The word perfect refers to something that is without any fault. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong in striving for zero fault outcomes. Without keeping high standards the mankind wouldn’t have reached where it is today. The point I’m trying to make is, perfectionism is not bad on all levels. As human beings though, we tend to take what is good for granted and soon it becomes expected. I feel strongly about perfectionism and in this post I intend to share a bit of what I dealt with, still dealing with perfectionism. The good the bad and the ugly all of it. (With a disclaimer that I am not a medical professional and am not sharing any medical or psychological advice.)
What is perfectionism?
Oxford dictionary defines the word as the fact of liking to do things perfectly and not being satisfied with anything else. It refers to the tendency to have excessively high standards for self and others. It’s a personality trait and not a medical condition. Nevertheless, falling prey to negative side of perfectionism can lead to medical conditions such as: anxiety, depression etc.
The good side of perfectionism
These days, we only hear the term perfectionism in a negative context and I don’t think that’s right. As I said before, mankind wouldn’t be here if we didn’t strive for high standards. If we look at simple examples of life, when you are hanging a picture on the wall. Do you keep fixing it until it appears straight? Do you use a leveller to make sure it’s definitely straight? If you like cooking would you taste the dish before serving it, Just to make sure? And when you make the same dish next time, do you remember to improve on something that didn’t go quite right the last time?
I like to make pencil sketches. I’m self-taught and never attended any classes. I do not mention this for self-praise. Instead, to highlight the scale of improvement we want to achieve ourselves especially when we like to do something. Years ago when I started, the first sketch I made was nothing but a single line outline of someone’s face. The next time I tried a bit of a shading, the time after that I tried various grades of shading. The more sketches I made the more I was excited about trying something more challenging the next time. It’s the same concept when you are playing a video game and you ache to climb the next level, or any sport when you want to become master of the new skills and techniques. What does that tell you? Striving for perfectionism is good. And trust me it is. 🙂
The bad and the ugly
Now what is it that makes perfectionism bad? Well simply speaking, it’s not striving for perfection that is bad. It’s what you do when you are not able to achieve the standards you set. When it is healthy as we saw before, we are not perturbed if we couldn’t beat our score in car racing. We just immediately jump to the next game and try harder until it’s been a few times and we are frustrated. We throw the joystick and go out. Eventually we try again and bingo we beat our score!
What happens sometimes though is when the stakes are a bit higher, you have to give a product presentation to win a client project and you are not sure you’ve got all it takes. You keep working on it, you keep second guessing yourself. Perhaps you are so nervous that you take weeks to even get started, until you realise you have very little time left. Even after you’ve eventually presented in the meeting you keep criticising yourself for the quality of the presentation, for wasting the time. On top of that if the clients go in a different direction and even though your boss says it’s not your fault. For you, all your fears have come true.
The next presentation is even more stressful and you have sleepless nights. You doubt if you are right for the job. You can’t start working because of the fear and you can’t relax before you are worried about the work. Before you realise your life is nothing but stress. You can’t take out time for your friends or family and you are not happy at work, you lose meaning in everything and wonder what is it all for?
Symptoms
I painted quite a bleak picture, now that I look at it. 🙂 if any of this feels familiar trust me you are not alone. We all feel some of it at some point or another. YES. ALL OF US. No matter how perfect someone’s life seems on social media. the reality is Life is not perfect. It’s not meant to be perfect. I’m going on a tangent here. Let’s get back to perfectionism. Now that we know the negative side effects of perfectionism can be a wide range of bad to ugly. Let’s get a little more into how do you know we are looking at the bad perfectionism. Also referred to as Maladaptive perfectionism. Some of the common symptoms are:
- setting unrealistic goals and then self-criticizing for not accomplishing them,
- Fear of judgment and judging others.
- Being overcritical of self and others.
- Overthinking, second guessing
- Obsessive thinking
- Seeking validation
- Excessive stress
Causes
Just looking at the symptoms doesn’t give a complete context or a holistic picture of the effect of unhealthy perfectionism. Let’s first take a look at what are potential causes of an unhealthy habit of perfectionism.
Upbringing or early childhood experience
A lot of psychologists back the research that the experiences we have growing up have a major impact on our life as an adult. There’s a lot of logical argument supporting this when it comes to perfectionism. Parental pressure, lack of a sense of belonging, a controlling parenting style can leave a child longing for a connection and belonging. This can lead to overcompensating and overachieving to get the acceptance they did not receive growing up.
