‘Perfectionism’ is a term that is used commonly in everyday life. People often refer to a perfectionist as someone who strives to achieve their best performance and goals in everything they do. Perfectionism can be present in every aspect of life. Someone may be a perfectionist in just one part of their life, for example work, but it is more common to have perfectionism across many areas of life. Such areas can include work, study, relationships, sport and exercise, personal appearance, weight, cleanliness, personal hygiene, friendships, music, appearance of one’s home, social performance: in fact, any area that is important to someone. To get started thinking about the different ways that perfectionism can impact on your life, read about the case of Aimee below.
Aimee: An example of someone with perfectionism
Aimee had perfectionism about the appearance of her home and being a good host. If Aimee was having friends over for dinner, she would spend many hours cleaning the house to what she perceived as a ‘perfect’ standard – and even then, she would inevitably notice some imperfections. For example, she recalled on one occasion spending six hours vacuuming, scrubbing floors, cleaning windows and doing the garden. Then she saw some streaks on the windows, and started cleaning again and again over these spots in an attempt to get the house looking perfect. Having spent so much time cleaning, Aimee ran out of time to prepare the food for dinner; when the dessert she made turned out slightly lopsided she started feeling very anxious and stressed. During the dinner, Aimee found it hard to concentrate on what her friends were saying as she was thinking about the food not being prepared to a good enough standard and was criticizing herself for this, thinking that she had ‘screwed up’ the dinner party and was a failure as a result.
This example shows us some of the different aspects of perfectionism. Perfectionism involves continual striving to achieve high standards that a person has set for themselves (e.g. ‘I must have a perfectly clean house’) despite negative consequences (e.g. feeling stressed and anxious). It also involves self-criticism when the person thinks they have not met one of their standards (e.g. having prepared food they perceive to be not good enough). One of the most problematic aspects of perfectionism is that people often base their self-esteem on how well they think that they achieve these high standards (e.g. Aimee thinking of herself as a failure for having baked an imperfect dessert for the dinner party). It is this continual striving to achieve very high personal standards, despite negative consequences, and basing your sense of self on how you measure up to those standards, that distinguishes unhelpful perfectionism from helpful perfectionism.
In this book, when we refer to ‘perfectionism’, what we mean is the following:
Perfectionism is the setting of, and striving to meet, very demanding standards that are self-imposed and relentlessly pursued despite this causing problems. It involves basing one’s self-worth almost exclusively on how well these high standards are pursued and achieved.
People with perfectionism often feel they are unable to meet their high standards and so constantly fear failure at the same time as they continually strive to achieve. Sometimes this can result in people avoiding tasks as the fear of possible failure paralyses them. Even when they do meet their standards they will often discount this achievement, thinking that their goal was not hard enough, or that anyone could have achieved it; thus they set the bar even higher next time. In one memorable case, one of our clients, Melissa, was awarded the top mark of her year in her Media Studies exam. She dismissed this achievement by saying that the teachers had just felt sorry for her because they knew she had an eating disorder. In another example, Sophie won an ice-skating competition. Her pleasure at this achievement was fleeting and lasted no more than a few minutes. Why? Because, despite the achievement, she personally felt that she had not skated well and could have performed a lot better. Another client, Ahmed, said that he felt that there was merit in pushing himself to his limits and that he could not understand why people took the easy way out. The therapist (who invariably would take a short cut to achieve a goal if one were available) was temporarily stunned. Why would you strive and struggle if there were an alternative, easier way to achieve your goals? If your self-worth is based on striving and achievement, and you both pursue your goals relentlessly and dismiss any achievement, you are in a ‘no win’ situation: you’re likely to feel a failure whether you actually meet your standards or not. The fear of failure is often at the heart of perfectionism.
There are three main parts of perfectionism. These are:
There is no easy way to define what a high standard is, as what may seem high to one person may not be to another. When someone has perfectionism, however, these standards are very demanding to the person themselves, i.e. difficult for that person to attain. What is important in the type of perfectionism covered by this book is that the standards are set by you yourself and you perceive them as being demanding. For example, earning £30,000 per year may not be demanding for some people, but may be extremely demanding for others.
