You’re Not a “Control Freak.” Why Perfectionism Is Your Prerogative — But It May Be Time to Let It Go

Welcome back, my friends. Today I’m talking about having a high need for control, which is common in neurodivergent people and often pointed out by others — and sometimes ourselves — as being a perfectionist, neurotic, controlling, or a "control freak," usually with the subtle, or not so subtle, implication that we should stop being that way. First of all, that's ridiculous because, all things being equal, absolutely everyone would prefer for things to go exactly the way they'd like them to go and for their efforts to produce the very best results. Neurodivergent or not, it makes sense to prevent things that would diminish an experience, whether it's putting fuel in an airplane before taking off, proofreading the final draft of your master's thesis before you submit it, or making sure the chicken is fully cooked before eating it. Doing something perfectly also makes sense because it's great to produce something great, whether it's a masterfully written manuscript that's sure to become a blockbuster film franchise, or an absolutely symmetrical birthday cake shaped like the number one that will be immortalized in the photographs of your child's first birthday.

For people anywhere on the spectrum of human neurodiversity, wanting control and striving for perfection makes sense, but only until they're perceived to be excessive. When those tendencies and behaviors go beyond what's considered normal are typical, and especially if they inconvenience others, they get flagged as something to fix, but they're often subconscious strategies for managing uncertainty and minimizing pain.

Especially when the stakes feel high — which can be the case even for tasks other people might consider trivial — we're often driven to do things perfectly by the sense that it guarantees us the best possible results of whatever we're doing. That means we won't have to worry about how our effort will be rated, scored, or evaluated — by other people or ourselves — so what's casually called perfectionism feels equivalent to protecting ourselves from experiencing that anxiety as well as the pain of regret and embarrassment of having underperformed.

In that way, perfectionism serves the same purpose as the rigorous safety monitoring, analyses, and inspections done at nuclear power plants or before spacecraft are launched, which is not to say that an imperfect first birthday cake is akin to a nuclear disaster or failed spacecraft, but the actions are inspired by the same desire to prevent negative outcomes. A high need for control around a task, event, or experience is similar in that we only feel that level of perceived self-protection is guaranteed when we know exactly what is required, and when and how, and nothing about that changes, and our plans for doing it aren't interrupted by anyone or anything.

If you were, or are, the student who asked 10 questions about a large assignment, then emailed 10 more when you got home to make absolutely sure you completely knew what was expected, that's what I'm talking about. If you're a parent whose child recently moved into their first apartment, and you text them toward the end of the month to remind them that rent is due on the first, and on the first to make sure they remember to pay it, and on the second to ask if they paid it, the same process underlies that behavior. And the same could go for anything: a work obligation, plans with friends, a recipe you're trying to follow, your spouse doing something you usually do but they offered to take care of, and you spend so much time and energy making sure they're doing it right, you may as well have done it yourself.

Or how about this? Have you ever apologized to a colleague, your partner, a friend or a family member because they made a mistake, or they're struggling with something and you feel like you should have done more so that didn't happen to them? I sure have, and I sometimes still do, but that's usually rooted in the same need to protect ourselves from pain, embarrassment, regret, or rejection.

Even though every neurodivergent person is different, perfectionism and high control needs almost always trace back to the experiences nearly all neurodivergent children have of being corrected and criticized when we're just being ourselves and doing our best. Some of us were in rigid, rejecting, even hostile environments where we were told explicitly that we were wrong, stupid, annoying, disappointing, or failures. But even when repeated corrections are delivered in loving, supportive ways, the impact accumulates into an internalized awareness that the way we naturally understand and approach things doesn't meet other people's expectations. An important distinction here is that neurotypical children are also corrected, of course, but they're able to pick up the way of doing things that meets others' expectations, which usually works better for them anyway.

