Understanding Perfectionism and Perfectionism-related Anxiety
Cognitively, most of us understand that being perfect is not an attainable goal. For that reason, perfectionism can be insidious and hard to detect. In reality, Perfectionism isn’t about believing that we could somehow appear perfect to the outside world, it is more about this inescapable feeling of not feeling “good enough”, no matter how high achieving we are. Let’s explore some of the root drivers of perfectionist-related anxiety.
On a macro level, society reinforces Perfectionist thinking and behavior. Individuals who exceed expectations academically are rewarded with praise, scholarship and financial incentive/opportunity. Individuals who stay late at work, who have poor work-life boundaries, and who go “above and beyond” in their roles ultimately receive promotion and validation. Individuals who fit within a certain body type or fulfill a societal beauty norm may be told that they are special or beautiful. These things in isolation are neither bad nor good, but they can have negative impacts on individuals who are predisposed to anxiety or people-pleasing.
On a micro/mezzo level, we as parents, teachers, or community leaders may be contributing to Perfectionism-related anxiety without even knowing it. Throughout our conditioning, we’re typically not taught to tolerate failure, let alone embrace it… Many of us grew up with messages like “failure is not an option” or are taught that mistakes are a sign of moral ineptitude. We grow up in systems that reinforce this idea that making mistakes will lead to judgement or criticism, which should be avoided at all costs. But why? Why are we taught to avoid these inevitable, inescapable realities about the world? If things like mistakes, judgement, and criticism are natural parts of the human experience, why wouldn’t we learn to tolerate them?
When we have no tools around tolerating “failure”, folks start to experience high amounts of performance pressure, which can lead to burnout, dysfunction, anxiety, depression, fear of criticism, and negatively impacted self-esteem. As a product of our evolution, human brains are hardwired to avoid pain and discomfort. Many of our brains highly effective survival mechanisms are no longer supportive to us within our current living landscape, which means our brains need our help in learning to adapt to the reality that fear, discomfort, and pain are both tolerable and temporal aspects of life. What would happen if we taught our brains to tolerate these things instead of fear them? Embracing fear, failure, and anxiety does NOT mean we have given up, instead, it means we are moving on.
Learning to build distress tolerance is a key component to overcoming challenges related to Perfectionism and Perfectionist-related anxiety. Instead of demanding perfect results, we can learn to accept our own personal best. Instead of relying on external validation and praise, we can learn to generate our own free-flowing dialogue of self-compassion. Instead of experiencing and avoiding shame, we can learn to embrace our imperfections as unique quirks or lovable parts of Self. This might support us with being able to better enjoy the journey instead of hyper-focusing on the outcome. Doesn’t that sound kinda nice?
