“Perfectionism” is a word we hear often, and it’s usually used in a performance setting. It could be work, school, arts, or sports. Unfortunately, it is usually mistaken as a positive trait. After all, hard work and striving for excellence looks good on a resume. However, when the goal becomes more important than your well-being, striving for achievement becomes self-destructive. When accomplishing your goal in one area of your life takes away from all others, you can find yourself in a seriously unhealthy situation.
The damage could be to your mental health, social health, physical health, and even occupational functioning. Perfectionism is not just a desire for perfection, it is an unhealthy need for it. An unhealthy need for perfection, something that rarely exists, can lead to an endless cycle of unmet expectations and self-criticism. To find out why you never feel good enough, let’s look at what perfectionism is, and what it isn’t.
What is Perfectionism?
At its core, perfectionism is the extreme inclination towards perfection, which in this case, is being without flaw or failure. While not all efforts for perfect outcomes are harmful, they are when the ends justify the means. It is when you and your health start to become less important than your goals. It could be your social health starting to wither away, spending less and less time with friends or family. It could be your physical health, with exhaustion and frequent illness. It could be your mental health, with panic attacks, looming anxiety, or even irritable outbursts. Depending on the severity of these symptoms, true perfectionism can begin to overlap with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). This is a diagnosis defined by rigid adherence to expectations for performance and behavior.
While a diagnosis can help, perfectionism is more bound to perceptions and standards. It is a mindset that makes life feel completely outcome-dependent, where effort is useless without the prize. This 0 to 100, black or white way of viewing achievement is what creates such extreme and self-destructive reactions. This means either you get an A on your test or you fail. It means that you either win the gold medal or you lose. In the infamous words of the fictional character, Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.” However, the reality is that if you’re in second place, you’re not in last. It does not mean you have to be content with second place, but it definitely doesn’t mean you’re in last place.
Much of perfectionism is rooted in societal, familial, or self-set expectations. There is a personality trait called neuroticism that can result in distress from attempting to achieve unattainable goals. That’s why the “A” in S.M.A.R.T Goals stands for attainable. To set challenging, yet realistic, goals the outcome has to be attainable. Otherwise, it is fighting against the reality that perfection only exists within the frameworks we create.
For example, a sports season with all wins and no losses is considered a “perfect season.” However, that does not mean that the other teams didn’t score, or there weren’t mistakes made. It just means that in the framework of the sport, the cumulative successes overcame failures in each game. Again, that does not mean there were no failures. Even in baseball, a “perfect game” does not mean that every pitch is a strike. It means that the ratio of strikes and strikeouts vastly outnumber the amount of balls thrown. Again, this means that the framework for a “perfect game” still includes bad pitches. Perfectionism is the need for not just a perfect season or a perfect game, but flawlessness. This is a rigid expectation, one that defies reality and continues to reinforce unhealthy perfectionist behaviors.
Why Such Rigid Expectations?
Expectations become rigid when the fear of failure becomes too great. These are unrelenting rules, principles, or expectations about how you, others, or things “should be.” Rigidity is what provides perfectionism with the black or white demand. No room for error means no room for flexibility. Flexibility could mean room for failure, and failure is to be avoided at all costs.
From a perfectionist’s perspective:
- Mistakes aren’t natural setbacks, they are catastrophic
- Any flexibility is viewed as excuses or potential for imperfection
- The fear of failure drives the compulsion to overperform
A perfectionist standard is a mental framework founded on a fear of catastrophic failure. Essentially, the failure does not stop when it starts. For example, one bad grade can lead to a failing grade. A failed class leads to dropping out, and dropping out means you’re a disappointment and you need to rely on others. If you rely on others and you are incapable of achievement, then you are a burden and/or worthless. This framework of perfectionism is described as catastrophizing. That is the mental assumption of how life will exactly turn out the moment you make a single mistake. A domino that itself is small, but tips over the next one. Eventually, all the dominoes fall, leading to the biggest and last domino. This way, any mistake could be the beginning of the end.
Why Do Perfectionists Fear Those Outcomes?
Perfectionism is driving yourself to exhaustion to achieve one outcome to avoid another. This may seem obvious, but a desire to win is different from a fight to avoid failure. Motivation to make something perfect, purely for the love of that thing, is healthy. If you love throwing parties, and you want to make sure everything looks great, then go for it. However, if your motivation is to ensure people don’t judge you for having a messy home, then your actions are driven by fear. Actions driven by fear can prevent calamity in the short term, but create self-fulfilling prophecies in the long term. The calamity is so dangerous that it causes rigid rules, that all the decorations should be perfect because the perfectionist thoughts say…
“If they’re not perfect, neither are you. If they are failures, then so are you. People don’t want to be around failures, then people will leave. If enough people leave, you will be alone. To keep your life from falling into shambles, you have to be enough, your results have to be enough, and to feel safe from that possibility, they have to be perfect, so you have to be perfect.”
How to Start Beating Perfectionism
- Embrace Flexibility: A rule or principle is only as useful as the context it applies to. If someone is working hard, which can be a good value, but they are working hard to rob a convenience store, it would actually be better if they worked less hard. Reflect and write down which rules in your life are rigid. Then, write 5 scenarios for each one where they would have to flex to the situation.
- Find Balance: Perfectionism drives you hard in one direction in life, taking you away from everything else important to you. Find ways to dial back your expectations, and to increase your time spent in other areas that were previously neglected.
- Filter Your Thoughts: If you are a perfectionist, then you’re used to extreme thoughts coming across your mind. Your new job is to treat thoughts like proposals. Let them land on your desk, look through them, and determine if they should be accepted or rejected. This way, you can start to control your head space.
- Foster Resilience: Resilience, not perfection, leads to victory. Resilience is the flexibility that allows you to overcome mistakes, not fear or frantically avoid them. For example, the flexibility of airplane wings is what makes them dependable and consistent. Resilience and flexibility are the keys to a new life after perfectionism.
Conclusion
Perfectionism is not a badge of honor, it’s a barrier. Even worse, it’s a barrier to something you are chasing only because you are running away from something else. Rules, principles, and standards are important in creating structure in life. However, they must be balanced with achieving good health. When you meet failure again, which you undoubtedly will, try seeing it like an old friend. You have changed and so have they. They used to intimidate and scare you, but with practice they have become much milder, maybe even helpful. With this growth comes the comfort of knowing you will make mistakes, but you will still be good enough just as you are.
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Keywords: perfectionism, anxiety, overcoming perfectionism, rigid expectations, perfectionism vs flexibility, self-worth, fear of failure, mental health, perfectionism OCD, managing perfectionism, mindfulness, breaking perfectionism cycle, emotional flexibility
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