Perfectionism does not correspond to the search for excellence, it attacks the search for the inaccessible. And of course, this is not without consequences.
Paul Hewitt, a clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, has been studying perfectionist behaviors for two decades. He is the author of a book detailing how perfectionist tendencies make people vulnerable to a wide range of clinical problems.
He particularly remembers a bright young student who came to see him after being awarded an A+ in a college entrance exam. This assignment had been deliberately very complicated in order to exclude all students who did not take the subject seriously enough.
He passed this assignment with flying colors. However, he had confided to Hewitt that he had had suicidal thoughts. “I got an A+ , but all it did was show me that if I was really smart, I shouldn't have worked so hard to get it “, he had told her. This is a perfect example of perfectionist behavior.
Today there are three types of perfectionists:the "self-oriented" group of people who demand a lot from themselves, the "other-oriented" who demand the perfection of those around them and finally the "socially prescribed" who feel immense pressure from society at large.
It's not about being competitive or simply striving for excellence, which can be perfectly healthy behaviors. Perfectionism is a broad personality style characterized by a hypercritical relationship with yourself. And what makes it toxic is that those affected are setting bars that can never be reached . In other words, they expose themselves to permanent failures .
Leading experts today agree that perfectionism is a growing cultural issue fueled by three factors:modern parenthood, an increasingly competitive economy and social media.
The latter are arguably the most dangerous. "Look around you these days and you'll see perfectionism everywhere “, explains Thomas Curran, a psychologist at the University of Bath. “I see it in my friends and colleagues and in the students I teach. In an age where social media allows you to constantly compare your life to that of others, perfectionism has only escalated “.
Thomas Curran and his team have also conducted a study on the subject. They collected data from more than 40,000 college students between 1989 and 2016. At the start of the study, about 9% of respondents had high scores in socially prescribed perfectionism. By the end of the study, this score had doubled. “On average, young people are more perfectionists than they used to be “, then concluded Andrew Hill, co-author of the study.
The problem with perfectionists is that they always try to keep up. However, today it is increasingly difficult to do so as we are constantly bombarded with "perfect" images of other people's lives.
Unfortunately, this "quest" for unattainable perfection has health consequences. A meta-analysis of 284 studies showed that high levels of perfectionism were correlated with these problems of anxiety, depression, insomnia or eating disorders. Some people also have suicidal thoughts when others self-harm.
These health issues aren't just for young people, as it's not something that "cures" with age. A study published by Martin Smith, from York St John's University in the UK, has indeed suggested that people who have been perfectionists in their lifetime seem to become more prone to experiencing negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and irritability as they got older. This is the result of several years of failures.
To get out of "perfectionism", professionals offer several solutions such as giving yourself permission to make mistakes .
“Perfectionists have a binary way of thinking that either they do well or they suck "explains to L'Express Magali Combal, facilitator of the course" Take a step back, get out of the traps of perfectionism "of the training organization Comundi. “However, there are an infinity of nuances between white and black in the judgment that one can make on a work “.
She also advises to pay attention to signals which characterize excess as feelings of fatigue, tension, frustration, isolation or procrastination. His final advice is to “take center” , that is to say, to resituate oneself in the collective instead of isolating oneself.
And finally, she advises to work on the concrete . "Break out the stages of a project in a realistic way, plan the duration of each task by giving yourself a reasonable margin ". Reality, she says, is always less predictable than perfectionists anticipate in their ideal world.
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