Does perfection affect mental health – We are in the era where you consume lots of self-help books, seminars and online courses to become successful, famous and rich. Most of this material explained how you have to stick to your work and over-perfection. They teach you and make you believe that your product or your services can only be accepted when it is perfect.
Even after Corona’s time, you might have seen people become perfectionists in cleaning their homes and offices. They are managing things with perfection and following a very perfect routine all the time. If such people just miss the little perfection they feel like they are the culprit. They feel they are inadequate and insufficient to accomplish certain tasks.
They kill themselves in the feeling of gult and their mood always depends upon how things are perfect. They always tried to keep things perfect and that perfection causes many mental disorders.
Where does this perfection come from?
To understand perfection it is important to know where it comes from. Your life is an accumulation of many factors. When you born you first encountered your parents. Then school, teachers and classmates, friends and so on. Your experiences with the world and with others make you some persona. You become something while you change many things. In short you mostly influenced by many aspects of your life. You decide to become something.
To achieve some targets and goals. You decide to make your life best and you design your life’s goals. But many times when you do not design someone else designs it. Sometimes you know what you want but you do not know how to achieve that goal. Then you may follow people who gives you advise or you follow because they achieve something in their life. But here need to think where is your control.
What do you want and how do you want is deciding factors. Are you design your life or it is someone else? Now let’s check below chart which gives you more idea about perfection.
SELF – PERFECTION
You put pressure on yourself to achieve something because
- PERSONALITY TRAITS
If you have nature to do detailing in all projects. If you have trait where you want everything should be manageable and perfect then you pressurizing yourself for the perfection. If your trait is to be a perfectionist then it might possible that you do things with utmost care and with detailed which gives you pressure. And if you are unable to do it with the expectation of perfection then you feel guilt about yourself.
- COMPARISION WITH OTHERS
When you compare your age, income, life style, health etc. with someone. When you compare your life with someone’s life. And you feel the pressure of achievement then it is a SELF-PERFECTION. If you understand this in detailed it is one of the psychological problem. As you never happy and satisfied what you did. You never appreciate yourself but always finding faults. In doing so you keep yourself pressure by having self-talk like,”I must do this, I should be good, I must follow the to-do list.” etc.
- MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION
Mental health condition like Obsessive Complusive Disorder (OCD) creates such self pressure of doing things perfectly. Perfection becomes their synonyms because they always have fear or anxiety of outcome. Hence they over deliver. Hence they put pressure to do more and more even it does not required. Typically you want to do some act repeatedly.
- BEING AN ACHIEVER
Your self -worth is what you achieve. You want to be an achiever and hence you just work with the perfection. You believe that your are only valuable when you achieve something valuable in your life. You keep beating yourself because you want to be an achiever. But it affects negatively as it affects your self-esteem and self-confidence.
SOCIAL PERFECTION
- SOCIAL PRESSURE
“What’s next? What you want to do? What you want become?, Think of your life if you do not do anything you end up with nothing.” You might have heard similar words from society. You feel peer pressure that you need to do something in your life.
You are interested in your creativity but you need to focus on earning money. And you finally end up in doing those jobs which you do not like. But you do all where you meets your ends. And you feel pressure. This pressure also converts into perfection. Because you afraid what people think of you. How they perceive you as a person. In order to get that validation you become perfectionist.
- PARENTS EXPECTATIONS
I know every parents want their child to be successful, rich and worthy enough. Sometimes parents are putting so much pressure on you in your childhood that it became your trauma. Your childhood trauma is one of the reason that you can become perfectionist. Because you do not want pain. Because you do not want to feel again that you are not worthy enough or useless.
PERFECTION ON OTHERS
- NEED FOR CONTROL
If you are a person where you want to control other people because you want to complete something than it ends in perfection. You keep pressure on others to do things as per your terms. In limited way to keep perfection pressure on others is a leadership quality but when it becomes dominance than it creates hassle and spoils relationships.
- HIGHER EXPECTATION ON OTHERS
When someone is an achiever than there is always an expectation that one should do more. In many organisations or even in many families if a person is an achiever automatically other people raise their expectations, This leads to perfection. An achiever always have fear of achieving more.
How perfection affects your mental health?