For neurodivergent children, and adults for that matter, there's confusion — which can be obvious and profound or more muted and vague — about what we did that was unacceptable and what the acceptable alternative is. For that reason, we're likely to be corrected for similar behaviors over and over again without being able to see or make the corrections — even when we're highly motivated, even desperate, to please the parent, teacher, peer, or whomever keeps pointing out that we're "too loud," "too quiet," "too friendly," "too shy," " too disorganized," "too uptight," and so on.

As a result, the ways many of us understand and approach things shifts away from our natural processes, usually without us even being aware of it, and we become highly focused on clarifying what's expected and then doing everything we possibly can to get the thing done right, so we can avoid being surprised by correction, criticism, or negative evaluation we didn't even see coming.

In that way, perfectionism and high need for control are adaptive strategies — you might even call them coping skills — that help us manage both our actions and other people's reactions. They make situations more predictable and lower our risk of being harmed by the outcomes of our actions, so it's almost like we're experiencing situations like everyone else — except we aren't, because the whole strategy, which again is subconscious, is built on the rejection of our authentic selves. That requires a tremendous amount of energy, and so does the pursuit of perfection and control, which by the way, are unattainable. So compared to everyone else, we're doing more and also failing more.

On top of all that, there's another layer to understand because what neurodivergent people experience, and other people observe, as perfectionism or a high need for control can have nothing to do with meeting expectations or avoiding correction. For many of us, they're the manifestation of our inherent processing styles, meaning you may be seen as a perfectionist or a control freak when you're simply approaching or engaging in tasks the way that works best for you, with no concern about what other people expect, how they may respond, or even what the outcome will be for you. Maybe you fold your underwear a specific way and keep them in color order in your drawer, and your partner finds it annoying that you care about that, often reminding you that "no one cares how your underwear drawer looks," but it has nothing to do with that for you. You just know that seeing that neatness and order every morning makes you feel centered, which makes it easier for you to start your day.

Maybe you create new spreadsheets for information you need to track at work — not because "you're trying to make everyone else look bad," as your colleague joked, or because you're trying to compensate for other ways you fear you may be falling short in your position, but because the spreadsheet they provided isn't intuitive for you to use, so entering the information was frustrating and took you twice as long. Maybe you always answer questions at work, with friends and family, and even with strangers in public, with clear, specific detail — not because you're worried people won't find you interesting, or "you need to show everyone how smart you are," as your teenager says, but because that's the way your brain works. Most people do things in specific ways, but those of us who do things in specific ways that are different from others, expect and then systems accommodate, are frequently informed — through formal sanctions, playful, jabbing, and everything in between — that we're doing it wrong and that we can and should be doing it right, but we are doing it right for us; that's why we're doing it that way! Nobody repeatedly performs a task in a way that makes no sense to them, feels wrong, and results in them being punished, criticized, or mocked every time. Clearly, in that case, the person is doing the thing in the way that works for them, as we all should be able to do. Honoring our authentic processes and preferences is vitally important, but that isn't a recognized truth in the societies most of us are in, which require a hell of a lot of conformity.

Whether they're protective adaptations or just our authentic ways of being, what are perceived as perfection and high control needs come at a high price in situations and interactions that don't allow for variability or individuality. We lose time — not just in the ways that are obvious, like the hours spent writing and revising an email to leave no possible question unanswered, or rearranging schedules again and again so we feel like everything is under control — but also in the way it steals our ability to be present, to pivot, and to move forward even when things aren't perfect.

We miss out on opportunities — because we were too busy to even notice them, weren't ready to take the leap, couldn't bear the risk of trying without feeling certain about succeeding, or simply ran out of time trying to get everything just right. Without meaning to, we neglect experiences we could have appreciated and enjoyed — not just big events, but smaller moments that compound, like the spontaneous outing we skipped because it didn't fit into the plan, the fun new thing we sat out because we weren't sure we'd be good at it, the concert we were too exhausted to enjoy, or the TV series we promised to watch with our kids as soon as we "caught up" with work, which never happened.

