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“Helen will never make anything of herself in this world unless she gives up her perfectionist tendencies” – so said my ‘understanding’ primary school teacher in my final year of primary school. Was she right? I don’t think so. That being said, I did need to learn to dampen down my degree of perfectionism and to get some perspective. It took me a while to do this and in the meantime I had a hard time of it. I’ve learned a few things since then about how to make perfectionism work for you rather than against you and I’m sharing some tips below.

Perfectionism is on the rise. A 2016 study found that every generation of young adults since the late 1980s is more prone to perfectionism than the generation before.

Am I a perfectionist?

Do you consider yourself to have perfectionist tendencies? How do you know? I’ve picked three key clues that might indicate that you veer towards perfectionism:

1. You have extremely high standards for pretty much everything you put your mind to and you work extremely hard to ensure that you reach them (self-oriented perfectionism). These standards are often applied to others too (other-oriented perfectionism) and you might find you wonder how others manage to succeed when their standards seem so much lower than your own. It’s also possible that you stall and procrastinate in sharing your work with others because you are not sure if it is good enough.
2. You often spend huge amounts of time to perfect something. You probably had a 90% perfect result a few hours before but had to over invest time to get that last 10% just so. It could be common for you to find that you are sacrificing personal time, sleep or family time because you feel you have to in order to meet your standards.
3. You are your worst critic. If you feel something isn’t up to scratch you will beat yourself up about it and hold onto that feeling. Others may be happy with what you’ve done but you know you could have done better.

So is perfectionism bad for me?

It depends. Having high standards and working hard does enable us to achieve great things. What is known as adaptive perfectionism can motivate you to aim high and such effort can feel challenging and rewarding. Unfortunately too much perfectionism (maladaptive) can result in a number of health issues with research showing links to stress, anxiety and depression.

When I was first at University, (back in the day when we took notes by hand), my perfectionist tendencies led me to get back to my room after a day of lectures and then write all my notes out again by hand because they weren’t neat enough. This meant I missed out on social events, I used up time that I needed for studying, and I was increasingly anxious .. and for what? Where was the value in copying out those notes? I dropped out of University after that first term despite passing my exams well. My anxiety driven by my perfectionism was too great. Fortunately, when I went back to University a year later, I started to grapple with it and in some ways, that learning and the change in me was as important as eventually getting a degree.

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

Making perfectionism work for you

If you feel you might benefit from toning down your perfectionist tendencies, the steps below can help:

1. Increase awareness – start by learning to recognise perfectionism. Perfectionism can affect how you think, feel and behave. Below you’ll find some examples of ‘thinking errors’ that can be linked to perfectionism. Start to create more awareness when you think in similar ways –that’s the first step to change:
   •     ‘all or nothing thinking’ (e.g. ‘I’ll never get it right’);
   •     labelling (globally rating ourselves e.g. ‘I’m a failure’);
   •     over-generalisation (something always or never happens e.g. ‘I always mess it up’).
   •     There are several more – read about them here
2. Correct thinking errors – aim to find more rational statements  to replace your thinking errors. This may need you to shift your perspective. You can do this by:
   •     Asking yourself how a close friend might view the situation
   •     Asking yourself what you might say to a close friend who was going through this situation
3. Look at the big picture – reflect on these three questions to help you to gain some perspective:
   •     What is the worst that could happen?
   •     If the worst does happen, can I survive it?
   •     Will this still matter tomorrow? How about next week? Next year?
4. Compromise – this means reassessing your very high standards and asking: “What level of imperfection am I willing to tolerate – and what does that look like here?”. You can take small steps to reduce your standards. They will still be high standards but hopefully not so high that they have a detrimental effect to your health.
5. Practice self-acceptance – challenge yourself to increase your acceptance of yourself. Remind yourself that you are not equivalent to your actions (e.g. if you fail at a task it does not mean that you are a failure).

In addition to working on your thinking and beliefs, you can practice overcoming behaviours common to perfectionists such as avoidance (e.g. of situations where you fear things may not work out perfectly) or procrastination. More on these in a future blog.

For now, if you’ve read this blog to this point you’ve taken 10 minutes on your journey to being a reformed perfectionist. I encourage you to be kind to yourself on this journey. As human beings, we are all fallible. As you try some of the things above, remember that they might not go perfectly, .. and that’s ok. You are still a valuable human being.