Jinger Duggar Reveals She ‘Trained’ Her ‘Mind’ to Stop ‘Trying to Be Perfect’ While Growing Up

Jinger Duggar got candid about changing her mindset to “stop trying to be perfect” after growing up in the Duggar household.

“If I’m just trying to be a carbon copy of everyone around me, that’s gonna be boring,” Jinger, 30, said in a reposted interview with Mayim Bialik’s on “Bialik Breakdown” on Wednesday, May 16. “Yes, everyday I will have to wake up and remember that.”

The Counting On alum said she had to “train her mind” and “remind herself” to “stop thinking how she used to think.”

“I used to try to feel like I have to be perfect,” Jinger continued, before bringing up a recent situation where she invited a friend over to her messy home.

“Well, she came over into my mess, yes, I was embarrassed,” the TLC personality continued. “But at the same time, there’s like this, I don’t have to be so perfect all the time.”

In the caption of the post, Jinger admitted she “really struggled” with wanting to “live in a way” everyone approved of.

“And it drives me to put all sorts of expectations on myself that I can’t live up to,” the 19 Kids and Counting alum wrote. “It’s been a journey but over the years I’ve been learning how to enjoy friends and community and relationships without feeling like I need to be perfect all the time.”

Jinger has been vocal in unraveling her perspective from the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) system she grew up under, most notably in her 2023 memoir, Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear.

In the pages, she revealed her older sister Jessa Seewald’s husband, Ben Seewald, encouraged her to interpret religion on her terms away from the teachings of IBLP’s leader Bill Gothard.

“I noticed his church read the Bible in its entirety and preached scripture that way,” the mom of two alum wrote in the memoir. “I feel like now I’m in a much better place. I see God as amazing.”

She also condemned Gothard’s teachings, writing that the organization created an unhealthy “fear of God" and equated it to “more of a terror.”

“I was probably one of the most sensitive people in my family, so I was a rule follower,” she explained on the “Cultish” podcast in March 2023. “If that was an inch on a skirt, I would be like ‘Oh, no. I can’t sit down with this skirt on.’ Because it would barely show like a quarter of my knee. I was a legalist to the extreme because that’s what Bill Gothard said would protect you.”