As a Blue who loves to talk about feelings, it wouldn’t surprise any Color Code aficionado to learn that I am an advocate for going to therapy. I believe everyone can benefit in some way from attending therapy, no matter their personality type, mental well-being, and life circumstance. A few months ago, I decided to “graduate” from seeing my therapist of two years. She and I bonded during our first session over both being Color Code fans, and her Red logic gave me great insight into my Blue emotions. 

One of the things I worked hard to overcome during my time in therapy was my crippling perfectionism. Ever since I was a little girl, I have obsessed over cultivating the perfect life. My Red/Yellow best friend used to tease me at recess in second grade by telling me my hair was messed up so I would take it out of its clip and attempt to redo it. My little hands could never replicate the hairdo my mom had styled for me that morning, so I would proceed to agonize over my fellow classmates seeing my normally perfect hair with a crease in it. Another area I had to be perfect in was being perfectly on time for things. My other best friend’s mom (a kind White) used to have to assure me that the clock in her car was running fast when she would drive us to school and I was fretting over being late. I still remember the awe I felt when I was rewarded for having perfect attendance in First Grade. I was the kid who didn’t enjoy missing a day of school. Imagine getting behind on all that homework! 

My perfectionism was somewhat manageable as a child, especially since I had parents who could “fix” everything for me at the end of the day. But it became too much to live with when I became an adult, and it interfered with every area of my life from my career to motherhood. After having my second baby in 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, I chose to focus way more on perfectly balancing my life with two children instead of giving myself the grace every new mom deserves. Days after giving birth, I was back to deep cleaning my whole house. I couldn’t wait to get back into my intensive daily workout routine, and I desperately wanted to have a schedule. However, it turns out that sleepless nights, a two-year-old, a newborn, and the perfect schedule don’t really mesh well. 

Looking around my home and seeing binkies and burp cloths lying on every surface was a constant reminder of how disorganized I felt. Whenever my baby wouldn’t nap or I didn’t have time to work out, I panicked. I constantly felt like I was struggling to come up for air. Enter my therapist, Rosey. I explained how debilitating my anxiety over my perfectionism was, and she helped me see that as a Blue, my perfectionism was largely rooted in having control. Blues need security, and in my case, I need to have control over my own life to feel secure. Rosey pointed out that it was possible for me to have control while also letting go of my perfectionism. It was as simple as this: Whenever my life felt out of control, I would stop and recognize that even though things couldn’t go perfectly in that moment, I could still have control over the choice I would make in that situation. For example, if I left my house a mess because I was taking my kids to meet their cousins at the waterpark, I could stop and recognize that my choice in that moment was to prioritize fun. I would get to the cleaning later. On another day, I might have chosen to let my toddler watch a little too much TV because it was important for me to have some extra time to clean the house and feel organized. I needed to recognize that in my busy stage of life, it really wasn’t possible to “do it all,” but I still had the choice of what was most important for me to do in that moment. And while sometimes that was cleaning the house and getting a workout in, sometimes it was asking my mom to watch my kids so I could take a much-needed nap. Sometimes it was eating dessert before lunch with my little boy so he could have a fun memory with his mommy. And sometimes it was simply choosing to be really present with my kids and ignoring my to-do list since I knew I had made the choice to be a mom, and I wanted to be a good one.

Now, months later, I feel immense happiness thinking about all the ways I’ve overcome my perfectionism. Do I still love a clean house and a cute hairdo? Of course! But I also sigh with relief when I remember I don’t worry as much as I used to about perfectly pleasing others or being right on time to every function. I was always meant to be imperfect, and it feels really good to perfectly fit that imperfect role. 

If you are a Blue personality who resonates with these woes of perfectionism, I advise you to try focusing on the control and the choices you do have amidst the chaos of life and comment below to let us know how it helps you!

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Megan Christensen is a Blue who has been writing her feelings for as long as she can remember. Megan graduated from BYU-Idaho in 2014 with a degree in communication. A lifelong fan of the Color Code, she’s thrilled to be the content editor of the blog and hopes to help as many people as possible become more self-aware. When she’s not writing, Megan can be found reading, doing yoga, and spending as much time as she can outdoors.