Perfectly Quiet

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What Perfectionism Keeps Us From Sharing

Two years in a row, two practitioners at my annual retreat in the Arizona desert told me the same thing.

You need more creativity in your life.

Both times, I pushed back. I'm creative, I told them. I design leadership development workshops. I build strategy for clients. I create cultural programming. I'm uber creative at work.

They looked at me and said, that's not really what we mean. And then they dropped it.

It took me a long time to understand what they saw. Everything on my list had an audience, a deliverable, and a standard it had to meet. Every bit of it got polished before anyone laid eyes on it.

My creativity only lived where it could be perfect.

That's the part of perfectionism nobody warns you about. It doesn't just make you work harder. It makes you quiet. It holds back your stories, your ideas, and your voice until they feel good enough to share. For too many of us, that day never comes.

Here's what this year taught me.            

What Perfect Cost Me

My perfectionism started as protection, a response to early life trauma. When you do things perfectly, nobody has a reason to be mad at you. You fly under the radar, or you fly above it. You stay out of trouble, or you get praised. And it worked. Being "detail oriented" moved me up the career ladder fast, and every promotion was validation to keep showing up that way.

So I did. I would never show anything that didn't meet my standard of completeness and excellence. Nothing left my hands until it was tied into a perfect bow. Eventually, people I'm still grateful to gave me honest feedback. Everything you do is high quality, they said. But it costs you speed.

I'd heard every saying about perfectionism. Progress, not perfection. Don't let perfect get in the way of good. The one that hurt most (and I choose that word on purpose) was this: perfect is the lowest standard you can set for yourself, because it isn't achievable. For a goal-oriented woman, that one stung hard.

By the time I reached the C-suite, perfectionism had stopped helping. It added pressure. And it walled me off from people. It changed how I talk about my own work, too. Compliment me after a keynote, and I'd say, oh, it's nothing. Or I'd offer a quiet thank you and change the subject. My inner critic saw every crack. She still does, and she isn’t kind about it.

“Oh, It’s Nothing” Has a Name

Psychologists Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett have spent more than 30 years studying perfectionism. One of their most important insights is that perfectionism isn’t only something we feel. It’s something we perform. They call one version of that performance nondisclosure of imperfection: avoiding ever admitting out loud that you’ve fallen short.

“Oh, it’s nothing” is nondisclosure of imperfection dressed up in its Sunday best.

The quiet goes deeper than deflecting compliments. Psychologist Dana Jack has spent decades studying what she calls silencing the self: holding back our thoughts, feelings, and needs to avoid conflict or disapproval. In a 2026 review of 126 studies, Jack and her colleagues found that self-silencing is most likely to take hold in environments that feel hurtful or unequal. Long-term studies suggest the silence can come first, before depression follows.

Perfectionism feeds that silence. Researchers have found the link is strongest for what they call socially prescribed perfectionism: not the pressure we put on ourselves, but the belief that other people expect us to be perfect, and that they’ll judge us when we fall short. That’s the kind I learned early. Never give anyone a reason to be mad at you.

When you believe everyone is watching for your mistakes, silence starts to feel like safety. You stop admitting what’s hard. You stop sharing what isn’t finished. You say “it’s nothing” and move on.

And that silence has a cost. In a 2024 study of more than 1,000 undergraduate, law, and medical students, Hewitt, Flett, and their colleagues found that perfectionists who hid their imperfections reported less social support. Loneliness helped explain the link between perfectionism and distress. Perfectionism doesn’t just sit beside loneliness; it helps create it. Which is exactly what that honest feedback told me. Perfectionism walled me off from people.

If nothing leaves your hands until it's perfect, a lot of you never leaves your hands at all. That's what it means to be perfectly quiet.

The First Time, I Tore the Paper in Half

Earlier this year, I went back to therapy. (Yes, a trauma-informed coach and former chief people officer, still figuring things out. How ironic is that?) In group therapy, the facilitators did something I didn't expect. They handed us paper and markers.

The exercise was simple. Scribble. Fast, loose lines, no plan, no care. Then go back and round every corner where the lines cross. It's a technique called neurographic art, though I just call it my doodling. No standard. No deliverable. Nothing to get right.

My perfectionist showed up anyway. Hell yeah, she did. My first page wasn't good, so I tore it in half and started over. The second one went in the trash. But I kept going, because good is something I've been programmed to seek. I committed to an hour a day: an audiobook playing in the background, with pencils, acrylic markers, and paint sticks spread across the table.

Then something happened. Almost like a light switch. I'd finish a page, look at it, and think: that's ugly. And then I'd chuckle. Because at some point, it stopped mattering. It wasn't good. It wasn't perfect. It still felt good. What mattered was that I made something and stuck with it. That small chuckle is the whole point. The same woman who used to rip pages in half was laughing at them and keeping them.

