The Part of You They’re Allowed to See
Portrait mode: on
You know that photo someone else takes of you at a party, the one taken with no warning, a bad angle, and zero filter? Contrast that with the one you took yourself with the right light and 37 retakes? Perfectionism is the gap between those two photos.
We don’t hate being seen. We hate being seen from the wrong angle.
That’s perfectionism and visibility in a nutshell. We aren’t afraid of being seen. We’re afraid of being seen before we’ve had a chance to turn on portrait mode on our iPhone.
I’ve been reading Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, and she names something in the Classic Perfectionist type that I recognized immediately. The self-discipline, the consistency, the structure we bring to everything. Those qualities can make us appear stable, unapproachable, or even haughty. Ouch.
But here’s what she says is actually happening: we aren’t trying to build a wall.
We’re trying to offer others what we most value ourselves — consistency, predictability, and a full understanding of the options before anyone has to make a choice.
We aren’t withholding. We’re offering the best of what we have. We just don’t always realize how it lands on the other side, for the person wanting some feeling, a break from a routine, or a quick decision.
Then she talks about spontaneity. Schafler discusses how stressful it is for perfectionists, and I want to say: amen, sister. The need for structure isn’t a character flaw. It’s how we function well, and for me as a diabetic, in particular, it is a matter of life and death. But taken out of context, it can come across as emotional distance when distance is the last thing we want.
Because here’s what doesn’t show up in the perfectionist stereotype: many of us deeply want to connect. Schafler describes a type she calls the Parisian perfectionist, someone who desires meaningful connection and who is genuinely bothered when people don’t like them.
Unfortunately, that’s me, or an earlier version of me.
I’ve swung in both directions — the Teflon version of myself, where nothing visibly touched me, and the overcorrection, where everything did. Al-Anon principles helped. Mel Robbins’ Let Them helped. And now I try to moderate how much other people’s opinions affect me. But underneath it all, the desire was always the same: I want to connect meaningfully and authentically. The surface-level stuff is almost painful.
Which brings me back to the angle problem.
We want to be seen for all of our good — the competence, the follow-through, the grace under pressure. What we can’t tolerate is being seen in the places we already know we fall short.
Because we’ve already identified every crack. We know where we’ve been sloppy, where we’ve been afraid, where we showed up in a way we don’t care for. We are genuinely afraid that if someone else sees those same things, they’ll arrive at the same conclusion we already have.
That’s not fear of being seen. That’s fear of being seen for who she knows she really is.
I write a parallel newsletter — Dear Kate Notes — for the woman in midlife sitting on a story she hasn’t said out loud yet. And what keeps showing up in both spaces is this: the recovering perfectionist and the woman with the untold story are managing the same distance. Between who they know themselves to be and who they’re willing to let the world see.
The version of you that feels safe to show is real. It just isn’t complete. And the parts you’re guarding? They might be the most interesting ones. The ones that would make someone feel less alone at 11 pm on a Tuesday.
You don’t have to share them. But it’s worth asking what it costs you to keep holding them back.
This content was originally posted on my Substack.