Setting goals and standards that you want to achieve is a normal part of life. Perfectionism is a problem when you become very critical of yourself when you don’t meet your personal standards. People with perfectionism usually focus on the negatives, and notice only the occasions when they don’t meet their standards, not those when they do. It is common for them to belittle themselves over their perceived failures, repeatedly berating themselves with critical comments, for example: ‘I should have done that better’ or ‘I am a failure because I did not get an A in the exam’ or, more simply, ‘Idiot!’
Another crucial part of unhelpful perfectionism of the sort we’re describing is striving to achieve demanding standards even though there are negative consequences. Examples of these negative effects are set out in Box 1.1.
What is interesting is that although some of these effects (such as being tired) are objectively unpleasant, sometimes people with perfectionism enjoy the feelings because they regard them as real evidence that they are pushing themselves to their physical limits. For example, Suzanna felt a sense of achievement when she was close to fainting with exhaustion after exercising as she felt that it was clear to her that she truly could not have pushed herself any further.
If you are someone with unhelpful perfectionism, you will tend to judge your self-worth on what you do, not who you are. Rather than viewing your idea of yourself in a balanced way, you believe that you are only a good enough person if you are achieving an excellent standard in the important areas of life. So your way of viewing yourself becomes far too dependent on the areas in which you’re striving for achievement. As an example, take the case of Derek.
Derek: An example of judging self-worth on achieving high standards
Derek was a manager of sales at a large bank who based his idea of how good he was as a person on his performance in two areas of his life that were very important to him: work and being a father. Derek expected nothing but exceptional performance in each of these areas. He frequently worked long hours to ensure that he exceeded sales targets and he was often praised by his manager for doing this. Despite this praise, Derek frequently thought that he should be doing better: he would often compare his performance to that of sales managers in other banks and think that he was not achieving as much as they were and so needed to try even harder. Derek also highly valued being a good father, and would spend as much time as possible with his children. He would often rush home from work to ensure he spent time with his children at dinner, and then go back to work for several hours after the evening meal, coming home very late and exhausted. He often felt he was not achieving well in either of these areas, and if one of his children was irritable with him, he would often take this as evidence that he was not spending enough time with them and was being a bad father, and would criticize himself for this. Derek often thought of himself as a failure because, despite constantly trying, he just couldn’t seem to live up to his own expectations of being an excellent manager and father.
You can see how judging yourself as Derek did can lead to problems. Because you think you are failing to meet your standards, you think of yourself negatively overall. This leads to the negative consequences discussed above including negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, depression) and unhelpful behaviors (e.g. avoiding, procrastinating) – all as a result of basing self-worth too much on achievement of very high standards.
Scientific researchers refer to different forms of perfectionism and suggest that perfectionism has a range of components. One group of researchers considers that perfectionism involves not just the pursuit of high standards for oneself, but also having high standards for other people and believing that others have high standards for you. Another group suggests that the key components of perfectionism are high personal standards and reacting to mistakes with self-criticism. Despite these differences in interpretation, all agree that for some people perfectionism is unhelpful and can clearly be separated from the healthy pursuit of excellence.
So far, you might be reading through this book and be thinking to yourself: ‘Yes, but doesn’t everyone try to achieve goals and standards? Isn’t that just a normal part of life?’ or ‘You don’t get ahead by being a slacker.’ It is very important for us to be clear about the difference between perfectionism and the healthy pursuit of excellence or striving for achievement. Setting personally demanding goals and trying to achieve them can be done in a way that is positive for the individual, is associated with a sense of achievement and satisfaction, and has few negative consequences. Take for example talented musicians or elite athletes, many of whom spend a lot of time striving to achieve their demanding standards. We would not see their high standards for performance on stage or on the running track as a problem; rather, we might see this as an integral part of high achievement.
