“I’m only human.” This common cliche acknowledges something very important: Since we’re human, we’re going to screw up. Unfortunately, many of us tend to be perfectionists. Even more unfortunately, it seems that this is a growing* trend, especially in young people. More young people now say that others are too demanding of them, they’re more demanding of others, and they’re more demanding of themselves. In many ways, our culture glorifies** perfectionism. Striving to be perfect is seen by many as a sign of hard work. This even shows up in youth sports. Expensive travel teams are seen as necessary to be able to play sports, and the anger from some of the parents in the stands about a call or an error can be shocking. In reality, perfectionism is incredibly fragile because when one’s goal is perfection, everything that falls outside of that can be viewed as failure. When people fall short of perfection (and they inevitably do) they end up viewing themselves, not just their efforts, as failures. The sad thing is that this means that their attempts may be successful or good enough to please others, but the perfectionist only sees failure.
There can be a variety of paths*** that lead to perfectionism. The first path starts with parents. As a parent, I don’t mention this to suggest that we’re responsible for all of our kids’ troubles. However, it is important, especially if we’re still in the process of raising children, to acknowledge that putting too much pressure on them affects the way they see themselves. The message we intend isn’t always the message that is received. Kids who frequently receive the message that they’re not trying hard enough end up also feeling that they, themselves, aren’t enough. Perfectionism can also be because of anxiety. In this instance perfectionism is an attempt to control things and lower anxiety. Unfortunately, this backfires because falling short of perfect feels like failure and reinforces the anxiety they were trying to control in the first place. Low self-esteem can also be a path to perfectionism in that the attempts at perfection may be an attempt to achieve praise to feel better about oneself. The problem here is that we can’t guarantee praise from anyone, and even if others do praise the perfectionist’s hard work they may soon start to see the hard work and results as something to expect, which may cause the praise to cease. After all, when we see the results we expect, they don’t really stand out anymore.
Some perfectionist fear letting go** because they fear they’ll lose their edge. They think that perfectionism has helped them to get far in their lives and they don’t want to risk losing their drive. The reality is that they’ve become successful in spite of perfectionism, not because of it. In fact, the weight of their unrealistic expectations have probably been holding them back from their true potential. Many perfectionists tend to play it safe. They don’t take risks or reach for new opportunities because trying something new means risking failure. It is hard to actually be exceptional inside of one’s comfort zone. They can be passed up by the people who make mistakes, learn from them, and keep growing toward true mastery.
The Positive Psychology* article that I’ve listed as a reference gives a great example of an experiment that a clinician used with a teacher who had been telling herself that she must spend exhausting hours of time working on end of the year reports for her students. The process looked like this:
Identify the belief–she had told herself that unless she spent 5 hours on each student’s report, parents would complain.
Experiment–half of the reports would be written in this 5-hour method, while the other half of reports would be limited to a total of 30 minutes of work.
Specific predictions–the teacher predicted that she was 95% certain that she would receive many complaints from parents who received the 30 minute reports and few complaints from parents who received the 5 hour reports.
Results–the teacher received no complaints from any parents.
Re-rate–the teacher changed her original prediction from 95% certainty to 60% certainty that future experiments would result in many parents complaining about the 30 minute reports vs. fewer parents complaining about the 5 hour reports. (This is important to note because it shows that this experiment reduced her level of worry about perfectionism and successfully challenged those beliefs, but the experiment did not erase the beliefs altogether).
Conclusion–the teacher realized she could spend less time on the reports and parents would likely still be happy.
Just like in the experiment above suggests, clients don’t fully shake their perfectionist fears in one counseling session. Very likely, these tendencies are based on beliefs that have been in place for a long time. This is where counseling can help. Counseling offers an opportunity to examine unhelpful thinking patterns and to learn to challenge them. Over time, working on challenging these beliefs and bravely making choices that go against these thoughts can help people to set themselves free from perfectionism. A great book by Adam Grant called, Hidden Potential, has a chapter specifically devoted to ditching perfectionism as a critical piece of unlocking greatness. I highly recommend this book, and I also highly recommend reaching out to a counselor for help if this topic is interfering in your life.
*https://positivepsychology.com/how-to-overcome-perfectionism/
***https://psychcentral.com/health/steps-to-conquer-perfectionism