Even when we feel like everything we're doing is to please and benefit others, to live up to the expectations we think they have for us, we often end up straining or damaging even our closest relationships, or stunting them by concealing parts of ourselves or allowing power struggles to develop over our ways of doing things. Our relationships with ourselves suffer, too. Despite all our effort to make things the best they can be for ourselves, we often feel like we jumped past all the good stuff and arrived at a point we never saw coming, suddenly realizing how much we've given up, grieving time and experiences we can't get back, and taking inventory of a life we build carefully, that doesn't actually fit us.

But there's hope, of course! My objective is never to "whip you into shape," convince you to be "normal," or show you how to be less you and more like everyone else. And I promise I will never tell you to "relax," even if we both know you really need to. My intention is always to validate who you authentically are and share my optimism about our ability to change the way the world sees neurodivergent people by changing the ways we show up in the world — because we're not the problem. It is not unreasonable to do things the ways that work best for you. What's unreasonable is someone telling you you're wrong about what works best for you, how you express yourself, what you need, and what you just prefer. What's unreasonable is being called a "control freak" by someone who's irritated or inconvenienced because you refuse to be controlled by their expectations or the rigid systems with which they choose to comply.

That's unreasonable. That's the problem. That's also the norm right now, which is why so many of us still hide, reject, try to change, and apologize for who we are. But I am telling you there isn't one right way to do each thing or one right way to be, and no one should have to prove their natural way of existing is valid. Even though we live in a world that still largely operates that way, you don't have to prove your natural way of existing is valid right now. You are who you are and whatever works for you works for you. Anyone who criticizes you or demands that you're less you, or different than you are, isn't offering you a relationship or an opportunity; they're offering you a box to shove yourself into. That's bad enough, but also, the box doesn't fit you, which is why nothing you do — even perfectly — makes your life feel perfect for you.

The good news is, even if you've been operating this way for years, and even resigned yourself to a life that's nothing like what you'd actually like to be living, it's not too late to change — and I don't mean changing yourself. It's not too late to change the relationships you have with these patterns, and with the experiences that made you think you had to sacrifice yourself to be valued by others. Even for those of you who've come to me after realizing you're neurodivergent in your seventies or eighties, it's not too late to stop apologizing, or trying to compensate, for the way you move through the world, to stop hiding or offering palatable explanations for your preferences, or to stop convincing yourself that "getting it right" is somehow more important than living a life that feels right for you.

This isn't about becoming someone who finally fits the mold, or even finding the mold that fits you; it's about realizing that the damn molds don't matter! If people see you as rigid, uptight, perfectionistic, or a "control freak" because of behaviors that feel like they help you prevent painful outcomes, or those that just make the most sense to you, you can modify the dynamics that make it feel like being yourself is the barrier to you having an easier, happier, more fulfilling life, because it absolutely isn't. I'm gonna walk you through five steps that can help you begin to release perfectionism and high control needs — not by letting everything fall apart or giving up on things that matter to you, but by learning how to tell the difference between what supports you and what drains you, between what's genuinely important and what's just pressure masquerading as important, and between what's coming from your authentic preferences versus what's coming from fear, habit, or being stuck in survival mode.

I'm calling these steps because they build on each other, but you may not have a need for all of them, and you don't have to have perfected anyone before using the next. You might also find you need to use all five in one situation and only one in another. And like essentially all of the steps and strategies I offer, these will be part of an ongoing process for most of us, meaning that even if you work through them meticulously now, you may need to come back to one or more of them at some point, or modify them to serve you better as your circumstances or priorities change. However they work best for you is exactly how they're supposed to work.

The first step is to determine what's underlying your perfectionism or high need for control. For most of us, this is something we'll have to do for multiple behaviors and tendencies. You can note them as they come up, or be proactive by thinking about circumstances, situations, tasks, or relationships in which you felt unable to go with the flow or let go of your standard for doing things, and you know that's causing you problems. Then you have to really consider whether your actions in those scenarios are simply aligned with what you like and what works best for you, or if they're driven by the feeling that you cannot tolerate the risk of finding out later you made a mistake, or being criticized, or losing some opportunity or relationship because you loosened the reins of how you do things.

