Self-love and self-expression threaten tyranny. Perfectionism threatens self-love and self-expression. 

Perfectionism is a demon that oppressors invoke and send out to harry everyone but themselves. The demon haunts someone until that individual sees no merit in their own accomplishments, is paralyzed by insane expectations of themselves, and loses self-worth. 

Some of us are haunted by the idea of perfection. It holds us back from our creative work; from any of our important work, for that matter. We fear we won't be able to do justice to the idea in our head. We've tried writing or painting or dancing, and somehow the brilliance of what we envision becomes corrupted as soon as we try to make it manifest. And there's that nagging voice in the back of our heads telling us what we have always known...that we're not good enough. That we will never have the skill to create what we dream of. That if it's not perfect, they'll deride us, they'll tease us. They'll reject us. Nobody will like us.

This is part 2 of a series on Pagan leadership and control freaks, perfectionists, and micromanagers. Read Part 1 here.

Ego Wounds

And that takes us back to the root issues here. It's not bad to be a visionary, to be an abstract thinker. But when you add in ego wounds of poor self esteem, lack of self confidence, or other related issues, what you often get is a perfectionist control freak, or a know-it-all. Or both.

There's a whole overlapping suite of behaviors that are found in a lot of grassroots leaders. There's the combination of being a perfectionist, a control freak, and a micromanager. All too often, folks also engage in the know-it-all behavior pattern as well.