presented ideas associated with the Church in positive ways.  Their perfectionism was tied to financial stability and personal independence, being able to stand in your own as well as being taken seriously.

edited:  I knew it wasn’t willow, but it sounded too right to allow my brain to reach for an alternative….until an hour later.  “Winnow out” still sounds wrong and “willow” better.  However, I am not thinking of an active or intended process, but a possible unintended consequence, so even winnow is actually off.

Edited Wednesday at 05:49 PM by Calm

[The Nehor]

40 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I’ll be forever grateful that my mission president never pushed goals or ideas about exact obedience. He was refreshingly down to earth.  We set goals, but they were about just trying to help us do the work. Most importantly, they were only ever goals for ourselves and not goals for other people. The idea that you can set a goal for how many people you were going to baptize in a month seemed insane to me. And we still have to do it in our ward’s and stakes today. It is the one culture of the church that I cannot stand.

You can’t make goals for other people. At that point they’re just wishes.

My dad was on the High Council and his assigned ward had a year where they had a ton of baptisms. When going over the numbers the High Council asked him what the ward was doing differently that led to this boost, probably planning to implement it across the stake. My dad told them they had changed nothing and did what they had always done and basically got lucky.

He had another experience in the same calling where they were concerned that missionary work wasn’t going well. During a meeting this was brought up and an eager missionary said that she could say exactly why the ward wasn’t baptizing. She was invited to share and she said that the deacons on being dismissed after the sacrament didn’t sit down first and then stand up to walk back to their families. They just walked back to their families. My dad said he was sure it was a joke and laughed and so did others before realizing she was serious. I am guessing that might be an expression of toxic perfectionism.

[The Nehor]

18 minutes ago, Senator said:

I guess I need to read the articles, because I'm not understanding the disassociation.  

Take my mission experience for example.  Serving a mission could rightfully be classed as a "higher religious involvement".  Yet it was reeking of TP. So I don't understand.  Are we speaking in generalities, so my mission experience was just an outlier? 

I don’t think it was. I just think most people in the church just eventually realize that kind of stuff is some kind of sham God approves of or something. I have seen many leaders talk about how some goal was given by God and how we can achieve it. I just happened to have been in the meeting when the goal was chosen and I didn’t see or feel or detect any form of revelation in it. In one case it was a number I offered as reasonable based on past performance. Suddenly coming out of someone else’s mouth it was a divine promise that it was possible. I was just grumpy the meeting wouldn’t end until we picked something and I had things I had to get done and threw out a number to make it stop. I really don’t think that I was inspired.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, stelf said:

also don't have time at the moment to read the articles, but they sound very interesting.

I don’t either, lol….well, I have the time but not the brain at the moment, hopefully in a few days whatever is clogging up the pathways will let loose its stranglehold and I can get back to serious reading.

I hope people don’t forget about the articles if they lack the time or inclination now and take the time to read them later on and then come back to the thread with impressions.  If this thread is still occasionally active in a year or more because someone finally had some free time and remembered these articles, I will be very happy.  I know this has been a concern for many people (I have known a lot of perfectionists in and out of the Church), so I think it’s a topic that is always in fashion.

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

My dad was on the High Council and his assigned ward had a year where they had a ton of baptisms. When going over the numbers the High Council asked him what the ward was doing differently that led to this boost, probably planning to implement it across the stake. My dad told them they had changed nothing and did what they had always done and basically got lucky.

He had another experience in the same calling where they were concerned that missionary work wasn’t going well. During a meeting this was brought up and an eager missionary said that she could say exactly why the ward wasn’t baptizing. She was invited to share and she said that the deacons on being dismissed after the sacrament didn’t sit down first and then stand up to walk back to their families. They just walked back to their families. My dad said he was sure it was a joke and laughed and so did others before realizing she was serious. I am guessing that might be an expression of toxic perfectionism.

Yeesh.  I hope someone gently addressed the flaws in her thinking on that one.

But yes!  There is no magic "thing" you can do to get more baptisms.  My parents were inactive for most of their lives, and about 7 years into their marriage.  My mom once told me that they came back to church when they were ready to and that they had had wonderful bishops before and home teachers, etc. but that none of them could have gotten them to go back sooner.  My parents had to be prepared, and when they were, that's when all of the fellowshipping in the past paid out.  The current ward just reaped the benefits from the actions of members in the past.

We want to fellowship and follow Christ because of who it makes us, not because it makes other people do what we want them to do.  Outcome based testimonies and actions lead to members doing crazy things trying to find the magic combination to unlock the secret cosmic vending machine.  And they always seem to lead to disaster over time.

We can't forget the "but if not" message of the gospel.  We have faith in Christ, not in a specific outcome.