You may already know which of the two accounts for most of your perfectionism and need for control, but you may not, because some of our patterns go way, way back, and are very well established. It's worth clarifying, because when perfectionism or high control needs cause you problems, knowing that your actions reflect your authenticity, or they stem from a need to protect yourself, and sometimes both, will make it easier for you to decide what to do without them without further compromising who you are.

The second step is to practice flexibility in low-stake ways. Whether your perfectionism and high control needs are self-protective or authentic, you may find that you have no idea how to do anything any other way. More times than I could possibly count, I've been told that something doesn't have to be perfect and advised to lower my standards, roll with it, or just do what I can, and let me tell you, I'm still learning how to do any of that. That's not to say I do anything perfectly or truly have control over anything, but it was really hard to see any kind of distinction between doing something with the goal of it going exactly the way I hoped — which means perfectly, of course — versus doing something that is "good enough." I still have to experiment with this a lot, especially with things I don't do often, and that's what this step is about.

With the things you knew or discovered in Step 1, play around with doing or being "good enough" in ways you can tolerate — bonus points if they're fun or funny — and see what happens. Maybe you realize that you're spending too much time proofreading, correcting, and revising emails and texts before you send them. How could you practice flexibility here in a way you can stand? What could be "good enough?" Could you try sending personal emails and texts without proofreading them? Or maybe just text to your partner or best friend — and of course you can tell them you're challenging yourself to send them as you type. If that's uncomfortable, could you proofread emails and texts, but try sending them after only correcting actual errors without changing, rewording, or adding to a message before sending it?

Maybe you have a daily exercise routine of stretching, doing intervals of jogging and sprinting on the treadmill, then doing a yoga routine, but since your doctor advised you to take a break from sprinting due to a minor injury, you haven't exercised at all. Is there an option between doing it the way you like to and not doing it at all? Could you try jogging without sprinting, or just walking on the treadmill? Could you try doing a different type of exercise entirely during the time you typically run? Could you try just doing the stretching and yoga portions of your workout?

Keep in mind that this is not about lowering your standards. The goal of this step is to explore flexibility in ways it's comfortable for you to do so. It's about confirming or discovering what your standards actually are, because "good enough" might actually be good enough for you, but many of us can't even conceive of that from inside the well-established pattern.

The third step is to redefine success, utilizing time limits. Many neurodivergent people struggle significantly with time management — even with the best planners, the most sophisticated apps, the most current evidence-based , , and of course the very best of intentions. I know this is true for the majority of you, and it is abso-fucking-lutely true for me, so I was reluctant to develop a time-based step, and I didn't take it lightly. I want these steps to give you wins. I want them to raise your hope, not your frustration. But the fact of the matter is that perfectionism and high control needs are very time-consuming. If your life allows that, it won't be a problem for you, so you won't need this step.

Most of us have less time than we need to do everything we want and need to do the ways we currently do them. And perfectionism and high control needs may account for most, or all, of our time management struggles. So we're going to use time to help ourselves, and like the previous step, we'll experiment with it. Don't panic; I promise this is not simply time-blocking, which means it's a bit more complicated, but also more likely to be useful. Start again with a scenario that's problematic for you because of perfectionism or a high need to control the task or situation.

The next time it comes up, you'll do two things before you start: define the broadest goal you can for the task, then give yourself a reasonable amount of time to hit that goal as simply as possible. By "broadest goal," I mean that if you zoom out from the situation, what is ultimately motivating your action? Rather than seeing the trees in the situation, see the forest.