Perfection have significant effects the way you think, feel and behave. Because you are driven by perfection traits. Which creates pressure as you understand above.
- CAN PERFECTION CAUSE DEPRESSION
So answer is Yes. It is. When you set higher goal of achievement from the self because you have a fear of failure. When you are putting unrealistic goals in front of you then you have pressure. Each time you tried without understanding your ability, capacity and weaknesses. You find failure outcome.
You tried all the time and fall back. Each time you question self and at last you become depressed. It affects your mood as you are not getting results as per your expectations. You are not getting what you look for. As I have mentioned earlier in my blogs about real goals v\s. superficial goals.
- DO PERFECTIONIST HAS ANXIETY
Perfection is a sign of chronic anxiety. Why? When you have a fear that what if you are making mistakes. When you have fear what if a given task is not perfectly done. Chronic worries is a part of perfection. You are continuously worried about your outcome. You are continuously thinking what will be the results. Yes, over perfectionist faces anxiety.
- EATING DISORDERS
Eating is a reflection of your emotions. When you stressed, worried or depressed you may feel cravings. You feel a need of eating or not eating. There are two types of eating disorders where a person eats extremely less or too much. In both cases a person is worried about his body weight.
You think yourself as heavy weight and you controlled your eating. Fasting too much or do lots of exercises. There are two types of eating disorder which : anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. In Bulimia people used to have binge eating. They eat too much at one sitting.
And then they tried to vomit or take enema to pass stool. Even it is not required. In anorexia eating a person eats very less in fear of increase in body weight. Perfectionism with the body shape and weight causes eating disorder.
- RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
People with perfection have lots of relationship issues. Because they expect similar perfection in another person. They dominant or become aggressive in order to get that perfection from others. As you can see chart perfection on others creates relationship issues. As they have very less acceptance level and empathy with lack of understanding.
- OBSESSIVE COMPLUSION
Obsessive Complusive Disorder. In order to be perfect a person has to follow certain repeated behaviours. A person has to do some compulsive activities which eventually become headache for other people. A person also feels his abnormal behavior but unable to get rid of it. Because in deep there is a fear.
- PERFECTIONIST HAS LOW SELF-ESTEEM
People with perfection has very low esteem. They take all criticism personally. And unable to learn new things or accept them. As they have set standard in their mind for the outcome. It is difficult for people to accept new ways. It is hard to see themselves in an imperfection zone.
HOW TO OVERCOME PERFECTION?
There are various therapies which helps you to overcome perfection. They offered various coping mechanism and skill development to overcome perfection.
CBT : Cognitive Behaviour Therapy helps to make you understand your cognition. You learn more n more about yourself. You can change your thoughts to balance thought which helps you to take different actions.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): This therapy helps people to understand their perfectionism. And learn more about the outcome even though tasks is imperfect. ERP prevents responses to criticism and build up more self-esteem. Behavioural Therapy: It is difficult for a perfectionist to change his behaviours. Because they believe their over perfection is only make them successful. But behavioural therapy gives them better and different understanding of the outcome.
Top Ten tips to overcome Perfectionism:
- Set real goals rather superficial goals. Realistic goals help you to perform better rather with the perfection.
- Chunk your task in to pieces. Rather to be overwhelmed with the big task chunk it in to smaller one.
- Practice self-compassion daily. Become little easy with self. Appreciate self with small trips. Giving breaks from long hours of work and celebrate your wins.
- Accept criticism as a feedback but do not take it personally. It is not possible that you make everyone satisfied and happy.
- Do not procrastinate or prolong things. As much as you look for perfection you may develop a habit of procrastinate. ” I will act when I am perfect”
- Understand your beliefs. “If you are perfect then you are successful.” “Your work should be such that looks perfect piece of art.” All these beliefs torn your ability to perform. You never want to even try because you have fear of perfection.
- Learn new behaviours like do same thing differently at different time. Delegate certain work to others and see the results.
- Learning new things in life. When you learn new skills, hobbies and things your perfection problem runs away. Because you learn that every person is an amateur.
- Ask yourself wise questions which comes with great answers. By doing so learn to understand yourself.
- Develop and grow mentally. Learn new things by learning about yourself.