Trauma
These childhood experiences could be a lot traumatic depending on the severity of the neglect and abuse. According to research a lot of perfectionist adults report to have been through such traumatic experiences.
Genetics
Some research and twin studies suggest that sometimes it could be genetics as well. Perfectionism can run in families.
Social and cultural causes
It’s not always something that’s related to childhood experiences. It could be the environment you are surrounded by as an adult as well. Especially the age of social media and overload of information we are living in today. Peer pressure, increased competition in practically every field from sports to arts. Before the age of social media we compared ourselves with five neighbours, ten classmates or office workers, had more facetime (not the iPhone one ;)) with family and friends and generally felt more connected and a part of the society.
With the rise of social media we see unrealistic standards for everything. Anyone apart from us is more good looking, healthy, intelligent, creating something amazing, traveling the world and living a much happier life. All eyes are buried on some kind of screens, the more we want to learn, to unwind, to entertain ourselves the more we spend time on screens and are disconnected from the real world.
People are bragging about no technology 24 hours. 🙂 Seriously? Growing up when I went outside to play I didn’t realise where hours went. A school trip for a few days, no one knew phones, so no one posted how cool the trip was, no one went live and we compared our trip with no one. It was just that one experience that mattered and it was the best one because there was nothing to compare. We were all there in the moment with each other enjoying each other’s company.
How does it impact our life?
When perfectionism is unhealthy and we focus not on improving but criticising it starts to have effects on our day to day life. Studies say that people who experience this can see life as less satisfactory and more stressful. Here are some examples of what it could lead to:
Overthinking and fear of failure
When you want something to be just perfect, with unhealthy perfectionism you tend to focus on what could go wrong. A healthy amount of it would be called critical thinking and being prepared for the worst. We are not talking about healthy here, so we get stuck with the overthinking and over worrying. We think about not 2 things that could go wrong but 20 things that could go wrong and at times we aren’t even finished with the list by then it’s time to hand over the project. 🙂
If you are looking for an example it’s very similar to overthinking as a teenager when you have a crush on someone. Does he like me, he smiled at me during assembly, does that mean he likes me? Or I have something on my teeth? Plucking a flower leaf by leaf to decide if he likes you or not. While that condition is temporary, overthinking with perfectionism can keep growing to paralysing extent if we continue to avoid it.
Procrastination
The more you overthink the more action time is misused. This means you are procrastinating and not doing what you should be in that moment. Fear of judgement and failure can stop you almost in your tracks and you don’t start on the task. Losing precious time.
Unexercised social muscle
As a perfectionist, you might want everything to be just right, whether it’s how you look, what you wear, how clean and organized your house is. To invite someone, from cooking to aesthetics to furniture to etiquettes everything should be perfect. This becomes counterproductive. Instead of being a good friend or a gracious host, your overthinking erects an invisible wall between you and the other person. Instead of inviting people into your life, you end up alienating them or overcompensate with people pleasing. To be prepared, to be perfect you avoid to spend time with people, you avoid inviting people into your life. Despite your best efforts and your desire (this is a human desire) to belong, to feel accepted stays unfulfilled. As a result your social skills suffer. I call it unexercised social muscle.
Due to other effects like procrastination, your time management suffers and you lose the balance in your life. You are constantly chasing your work and personal responsibilities, when your family and friends might feel neglected. Even when you are with them, you can’t be there one hundred percent because you are thinking about what you have to do at work. It becomes a vicious circle and adds to your already high stress levels.
Stress levels
Both procrastination and fear of judgement increases your stress levels. Missing deadlines can make you feel less and you would think that people think less of you, so one trigger adds at least 2 types of stress. You constantly self-criticize and blame yourself for everything. This doesn’t help. Before you know it you are constantly under stress. We all know too much cortisol in not good for our body. This could lead to burnout or other medical conditions.
Self-doubt
I speak with personal experience. Enough of above experiences and your start questioning everything about yourself. Your self-esteem suffers and self-doubt creeps in. Thoughts like you are good for nothing, you deserve nothing and a sense of meaning lessness clouds over the joy you once felt in life. You second guess every decision and worse part not only you, others can sense this missing confidence in you. What do you know? People start doubting what you know. 🙂
What are some practical ways to deal with perfectionism?