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, Senator said:

I guess I need to read the articles, because I'm not understanding the disassociation.  

Take my mission experience for example.  Serving a mission could rightfully be classed as a "higher religious involvement".  Yet it was reeking of TP. So I don't understand.  Are we speaking in generalities, so my mission experience was just an outlier? 

Not having read the articles yet myself, except the intro and parts of the religion one and honestly I am having problems remembering the details of what I did read right now, I could be very off…but based on past observations I am guessing lower toxic perfectionism being tied to higher religious involvement is a result of getting a lot of different messages from church and for most, the messages that contribute to lower levels of perfectionism get through more than the ones that would lead to toxic perfectionism.  Doesn’t mean the toxic ones are totally lacking, just that they are not as strong in their impact as many believe (based on how I hear it often discussed).

Edited Tuesday at 09:37 PM by Calm

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

They mean well but essentially it just sounds like they are saying that our goal as members is to work ourselves up to not needing Christ's grace. 

I've said similar things, but working myself up to not needing Christ's grace was definitely not what I meant.

No matter how close one can get, even to actually perfect in one thing, such as tithing, there's still the backlog of stuff that one got wrong and despite full repentance is still wrong. You can't erase the past by anything you do or don't do. Only the atonement of Christ can do that.

 

[Calm]

4 hours ago, stelf said:

I also don't have time at the moment to read the articles, but they sound very interesting.

I do have some thoughts on this topic though. Sometimes when we talk about perfection we say something along the lines of "You don't have to be perfect, you just have to do your best." I think even this is problematic though. The problem for me is how do we even define what "perfect" or "best" means? I have not been able to form even a workable definition of what perfect means as it would apply to me. Are we just talking about actions? Intent? Outcomes? So, to combat the problem of perfectionism I've had to say that I can't even commit to always doing my best. Truthfully, I do not always do my best. Right now, I am typing on an internet discussion board instead of working. However, I can commit to at least showing up. I can commit to at least doing something, to trying. There really is no best or perfect.

 

If we measure our “best” by what we can do if isolating from any negative, had all the time and energy in the world, or by what we manage on our best days, we might as well use “perfect” because the best days that allows us to hit maximum expression of our capabilities aren’t that common in my experience, if ever even existing anywhere besides in our heads.  Every day we have multiple needs demanding our attention.  If we set aside all the time and resources one project needs, another will be shorted.  And that means whatever you just achieved is not perfect or your ‘best’ because it damaged (hampered is probably a less toxic perfectionism term here) your ability to work/achieve other things.

A good life is more likely to be achieved than one’s ‘best’ life….and what’s good is very personal.

Imo, there can be no best and no perfect because reality doesn’t allow us to isolate one event/activity from another even if we can mentally and emotionally.  The costs do matter as much as the benefits.  Maximizing benefits vs costs is imo a better way to approach the juggling act that is mortality.  It’s about keeping the balls we need moving in the air, still moving, not constantly going for the big drama of a high toss or fancy catch that makes it more likely one has to drop the other balls.  An occasional flourish for the fun of it or choosing to toss around fewer balls so you can do more of what you love are good things as you don’t want life to be drudgery; balance can be achieved in multiple ways, after all.  Perfectionism has us looking at life in one way.  That is something that isn’t that helpful 

Added:  and once again I have not done my best because I spaced on the time and 4 PM hit and the office is now closed, so the appointment cannot be made.  And yet I was enjoying myself in the writing which is a very good thing.  Since I can call tomorrow I can choose to think of it as the ball is still in the air and not dropped even if the perfectionist voice is telling me what a failure I am again (this is probably the fifth day I have let myself get distracted until it is too late; I have been spoiled by online scheduling at my convenience for most things; hopefully the three alarms I have set for tomorrow will work, lol)

Edited Tuesday at 11:18 PM by Calm

[Stargazer]

3 hours ago, Senator said:

Well said!

I had a mission president whose main mantra was derived from D&C 82: 10, "I, the Lord and bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise."  He coupled this with the stories of the stripling warriors, and the sons of Mosiah's exactness in commandment keeping, hence resulting in protection/success. This translated to the equation,  keeping the mission rules and goals with exactness = baptisms. 

I served in the Germany Düsseldorf mission 1972-74, in the absolute doldrums of that mission's baptism history. Everything improved after I left, no doubt because of my malign influence going away <- just kidding! As far as I could tell, most missionaries were keeping the rules with exactness. I know I sure did, most of the time anyway. In general, at that time Germany was in a famine of baptisms. 

But if you guys hadn't been keeping the mission rules, perhaps you would have had even fewer baptisms! There! Bright side invoked!