I'll use a couple of our earlier examples to demonstrate this. If you are the person who makes new spreadsheets for work, even though existing spreadsheets are always provided, there are probably several things that motivate you to create your own tracking systems, but you give it some thought and identify your broadest goal as tracking the data, because that is a requirement of your job. That means everything you've been doing to create the perfect spreadsheet is really about getting yourself to do that required task. So now you give yourself a reasonable timeframe for achieving that broad goal as simply as possible, knowing that you could spend an entire afternoon making an incredible, sophisticated, integrated, perfect spreadsheet. Maybe you give yourself 30 minutes to create a spreadsheet that allows you to enter all the required information in the order in which it appears on the report you have to use, which is still a huge improvement over the provided spreadsheet.

Let's do one more. If you realize that when you're responding to work emails, you spend a lot of time acknowledging issues or tasks that are related to the topic of the email because you want to address all the questions the recipient may have. And after you get all that in the message, you spend even more time rephrasing a lot of what you wrote to try to balance professionalism with friendliness in your tone. All of that makes sense, but after considering this time-consuming process, you're able to identify your broadest goal as clearly providing some piece of information, either in answer to a question or because something needs to be addressed. So you experiment with giving yourself five minutes to read an incoming email and mentally identify the information you actually need to give, and up to 10 minutes to clearly provide that information only, add a friendly line about being happy to answer any questions, proofread and correct only actual errors, and send it.

Now when you do this, you may find that the time you allotted wasn't sufficient. That's totally fine, but if that's the case, you have to check in with yourself about whether or not you really stuck to what was required to hit your broadest goal as simply as possible. If you did, give yourself more time next time. If you didn't, put more into identifying the broadest goal and the simplest action you can take to achieve it, but give yourself the same amount of time for the task itself. Again, the goal is not to lower your standards, but to help you focus on the overall purpose of what you do, and the value of your time, in situations where your need to do things a certain way is causing you problems.

The fourth step is to reduce decisions by automating and creating routines. Some of the scenarios you identified in Step 1 will occur regularly, and yet you may engage in them "from scratch" every time, meaning you're making a lot of the same decisions over and over again, whether you realize it or not.

Remember, we're talking about scenarios that are causing problems for you, so at a minimum, odds are you go into those situations already thinking about the problems, probably reflecting on how much better off you'd be if you'd already figured it out, and negotiating with yourself — or maybe even other people — about what you can and can't change this time, and again the next time, and the time after that. You get my point. It takes a lot of your energy, potentially every day, maybe several times a day. Whether your actions are self-protective or authentic, you can reduce the energy they require, and deflate any conflict that arises from them, by taking decisions out of the equation.

Steps 2 and 3 can feed into this process easily, because when you identify "good enough" options for specific tasks, and timeframes that allow you to achieve the broadest goals of certain tasks in the simplest ways possible, there will be no need to make decisions about what you'll do, how you'll do it, or how much time you'll spend in those scenarios. For other situations, look for ways you can use technology to automate parts of the processes. You don't have to be super tech savvy to make things even just a little easier.

Remember that friendly line you put at the end of your email about being happy to answer any questions? Make that part of your automatic email signature, create a text expander prompt, or just create a document of frequently used text so you can copy and paste it. This will eliminate the need to think about and decide what you write at the end of emails, and little things like that add up to make a huge difference. For things you can't automate or simplify with technology, try making it a routine — something you always do a certain way at a certain time — so you don't have to decide if you do it, how you do it, or when you do it.

As an example, consider a person who's trying to reduce their perfectionism and high need for control around household tasks, which they identified in Step 1 as being tied to fears about being an inadequate spouse and their partner leaving them. They could create routines around the task themselves, like only doing laundry on Sundays instead of whenever they notice the basket seems like it's getting full, and they could create a routine with their spouse of going to breakfast every Saturday, when they will honestly express any frustrations they have with each other, so neither of them waste energy wondering if something is a problem.

The goal of this step is twofold. First, to set aside time for tasks that align with your authentic processes and preferences. There may be some initial challenges in determining the best time to incorporate routines around scenarios that are causing you problems, but the goal is to create routines that, once they're established, allow you to do what works best for you without making or justifying a decision to do so. Second, to prioritize tasks appropriately by assigning them limited but sufficient time. For example, creating a routine of checking your child's grades with them and helping them make a plan to complete missed assignments every Saturday morning means not doing that, or deciding if and when to do that, any other day or time.