The story seems quite grim by now. I am sure a lot of us can relate to at least some of the symptoms. Some studies suggest that almost 92% of people suffer for some form of perfectionism. So what is it that we can do about it? Since it is not a medical condition in itself and we know the underlying causes can be anything from upbringing to current cultural and social surroundings. Here’s how we can use this knowledge to deal with it:
1. Awareness
The first thing to be mindful about is being self-aware. Let’s pay attention to our action and thought patterns. Do you tend to be to discouraged by not achieving a goal, do you at time overthink a project or a social situation. Do you catch yourself overthinking about what others might think of you. Let’s make a note of it and become aware that you sometimes tend to do that. Even in meditation they say of you catch yourself drifting just being aware of it stops that process at least for that moment. So be aware of our habits and thinking. Self-awareness is the first step towards any improvement. 🙂
2. Be easy with yourself
To go back to the positive side of it. There’s nothing wrong in having high goals and standards. If a goal has been unachievable for a while and is impacting your mental health. Let’s look at making it more realistic. Let’s maybe divide it in sections and focus on the first step. Most of all if you fail at something or it’s not as per your standards, don’t criticize yourself. Be aware that this has happened and try to focus on what it is that you can do now. Stephen Covey talks about your paradigm and circle of influence. Look at it from a perspective of what you can control and change. Jordan Peterson in his book 12 rules for life says, treat yourself as someone you are responsible for. Ask yourself, would you be as harsh with your friend or loved one as you are to yourself? I share more about how to be kind to yourself in this post.
3. Remind yourself of your previous accomplishments
Next time you catch yourself with self-doubt or with fear of failure. Remind yourself of the last time you thought in a similar way. When you got down to work it turned out to be fine. You were able to complete it and you did a good job at it. You also thought if only you had spent more time on it, it would have been even better. 🙂 Let’s start on this project now and we’ll cross the next bridge when we come to it.
4. Challenge yourself in a healthy way
If you catch yourself, avoiding situations or taking in projects. Exert a little and convince yourself to try it. Here, I’d like to talk about the comfort, learning and terror zones. There are different versions of it depending on the context and what someone it trying to explain. For the purpose of this point I will use the following image:
The comfort zone
I first learned about it in a train the trainer session and failed miserably when it was my turn to first time explain it to a group of new trainees. I’ve become much better at it since then :). The comfort zone is where we feel at home. If we are avoiding people, it could be the solace of our home where we feel most at ease. If we are avoiding a new project it could be the comfort of the team, department we have been in for years. It is familiar, we know the ins and outs of it and therefore this is where we would like to be for eternity. This makes us feel safe.
The learning zone
It is important to feel safe. Since we already know the ins and outs of this place, we aren’t going to grow much if we don’t try anything new. You might argue I am happy as it is and wouldn’t want to grow. Imagine though there’s a new process / technology that is now impacting your existing process / team. You can’t avoid it now. You have to embrace it and if you don’t, you might lose your job. We all know the disruption we are facing today. It’ll be good for us if we push ourselves a little out of our comfort zone, that becomes our learning zone and we experience and learn new things. Gradually our comfort zone expands and we are ready to push a bit further.
The terror zone
Next to the learning zone is the terror zone, that is pushing ourselves beyond our limits. The common saying your first learn to crawl, then walk and then run also refers to the same thing. You won’t learn deep sea diving by jumping into the ocean if you first don’t learn the techniques. Your traumatic experience might put you off completely from not just diving but also swimming. That is your terror zone. Naturally how big and far is learning and terror zone varies for each one of us. We are good at recognising what is our limit and it’s healthy to experiment with it a little from time to time.
5. Practice meditation or mindfulness
Focusing in your breathing and your awareness in your present moment helps a lot with our thought patterns.
Summary
Perfectionism can be both healthy and unhealthy. We should be aware that today almost all of us suffer with some kind of negative side effect of it. If we pay a little attention to our habits and thoughts, be easy on ourselves, we can build a healthy thought process and keep our high standards. 🙂
Until next week. Ciao!
Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional. The post above is based on my research of medical articles and personal experience.