3 hours ago, Senator said:

It was not the best two years of my life.

I have extremely ambidextrous views of how those two years went for me. I was a fairly new convert, with barely three years church experience under my belt. I had to overcome a fair number of personality traits, and I didn't succeed with some of them. I felt like a failure in some ways. Only baptized one man, but he stayed active in the church until he died, so that's something. After returning home, I would occasionally dream I was going back for a second try at it, and this time I would do better. 

I would say that while it was not the best two years of my life, it was probably the two most important years of my life up to that point. 

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, stelf said:

This definitely resonates with me. I remember hearing lessons and talk from mission presidents and the office elders about this very thing. They even went so far as to say that if you don't leave your apartment by 9 am sharp, you could miss someone that you were supposed to talk to and they would lose out on eternal blessings. I basically spent two years feeling like there was no hope I would ever measure up.  These were not internal things I initially put on myself, but I definitely did internalize a lot of these teachings. It's been hard to extricate myself from them.

 

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

This is often a problem. Doing your best can be a cheerful attitude if taken in a positive way and not assume it is an absolute statement of fact. If doing your best means objectively making the best possible choice in every situation (probably strictly a more exact definition) it is crippling. I took a nap yesterday because I was tired. Was that the best use of my time? I could have pushed through and accomplished something much more worthwhile. I did not. So not my best. Better not do that again. Then the Mission slogans about pushing yourself harder every day and it just became a cacophony of minor failures. Thankfully I just stopped believing the people pushing it for my own sanity.

I feel sad for your experiences, both of you. 

In the Germany Düsseldorf mission, my mission president was a wonderful man. He was loving, patient, kind, down to earth, and understanding. He didn't set irrational goals for us, but gave us encouragement to do as well as we could. He was kind of an unusual pick, because he had been an active patriarch. Men serving as patriarchs are only rarely called to any church administrative calling, such as mission president. He was also unusual in another sense, because he was a World War II veteran from the other side! He had served as a medic in the German Army. After the war, as a married man, he was called to serve a full-time mission in the Soviet occupation zone. And in the final unusual sense, the man he replaced as mission president was the man who had served as his missionary companion in the Soviet zone!

 

 

[Calm]

29 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

, it was probably the two most important years of my life up to that point. 

I am sooooo glad you said “up to that point”.  It is depressing to hear people refer to their mission, wedding day or anything else as the best ______ or the most important _____ (fill in whatever time period) of my life.  It feels like they have given up hope for any future joy or peak experiences, don’t value what they have, or just aren’t invested in the rest of their life.

Edited Tuesday at 10:41 PM by Calm

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

I didn't recognize it as anxiety, because I just thought, "Oh, that's not anxiety: that's just, 'people expecting me to do stuff,'" or, "Oh, that's just, 'me expecting me to do stuff.'  It only stands to reason: Aren't people supposed to be able to depend on me to do stuff, and aren't I supposed to be able to depend on me to do stuff?"  Yeah, I suppose that's true, but I also catastrophized nearly every potential outcome of "stuff not getting done" or of "stuff not getting done as well as (I thought) it should be done." 

This hits very close to home for me.

[Rain]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

 

You can’t make goals for other people. At that point they’re just wishes.

Yes, this is what John Lund says - not specifically about missionary work, but about goals.  Unfortunately, I've found that most people in the church don't believe it.  

[Calm]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Mouthing words no one expected to happen to try to “inspire”.

No pain, no gain.

Where did the mentality that having unreachable goals causes us to incredibly stretch ourselves rather than curl up eventually in learned hopelessness come from?  Who was the first person in history who said something asinine like “reach for the stars” rather than “isn’t it lovely to sit out here and be dazzled by the glory that is the night sky”?

Not saying having dreams is a bad things, it’s unrealistic expectations I am concerned about.

Edited Tuesday at 11:08 PM by Calm

[Calm]

1 minute ago, Rain said:

Yes, this is what John Lund says - not specifically about missionary work, but about goals.  Unfortunately, I've found that most people in the church don't believe it.  

Out of the Church as well in my experience.

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, Stargazer said:

I've said similar things, but working myself up to not needing Christ's grace was definitely not what I meant.

No matter how close one can get, even to actually perfect in one thing, such as tithing, there's still the backlog of stuff that one got wrong and despite full repentance is still wrong. You can't erase the past by anything you do or don't do. Only the atonement of Christ can do that.

 

Very true.  I think most people just mean that they pay a full tithe when they say that they pay tithing perfectly.  But can we actually be perfect in anything?