In contrast, unhelpful perfectionism of the sort described in this book involves someone’s view of themselves depending on how well they think they have done in particular areas and their pursuit of their very high standards despite negative consequences. Intense self-criticism (even self-flagellation) if someone believes they have failed to meet their standards is also an integral part of unhelpful perfectionism. So if the musician were to ruminate over some trivial mistakes made when playing on stage, forget the positive aspects of their performance, perceive themselves to be a failure as a person and subsequently refuse to do anything for days on end but practice to correct those trivial mistakes, that would be unhelpful perfectionism. Or if the athlete focused on having finished second in a race, concluded they had performed poorly and were failing overall as a person and therefore needed to practice running further and harder despite injury, this would be unhelpful perfectionism. In contrast, a musician with a healthy pursuit of excellence might make mistakes in performance on stage and take reasonable measures to correct them but would still feel worthwhile as a person and be able to acknowledge the positive aspects of their performance. The athlete who finishes second in a race and thinks that they would like to do better next time and produces a reasonable running schedule that is less likely to produce injury – and still thinks they are worthwhile as a person – has the same high standards as the athlete with unhelpful perfectionism but is more balanced in their approach.
One word of caution. There is no clear-cut distinction between positive and negative striving to meet standards. Often, setting demanding standards can start out as positive but over time become negative. For example, determinedly pursuing high standards of weight loss can be helpful when a person is significantly overweight but unhelpful if the person subsequently loses too much weight. Similarly, someone can have the goal of completing all their reading lists at school, and that is appropriate; but in a different context, such as at university, it is just not realistic to expect to read everything. It is too simple to say that some people can set demanding standards and never experience negative consequences of striving, and we know that even striving to meet high standards on its own, without the self-criticism and basing your sense of self on achievement, can sometimes be associated with anxiety or, for example, problems with eating or relationships.
The main differences between unhelpful perfectionism and a healthy pursuit of excellence are:
1 In unhelpful perfectionism the person’s view of themselves is too dependent on how well they think they achieve their own demanding standards.
2 In unhelpful perfectionism, people continue to pursue their standards despite negative consequences.
For many people it is extremely difficult to see where healthy pursuit of excellence ends and unhelpful perfectionism begins. It may be that the two coexist – for example, in some areas you may be pursuing excellence in a healthy way while in another area your striving for achievement is causing significant problems and becoming unhelpful. There are some areas in which determinedly pursuing high standards is likely to be inherently unhelpful, such as trying to achieve a particular shape and weight when there is only a limited amount anyone can do to change their basic body shape. One reason why many people find perfectionism difficult to change is that it has been helpful to them in the past (as the healthy pursuit of excellence), but has become more problematic over time or is an unhelpful approach in a different situation. It is because of this complexity that it may be hard for you to see yourself as someone with unhelpful perfectionism while those around you can see it more easily.
To help you determine whether you have perfectionism that might be a problem, it is useful to ask yourself the questions set out in Worksheet 1.1.
If you answered ‘YES’ to question 6 and the majority of the other questions, it is likely that you will benefit from using this book. Given your determination, you may well throw yourself wholeheartedly into the program and do the tasks set in Part Two to the best of your ability. This is an area where pursuing excellence can be healthy; but remember the guidance set out at the beginning of this chapter – use the book in a moderate way, setting aside some regular (but not excessive or rigid) time each week to complete your tasks. You don’t have to be the best at overcoming your perfectionism – simply overcoming it will bring you joy, flexibility and freedom.
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE
1 Do you continually try your hardest to achieve high standards?
2 Do you focus on what you have not achieved rather than what you have achieved?
3 Do other people tell you that your standards are too high?
4 Are you very afraid of failing to meet your standards?
5 If you achieve your goal, do you tend to set the standard higher next time (e.g. run the race in a faster time)?
6 Do you base your self-esteem on striving and achievement?
7 Do you repeatedly check how well you are doing at meeting your goals?
8 Do you keep trying to meet your standards, even if this means that you miss out on things or if it is causing other problems?
9 Do you tend to avoid tasks or put off doing them in case you fail or because of the time it would take?