What Is Perfectionism?

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Perfectionists tend to struggle with deciding between being good and feeling special.

At its core, perfectionism is a mixture of unresolvable conflicts.

Pursuing truth may help the perfectionist form a more realistic and helpful understanding of their place.

You can’t suppress your beliefs merely by feeling guilty about having them. While it’s possible to exhibit only one form of perfectionism, many perfectionists present with several. So, for example, not only are many of them concerned with professional achievement (i.e., success-oriented perfectionism), they’re also preoccupied with being good people (i.e., moral perfectionism). And the values involved often conflict.

To become extremely successful, arguably, one has to believe they’re special; thus, every comparison brings relief and motivation. This means that self-esteem and self-efficacy, the sense of mastery, are built, in some sense, on the backs of others. And that may conflict with moral perfectionism, which entails compassion, contribution, and humility. As children, perfectionists may be taught that they need to stand out but, simultaneously, need to present modestly. The implied message is: You can’t be yourself. And this, in turn, conflicts with another core value, that of authenticity. You aren’t allowed to be your special self because it hurts others’ feelings, but being disingenuous to avoid blowback is also cowardly.

For a perfectionist, who’s fixated on rules, this can feel impossible to keep track of and embody. Add in the element of black-and-white thinking, wherein the individual believes that to be anything, like authentic, one has to be that thing all of the time, and we can successfully argue that perfectionism is a state marked, for the most part, by confusion. You can imagine the anxiety and hopelessness that follows. How can we both be good and proud? How can we become both righteous and elite? Parents who instill these values in their children may believe that having it all is possible because they may, erroneously, believe they embody all of those virtues. And their children may naively internalize those images, idealizing the parent while failing to make it work themselves.

Even if a relationship with a parent sours and they’re taken off the pedestal, it may still be challenging to create a new mental map, or schema, of how the world works and what one’s values should be. So, it’s common for a perfectionist to believe that surely others out there, the special ones, resolved these contradictions; surely, the ideal can’t be completely baseless. Yet, it is because, at its core, perfectionism is a state of irreconcilable conflict, even if it’s domain-specific—there are meaningfully conflicting values within your pursuit of goodness just as in your pursuit of success. You may be individually successful yet on a bad team, which you can’t seem to help improve. And you can do the right thing while inevitably seriously hurting some people.

Seen through the lens of paradox, one can learn to take perfectionism less seriously and, by extension, life’s choices, too. In treatment, perfectionists tend to fear revealing some of these beliefs because they wish to appear as good people, even, again, trying to evade their own thoughts. By doing so, they miss the chance to reflect on some of them. What’s true and what isn’t? Do you excel in some area? Maybe, but how does that make you special? Are your comparisons myopic? Do you often zero in on another’s trait or even some specific failure to lift yourself up? And when you need motivation, do you find yourself envious? Reality, then, to the perfectionist, is merely instrumental, always serving some grander purpose.

At the risk of oversimplification, you can decide to go wherever the truth takes you. We allow others to enjoy being proud of themselves because we infer some degree of humility. Being proud of graduating from a difficult program isn’t synonymous with believing yourself to be the smartest person you’ve ever known. Feeling attractive isn’t synonymous with believing others are ugly. Pride is usually only disdained when it’s accompanied by grandiosity. So, maybe that’s what needs to challenged—your use of a sense of superiority as a balm and an adrenaline boost.

The pursuit of truth helps the perfectionist form a deeper understanding of what tends to annoy others and why, the uses and limits of comparing oneself to others, the inherent limitations of character (what one can never, logically, become), what it means to be special and if it’s attainable, and how perfectionism counterintuitively harms relationships. Truth’s pursuit may even aid those relationships if one is able to admit the underlying feelings of their overly critical comments.

What Is Perfectionism?

Take our Perfectionism Test

Find a therapist near me

Parents of perfectionists may want to see their children in the same way they see themselves, so, along with the criticisms, there may be a fundamental understanding of: But you’re better than this because you’re so much better than others. So, the child may tap into the sense of some special essence, which they may believe just needs to be drawn out. Is there an essence, and why does it have to be special? Can presenting with humility, in reality, be insulting at times? Can you be and feel important to others, and even for a skill or contribution, without feeling generally superior? Most of the time, the pursuit of truth leads each of us to the same destination: Your unique traits matter and, yes, they do leave a mark, but so do those of many others. You’ll have to decide if that’s good enough.

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