Why Perfectionism is Dangerous to your Mental Health
“Perfectionism isn’t a behavior. It’s a way of thinking about yourself.” Andrew Hill
First, let’s dispel the common myth that perfectionism is positive!
Researchers have found out that perfectionism is not just dangerous, but it causes numerous health problems as well. Perfectionistic tendencies hold you back from being the best version of yourself while exposing you to a laundry list of clinical issues.
Research has reported that the higher your level of perfectionism, the more psychological disorders you are likely to suffer. The most damning of all is suicide and early mortality, but the issues could range from depression, PTSD, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, chronic fatigue, and headaches among many others.
2 out of every 5 kids and adolescents are perfectionists. A study done on perfectionism on several generations revealed that most recently, graduates from the UK, US, and Canada reported a significant increase in the levels of perfectionism.
In simpler terms, a college student is more likely to have perfectionist tendencies now than a student who was in college in the ’90s. The sad part is that this doesn’t mean that the generations are becoming smarter, it only shows that the younger generations are becoming sadder, sicker and they are sabotaging their potential.
Perfectionism is a self-defeating approach of looking at the world. It is built on the irony of making and admitting. Mistakes are part and parcel of life, but by avoiding mistakes at all costs, perfectionists make it harder for themselves to achieve their own goals.
The sad reality is that health-wise, the effects of perfectionism cut’s across, from mild headaches to suicidal tendencies and even early mortality.
In some ways, society looks at perfectionism through a positive lens. When someone says they are a perfectionist, they may get compliments. For this reason, perfectionism becomes quite complicated and controversial.
Some experts argue that there are healthy levels of perfectionism. According to them, “healthy” perfectionism is characterized by high levels of discipline, motivation, and high standards. On the contrary, maladaptive perfectionism is characterized by feelings of never feeling like you are good enough even when you have done your best and you get frustrated when you haven’t met your goals.
A study done on 1000 Chinese students revealed that adaptive perfectionist tendencies were more pronounced in gifted students. Less gifted students showed more signs of unhealthy perfectionism tendencies.
Studies have shown that beating yourself up over mistakes or feelings of not living up to a parent’s expectations makes you more vulnerable to depression. It’s true because suicide ideation has also been linked to people who have high personal standards as well.
Even if there is some positivity in being a perfectionist, experts say it is insignificantly minor and worse — misunderstood. Hard work, commitment, diligence, and all those things are desirable, however, for a perfectionist, those qualities are just but symptoms of their perfectionist tendencies.
Perfectionism is about unrealistic standards and not necessarily high standards.
Experts argue that perfectionism isn’t about hard work and setting high standards, it is about that inner voice that is always critical. This inner voice is critical of different things in every unique individual. For others, it criticizes fitness and work, in others relationships and finances. One person’s tendencies may differ greatly from those of other people.
A perfectionist feels every tiny bump along the way. They are truly sensitive to stress.
Perfectionists can move into a challenging situation smoothly, but faced with a small challenge, they would perceive it as something huge. At the very least they would perceive a small wind as a category-five hurricane.
As it is, the ironies never cease. For this reason, the adaptations of perfectionists set them up for failure rather than success.
When faced with failure, perfectionists react with harsh emotions. They feel more guilt and shame. They also get angrier. They are more likely to give up easily, and they’d rather cope with avoidance when situations don’t seem perfect. In this way, they sabotage the very success that they desire to achieve in the first place.
As a matter of fact, there is a correlation between performance anxiety and perfectionism, research suggests.
The only problem is that a perfectionist’s sense of performance is intertwined with their self-worth. They easily feel disappointed when they don’t succeed. It’s okay to be disappointed by failure, but perfectionists feel shame when they don’t perform according to expectations.
They then cope with this by striving for perfectionism. When you are perfect, you never experience failure and that means you never have to face shame. Perfection then becomes an endless pursuit; a vicious cycle. Only, perfection is impossible. This is a fruitless pursuit.
Self-compassion is the best protection against anxiety and depression which doesn’t exist in perfectionists. They are good with self-criticism which is a predisposing factor for depression. On its own, perfectionism is a lethal contributor to suicide. Depressed patients who are perfectionists are more suicidal.
It’s even sad, that even without suicide in the picture, perfectionists are more likely to die young. Maybe because there are often stressed?
Perfectionism is self-defeating, but more and more people are starting to share it.
But why?
Well, society is brutal. The first thing people ask when they meet is “what do you do for a living?” Society values someone by what they do for a living, or the achievements that they’ve had so far.
The quality and extent of our accomplishments are what makes us more or less valuable in today’s society. Sadly even strangers value each other based on whether they can buy a certain car, rent a certain place or receive a certain loan. How accessible these resources are to us then becomes associated with our appearance. Other people then use that to weigh if we are good enough for a certain job or a certain invitation.
Even children face competition with the testing in schools and high-pressure entrance to universities. For this reason, parents are pressuring their children to excel in school. Because the focus is on achievements, children have become more averse to mistakes.
Because their idea of achievement is very narrow and strict, children start to develop perfectionist tendencies.
Even worse is the existence of social media. Do one mistake and it might get magnified millions of times globally. The glossy feeds also make the quest for perfectionism some kind of “norm” in today’s world.
Perfectionism is challenging to treat. People can be trained to be more compassionate with themselves through therapy. The only problem is that people value perfectionism in a way, and this makes it harder to treat it compared to depression or anxiety. Perfectionists argue that it makes them excel, they benefit from being perfectionists.
This is not the case.
The goal is to replace that critical inner voice with kind words and messages, both to ourselves and other people. It is liberation. Allowing yourself to be imperfect, accepting that it’s part of being human, and celebrating it, is the only way forward.
In reality, maintaining “perfection”, which doesn’t even exist in the first place is just exhausting.