Here's one more example to illustrate the point of reclaiming your time and energy: creating a routine for spending time every Sunday evening or Monday morning going over your plans and obligations for the week and adding them to your calendar means not having to decide when to do what all through the week. And because the basic objective of a routine is just to follow it, you can define your routines to emphasize doing something regularly, rather than doing something perfectly, or according to rigid standards.

Lastly, the fifth step is to find or create situations, environments, and relationships in which your authentic self is accepted and celebrated. If you've watched or listened to other episodes, or have been following me for a while, you had to see that one coming. Even if you have high control needs, you're not a "control freak." Anyone who calls you out like that is proclaiming their discomfort, which is not your problem. Whether your behaviors and tendencies are adaptations that have protected you, or just the ways you like to do things, it's your prerogative to honor them if they work for you. If they don't, it's your prerogative to figure out why, and find ways to change them without compromising who you are.

But no matter how well you understand yourself, what strategies you use, or how many automations or routines you put into place, if you stay in systems and relationships that punish your authenticity, you are going to suffer, struggle, and burn out, because that's exactly why neurodivergent people suffer, struggle, and burn out. When we don't want to, but feel pressured to, let go of behaviors that others see as perfectionistic or controlling, one of two things is happening: we're suppressing who we are and focusing on doing things in ways that protect us from being criticized, corrected, or rejected, or we're being true to ourselves, but that causes us to be unable to meet other standards or expectations.

Both are unsustainable, and they cost us way too much, so we have to change them. Sometimes we need to stay in situations, environments, or relationships that perpetuate these struggles just as they are for the time being. But most situations, environments, and even relationships can change, and ultimately are optional. We may be afraid to make adjustments to, or leave, them because they're familiar, we don't even know how to begin, or we fear there's nothing better, no way that person could accept the real us, no way any person could, no way to earn a living doing what we love and are good at, no place to live, worship, learn, participate in hobbies, explore interests, express ourselves, or connect with others as we truly are.

Those fears are powerful, but they're not based in truth. They're how everyone feels after years of being rejected, corrected, or called out for being themselves, and praised — or at least spared the scrutiny — for being like everyone else. Those fears are the product of all the messaging we've received that convinces us that we can, should, and in some cases, must, change who we are to fit into the boxes we're offered — as though they're a gift, and it's our privilege to be able to shove ourselves into them, no matter how much it hurts us.

The truth is that is the problem — not who you are and how you do things. The problem is that our society still expects neurodivergent people to abandon our instincts, needs, and identities in exchange for the illusion of peace, happiness, success, and belonging, as though a false version of a person could ever access those experiences for real. Steps 1 through 4 are designed to help you release some of the falseness that keeps those experiences out of reach for your true self, but you'll almost certainly need to use Step 5 — immediately or eventually — to create or move into situations, jobs, relationships, communities, or even a city that doesn't make it harder for you to be who you are.

It might not be quick. It might not be easy. But it's possible, and you don't have to wait for anyone to give you permission. No matter how complicated your circumstances are, you can give yourself permission to begin to create even small spaces, experiences, and relationships in which your real self gets to exist, where your preferences matter, your needs aren't treated like inconveniences, and you don't have to twist your brain into knots to be understood.

You can start to let go of the people, places, and roles where only the optimized, easy to be around, performing version of you is valued, and you can find or create the components of a full, real life in which your authentic self can be wildly imperfect and free as a bird or unapologetically committed to doing things exactly and — even perfectly — the way you want to do them, without anyone — including you — calling you a "control freak." You don't have to shove yourself into any box, and definitely not ones that don't even fit. There's plenty of space for you outside of the boxes, in places and relationships that don't require you to hide or protect yourself, because you don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. I'm rooting for you, my friends — exactly as you are.