8 Lessons for Compulsives & Perfectionists from NBC’s The Good Place
The television series The Good Place has lots of wisdom to offer compulsives and perfectionists. By highlighting certain character traits in both compulsives and non-compulsives, The Good Place uses humor and drama to help us see more clearly the pitfalls and potentials of both perfectionists and non-perfectionists.
While you’ll get more out of my comments if you’ve seen at least some of the series, hopefully this post will be helpful even if you haven’t seen it. In either case, my comments shouldn’t spoil the series for you if you haven’t seen or finished it yet.
The first four characters I’ll describe have ended up together in the afterlife, and we watch what it’s really like for them there. The last four characters are part of the staff in “heaven.”
One way to think of a story such as The Good Place is as a dream, in which each of the characters represent different parts of ourselves. From a Jungian point of view, dreams can reveal aspects of these parts that we had been unaware of, and they sometimes imply how these parts can work together in a more balanced way. Each character in The Good Place has a lesson to teach us.
Chidi: The Obsessive Thinker
Chidi is a college ethics professor who tries compulsively to be a good person. But he’s so obsessively perfectionistic about it that he can never choose what to do. The possible environmental damage he caused by drinking almond milk haunts him, even tortures him, well into the afterlife. This limits what he can accomplish, like finish his dissertation or choose which sort of muffin he wants for breakfast.
His difficulty in making decisions also drives the people around him crazy. A friend asks him for help with his wedding and Chidi is paralyzed by the consequences of all the choices he needs to make. Chidi is a great example of the thinking type of compulsive that I described in a previous post.
Eleanor: The Impulsive Party Girl
Eleanor is the opposite of Chidi: she’s possibly his soul mate and certainly his Shadow, his unlived side. Having been “raised” by two reprehensible parents she lives in survival mode. And if it feels good, she’ll just do it. She’s impulsive rather than compulsive.
In my book I describe compulsives and non-compulsives as being like wizards and muggles from Harry Potter. “Normals,” people who don’t have the magical powers that compulsives have, have just as important a role to play in the world, like bringing life to the restrained lives of compulsives. Clearly Eleanor plays this role for Chidi.
While Eleanor seems as reprehensible as her parents at first, she does make an effort to become a better person. And just as importantly, her impulsivity allows her to take leadership in a way that Chidi never could, because she’s not paralyzed by indecision. She’s spontaneous and can gain helpful insights quickly.
Tahini: Generosity Hijacked for Security
Tahani, a glamorous, well-educated, and perfectionistic philanthropist shows us how healthy compulsive motivation can be hijacked. She is energetic and determined, and has a genuine desire to help others. But she ends up trying to use that inclination to prove herself equal to, if not better than, her artistic sister who won their parents’ affections.
Jason: The Innocent Fool
Jason is a dope dude who wants to just dance and DJ. While everyone sees him as dumb, it turns out he too has things to offer. He is a 21 stcentury version of the archetypal Fool, whose innocence brings life to those around him. He is resilient. Unlike Tahini, he is oblivious to what others think of him, which can be very liberating. His direct and naïve caring helps to transform Janet, a robot who becomes more human with his help as the story progresses.
Michael: Control on Steroids
Michael is the heavenly architect who creates the particular version of “Paradise” that the four main characters end up in. He loves to control, and part of his education in the series is his realization that he can’t control everything. But it takes him literally hundreds of trials to begin to see that he can’t outfox the human element. He begins with a sense of righteous judgement which can lead to torture, but with time his appreciation for the way humans care for each other changes him. Like many people with compulsive tendencies, he had lost track of the actual purpose of his need to control.
Janet
Janet, who is literally a robot, becomes more humanized as the series goes on. Some compulsives have conditioned themselves to respond to the demands of others and feel nothing. She literally lives and dies at the behest of others. In this way she is an example of the friend/servant type of compulsive I described in a previous post. Her growing sensitivity, “humanness,” and self-identity actually make her more helpful to those around her. She becomes wise through her successive deaths.
Sean: Righteousness and Punishment
Sean is both the Devil and the Punisher. He sees his role as upholding the standards that heaven has set for humans. Compulsives can get caught in a role in which they painfully inflict their perfectionism on others. It feels as if that’s the right thing to do, the thing they should do. With time Sean accepts that it’s the capacity for change which is most important, not a set standard that leaves us judged once and for all. He also learns that without having the more forgiving angel to contend with, life is boring.
The Judge: She’s Not Who You Expected
We meet The Judge, a God-figure. Much to our surprise and amusement, she’s very human in her own way. Compulsive perfectionists often suffer from a God-like conscience with unrealistic standards of a superhuman dimension. But The Judge turns out to like crime shows and burritos. She gets bored easily. She would be considered a person-of color on earth. She’s open-minded and open to questioning. She’s not as rigid as we might have imagined.
A Good Place to Be
The Good Place is a story of how compulsives and perfectionists can change and redeem themselves. It helps us to question what it really means to be “good.” It’s funny and wise. While it’s sophisticated, it’s also very dramatic: After each episode I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
And if you can see parts of yourself in each of the characters, it’s as good as a revealing dream.
Originally published at https://thehealthycompulsive.com on March 7, 2021.