What Is Perfectionism?

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Perfectionists deeply fear failing and what it implies about themselves.

Our misperceptions about ourselves and the world contribute to obsessive terror.

We may not completely evade failure, but we can defang it.

The thing that pains me the most about patients is the thing that pains me the most about myself. I hate how much failure means to us. Arguably, perfectionists fear failure more than anything else, even rejection, which is just an example of it. The questions “Am I good? Am I smart? Am I successful? Am I attractive?” can be combined and framed as “Did I win at life?” or, better, “Am I not a loser?” The hook of social media is based on the insight that many have a chronic need to compare their lives to those of others to reassure themselves they aren’t losers. Social media feeds off of their fears.

But why are we so afraid of failure? Why is it that this emotional state feels akin to the awareness of your imminent death? And why is ambition often less about success and more about relief — the relief of not feeling like a failure? For perfectionists, who are prone to black-and-white thinking, success implies the belief in arrival, or the sense that one has rescued oneself from being a failure. The underlying belief is that there’s a place one can get to wherein they never again have to worry about, essentially, hating themselves — that there's a permanent escape. Social media reinforces the belief, since so many users appear to be permanently happy.

One may easily feel that........

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