That's what creative expression offers that work never could: a place to practice being imperfect, on purpose, with nothing on the line. And you don't need talent for it to work. In one Drexel University study, adults who spent 45 minutes making whatever art they wanted came away feeling more capable, nearly three out of four of them.

I’ve been a writer since middle school. I still have every journal. But this year, when writing became a huge part of my work, I needed somewhere the words didn’t have to be perfect. Doodling gave me that. And it showed me how much can happen when we sit in the process and stop worrying about the outcome.

Let me be clear. Outcomes matter, especially at work. But when the outcome is all we can see, it boxes us in. It stifles innovation before it ever has a chance to grow. As perfectionists, we have to learn to balance ideas with results. To welcome failure as part of the process. Failure creates a healthy pressure; it shows us where we still have room to grow.

So yes, I’m learning to be grateful for the mess. It’s not a detour from better outcomes. It’s how we get there. I couldn’t have said that a year ago.

From Doodles to "Yes, I Did. Thank You."

My mom was one of the first to see the doodles. She watched me draw when she visited, and again when I visited her. You do that a lot, she said. So what are you going to do with all of that?

I didn't have an answer. I didn't think of the pages as art, and I didn't think of myself as a creative person. Honestly, it's still not a word I hand myself easily. "It's just something I do" feels safer. It takes away the pressure of having to be good at it.

But her question stuck.

A few weeks later, I watched a woman on social media run her hands through a bin of paper beads she'd made from scrapbook scraps. I have all these doodles, I thought. And my aunt did teach me to make jewelry when I was young.

I ordered a bead roller and a glue stick and started cutting up my doodles. The lifelong learner in me loved it: researching materials, figuring out that how you cut the paper decides the size and shape of the bead. My first batch was certainly not perfect and certainly not pretty.

Then I remembered where I live.

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras beads are everywhere, and there's a growing push toward sustainability. So I taught myself to seal the paper beads to make them water resistant and strung them with glass ones. And there they were, 20 strands of handmade beads.

On a video chat recently, I showed my mom those first strands. All those crazy doodles turned into that? she said. They're beautiful. She saw it before I did. Psychologists call this the beautiful mess effect: we judge our own imperfect moments far more harshly than the people who witness them.

This February, I'll ride in my first Mardi Gras parade with the Krewe of Morpheus, named for the Greek god of dreams. Krewes toss things from their floats, which we call throws. (Not a huge creative leap on the naming.) Locals covet the handmade ones, because they know the hours and heart behind them. I've been on the receiving end, and I know that joy.

Here's the moment I keep picturing. I toss a strand into the crowd. A woman catches it, turns it over in her hands, and yells up at me.

Did you make this? It's gorgeous!

I hope what I want to say and what I actually say are the same.

Yes, I did. Thank you.

Five words. No shrinking. No list of flaws. Just ownership and gratitude in the same breath.

For a recovering perfectionist, that might be the bravest thing I do all year.

Five Ways Creative Expression Loosens Perfectionism's Grip

You don't need paper beads or a parade. Creative expression can be writing, collage, cooking without a recipe, singing in the car, dancing in your kitchen, gardening, knitting, or photography. The form matters less than how you approach it.

Courage doesn't have to be big, either. It can be tiny, consistent acts of bravery that build on each other over time. At OakRoot HX, we call that Microbravery™. And we believe it’s this practice that leads to lasting transformation. Here's how to practice it through creative expression:

1. Pick something you have no reputation in. Choose a form where nobody expects you to be good, including you. When there's no standard to protect, the perfectionist has less to grab onto.

2. Set a timer, not a standard. Commit to ten or fifteen minutes, not a finished product. When the timer goes off, you're done, whether it's "good" or not.

3. Make the first one badly on purpose. Write the worst paragraph you can. Scribble the ugliest page. Getting the bad one out of the way takes the pressure off everything after it.

4. Keep the ugly ones. Don't tear them up or throw them away. They're evidence that you showed up, and someday they might become something else entirely.

5. Share it before it feels finished. Show one trusted person. And when they compliment it, skip "it's nothing." Try five words: Yes, I did. Thank you.

None of It Is Perfect

If you'd asked me in January where I'd be in October, not even my wildest imagination could have predicted it.

Is my battle with perfectionism over? No.

But this year taught me to step into grace. To practice self-compassion. To do things scared. To start dropping the armor I've carried for so long. Nothing I did this year was perfect. Not stepping away from the corporate world. Not launching OakRoot HX. Definitely not my doodles; some of them are so horrendous, they look better cut up. Not even the beads.

None of it is perfect.

But it's all pretty darn good.

If you're holding something back until it feels good enough, hear this: you are worthy of being seen at every stage of your growth. You don't have to be finished. You don't have to be perfect. You only have to stop being quiet.

Make something. Keep it. Let someone see it. Let someone see you.