Perfectionism

Love of perfection and idealism: when we strive for excellence and fear being just very good, we end up surprised by poor performance.

Perfectionists are people who strive for perfection in many aspects of their personal, family, educational, or professional lives. For example, they believe they must always be the best student, the best employee, or the best parent. With little or no awareness, the perfectionist sets high goals and expectations and strives hard to achieve them. However, when they reach those goals, they belittle their achievement and attribute it to other factors rather than their own effort. At that point, the person criticizes themselves, devalues their accomplishments, and may even blame themselves for not setting higher expectations. They then raise the bar in their mind for the future and repeat the same cycle again.

In a meta-analysis involving large numbers of over 40,000 American, Canadian, and British students across 164 research studies, it was found that perfectionism has been steadily increasing from the 1990s to the present decade. This study highlighted the issue, suggesting that it may have arisen and persisted due to the reinforcement of academic, professional, and social competition, according to the researchers. In addition, the researchers found that this increase in perfectionism may explain the rise in mental health disorders. Other studies have shown that perfectionism is associated with several psychological disorders, including obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder, and may be one of the factors contributing to the development and persistence of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Perfectionism is defined as a combination of excessively high personal expectations and excessive self-criticism. Many scientific models have sought to analyze the development and persistence of perfectionism in an individual’s life, including the following models:

1. Self-oriented perfectionism involves expecting perfection in one’s own performance.
2. Other-oriented perfectionism which involves expecting perfection in the performance of others.
3. Socially prescribed perfectionism which involves perceiving that society expects perfection in one’s performance.

Therefore, perfectionism is considered the individual’s pursuit of perfection, displayed in personal aspects, accompanied by efforts to hide flaws and avoid revealing them to others.

Millions of people believe that perfectionism is a key element of success. Unfortunately, this falls within the cognitive-behavioral model, which links thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Through this model, we can see the effects of perfectionism on those who suffer from it, something I I suffer with it daily as a cognitive-behavioral therapist in-person consultations, as follows:

Automatic thoughts: the occurrence of negative automatic thoughts related to low self-esteem and high self-expectations. For example: “I got an excellent grade because the exam was easy,” or “I got an excellent grade because the instructor was lenient.” Thus, regardless of the result, the perfectionist downplays their achievement and attributes it to other reasons, which stems from cognitive distortions such as discounting or excluding positives, reinforcing core beliefs of unworthiness.

Emotions: A person suffering from perfectionism usually experiences feelings of sadness, disappointment, and anxiety in the context of negative automatic thoughts.

Behaviors: In light of these thoughts and emotions, the person oscillates between three behaviors:

1. Avoidance and attempting minimal effort due to uncertainty about achieving personal goals and expectations. This leads to feedback that reinforces the validity of negative thoughts, suggesting that the person is unaccomplished or unsuccessful.

2. Attempting to meticulously focus on task details and immersing oneself in completing them, the person often has many tasks that remain unfinished due to a lack of belief in their ability to reach the high goals they have set, despite having the necessary resources and capabilities. This can be compared to being asked to swim from point A to point D while expecting to both swim and dive simultaneously. As a result, more time is spent diving, and they fail to reach point D on time. This creates a feedback loop that reinforces the previously mentioned negative thoughts, leading the person to self-blame and to resolve to raise their expectations even higher in the future.

3. The person completes the tasks assigned to them, but downplays and minimizes their achievement, attributing it to reasons other than their own effort. This reinforces negative thoughts and leads them to criticize themselves and diminish their sense of deserving the accomplishment.

Below is the cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) model for the vicious cycle of perfectionism:

As we can see from the mental connections above, the development and persistence of perfectionism hinder the person from performing their daily tasks, which gives us a better understanding of the areas of dysfunction and allows for designing a treatment plan that addresses the following:

1. Educating the person about the cycle of perfectionism and how each part is connected to the others, and that the treatment plan aims to break this cycle at multiple levels, including thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, so that the person becomes more aware of their actions and begins to identify negative automatic thoughts and re-evaluate them through therapeutic exercises.
2. Redefining perfectionism as an unattainable goal, since we cannot achieve perfection no matter how hard we try, and recognizing that our humanity entails imperfection. It is also important to distinguish between perfection (diving) and performing tasks with sufficient quality (swimming).
3. Creating alternatives to self-blame through self-affirmation and encouraging the person to attribute their achievements to themselves rather than to other reasons. For example, reframing “I must be a perfect mother” into a more balanced thought, such as “I am a good enough mother.” In the case of mistakes, which are inevitable for any human, they should be seen as part of our human nature and as an opportunity to learn and correct errors.
4. Designing behavioral experiments to help the person break this vicious cycle. For example, a person who delves deeply into the details of a project at work and spends excessive time searching for the minutest details. We use Socratic questioning regarding her personal expectations and her manager’s expectations, then help her expand her margin of flexibility to align with the manager’s expectations, which are the realistic standards to consider while performing the assigned task. Additionally, we design behavioral experiments where she leaves a simple task unfinished, turns her attention to self-care and self-affirmation, and then returns to complete the task.