Even paying a full tithe is probably not paying tithing perfectly.  Maybe we don't always pay for the right reasons, for example.  Maybe we are off on our calculations sometimes and actually owe more than we paid but didn't realize it.  Maybe sometimes we feel pride when we pay tithing, like we are better somehow than those who don't. 

Even when we pay a full tithe, it's still Christ's grace that makes that worth anything to us spiritually.  It's still His grace that we need to fill the gaps of our mistakes and fallen natures and make the sacrifice enough.

I'm just not sure that there is anything to be gained by pretending that we can pay tithing perfectly. 

[The Nehor]

34 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am sooooo glad you said “up to that point”.  It is depressing to hear people refer to their mission, wedding day or anything else as the best ______ or the most important _____ (fill in whatever time period) of my life.  It feels like they have given up hope for any future joy or peak experiences, don’t value what they have, or just aren’t invested in the rest of their life.

Yep, best to avoid superlatives comparing to things that haven’t happened yet.

[The Nehor]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

No pain, no gain.

Where did the mentality that having unreachable goals causes us to incredibly stretch ourselves rather than curl up eventually in learned hopelessness come from?  Who was the first person in history who said something asinine like “reach for the stars” rather than “isn’t it lovely to sit out here and be dazzled by the glory that is the night sky”?

Not saying having dreams is a bad things, it’s unrealistic expectations I am concerned about.

United States management culture. A bunch of managers realized that the path to success is not to work harder. It is to convince other people to work harder on your behalf and skim some off of it. Then they thought that this kind of motivational garbage gives them a rush so if we just package it up neatly it will motivate others. Most quickly become cynical and tune it out. Then it dribbled into church culture and because the people who said it are inspired revelators God became a lot like that bored middle manager at best. At worst well….an all devouring idol God  who cannot be placated. Ever. No matter what you do.

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

United States management culture. A bunch of managers realized that the path to success is not to work harder. It is to convince other people to work harder on your behalf and skim some off of it. Then they thought that this kind of motivational garbage gives them a rush so if we just package it up neatly it will motivate others. Most quickly become cynical and tune it out. Then it dribbled into church culture and because the people who said it are inspired revelators God became a lot like that bored middle manager at best. At worst well….an all devouring idol God  who cannot be placated. Ever. No matter what you do.

Nah….it goes back further than that surely.  US management culture just made it extra dysfunctional.

Virgil allegedly created the idiom, but not sure exactly how he meant it.  Plus I bet he got it from someone else.  Too many kids out there trying to grab a star to play with.

added:  man, my brain is miswired today, so many typos and wrong words

Edited Tuesday at 11:44 PM by Calm

[blackstrap]

Lengthen your stride, quicken your pace.  When this hit the Elder's quorum I remember the general feeling that ,,, " whatever " ,we will inch forward when possible.  The RS ladies, however , took it much more to heart. My spouse said the lessons always made her feel inadequate if not unworthy. Is this usual or am I just being s ******. 

[Stargazer]

20 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I'm just not sure that there is anything to be gained by pretending that we can pay tithing perfectly. 

Neither am I. 

For one thing, there was a period of time when I wasn't paying tithing at all. And due to loss of records, I have no way to go back to figure out how much I should have paid. Perfection would require making up the shortfall. Since I can't, it needs be that I rely upon Christ's grace for that.

This makes me think back to all the times when I was much less than worthy, and have no way to make recompense because of the nature of the offenses. And of course, even full recompense does not fix the sin (because I can't turn back time). So I thank God daily for the gift of His Son's sacrifice.

[Rain]

31 minutes ago, Calm said:

Out of the Church as well in my experience.

True. I thought of that briefly, but nothing came to mind at the time, but it's definitely a big thing for sales "goals".

[Stargazer]

4 minutes ago, blackstrap said:

Lengthen your stride, quicken your pace.  When this hit the Elder's quorum I remember the general feeling that ,,, " whatever " ,we will inch forward when possible.  The RS ladies, however , took it much more to heart. My spouse said the lessons always made her feel inadequate if not unworthy. Is this usual or am I just being s ******. 

Long time ago we had an elders quorum lesson on a particular topic, and I suddenly realized that I was an offender in the topic. I felt so ashamed of myself that I stopped attending quorum meetings for a few months for fear they would come up with something else I hadn't realized I was screwing up unknowingly. Since my calling at the time was ward clerk I could retreat to the clerk's office to pretend to work on my calling.  It was stupid of me. The whole point of the lessons is to encourage you to repair yourself, not throw you into despair. If you're in despair, it's you who is throwing you there. I fixed my error immediately, but I still felt ashamed of myself. This wasn't anything like bank robbery or tax evasion, or anything requiring confessing to the bishop. Thankfully I don't remember any longer what it was. Maybe that's the result of repentance.