7 Signs You’re a Perfectionist and it’s Doing You More Harm Than Good
by Sandra Girgis
January 17, 2021
Constantly striving for success, excessively high performance standards, desire to produce flawless outcomes, allowing little to no room for mistakes, constant room for improvement, sound familiar?
If so, you might just be *drum roll*
A Perfectionist. Welcome to the club.
However, you’re very likely also an expert at self sabotaging and that’s where the “crippling” comes in.
Ironic?
Sounds like it, but let me explain.
Perfection is unattainable. Nothing in this world is perfect, rather everything is, you guessed it, the cliche “imperfectly perfect.”
But here you come along expecting to create perfection and not the imperfectly perfect kind, rather the perfectly perfect kind. An unattainable goal you’ve set for yourself, and not just once or twice, but constantly, in everything you do, you seek perfection and will not accept anything less than.
Is your Perfectionism doing more harm than good?
1. Lack of satisfaction- No matter what you do, or what you accomplish, you’re never satisfied with the outcome. You always feel that you could’ve done better.
2. Constant comparison- Often, perfectionists find themselves comparing their performance to an “ideal” or to someone else whom they’ve idealized. The danger here is that often, we end up comparing apples to oranges. We compare everything others are doing RIGHT, to everything we’re doing WRONG. And that’s where negative self talk comes into play.
3. Negative Self-Talk/ No room for mistakes- Negative thoughts and self-talk is an indirect consequence of crippling perfectionism which often arises from the intolerance of mistakes. Often, with the heightened focus on the negatives and what’s done wrong instead of right, we end up training ourselves to normalize negative thoughts. This then expands further than a task and infiltrates our whole life; from body image, to diet, career and even relationships, we become experts at identifying everything that’s wrong with us and never appreciating positive efforts nor celebrating accomplishments.
4. Lack of celebration of your accomplishments- This often gets overlooked, especially in American culture where the focus is always on “what’s next.” Perfectionists rarely celebrate accomplishments and when they do, it’s often short and quickly forgotten. The reason being, lack of satisfaction.
“Yes I got this Job, but now I have to work to get a manager position.”
“Yes I got into this competitive graduate program, but that’s not as important as graduating top of my class.”
“Yes, I got into medical school, but I’m still not a doctor yet, I have to work extra hard because I might not get a residency if…”
Etc.
You’re always focused on what’s next, so much so that you often forget to recognize how far you’ve come.
5. Inability to accept praise- This often is mistaken for humility, but it’s not the same! Humility is understanding the impact of your accomplishments, however not boasting or overindulging in praise. What perfectionists often experience is an absolute denial of praise because often the output they’ve provided fell short of their expectations and thus, praise is rejected.
6. All-or- nothing- This may be, in my opinion, the most toxic trait of perfectionism. Often, the fear of failure will prevent you from taking risks, starting a project, or even learning a new skill. As a perfectionist, you most often find yourself drawn to tasks that don’t necessarily challenge you simply because if you think there’s a possibility of failure, you’re inclined to avoid the situation entirely.
7. You’re extremely hard on yourself and often feel depressed when you don’t reach your goals- You rarely attribute failure to anything/ anyone besides yourself. No matter what happened, you always find yourself blaming YOU! “What if I had...?” “ I should’ve/ shouldn’t have done…” Rather than assessing the situation and using it as a chance for improvement, you find yourself often using it as a chance to point out all your faults and stopping there (see #3).
Feeling hopeless and helpless?
No worries fellow perfectionist, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve that may just help you maximize the benefits of your perfectionism and minimize all the negatives that come with it.
Make a list of your to-date accomplishments, and every time something new comes along, add it to the list. This will provide you with a physical, tangible proof of your successes which you can and should refer back to when you’re feeling like you haven’t done enough.
While setting your goals, account and allow for mistakes. By doing this, when road bumps come across your journey, you’ve already accounted for them. So while it may cause an inconvenience, it’s still part of your plan and it allows you to feel more incontrol.
Surround yourself with people who TRULY lift you up. A supportive community is crucial, especially when you’re beating yourself up. Surround yourself with people who will remind you of your accomplishments, who understand your struggles and most importantly people who genuinely want to see you succeed in all aspects of your life. These people are rare and hard to find, but once you find them, hold tight my friend, they’ll be your saving grace.
Schedule times to celebrate your successes. Similarly to writing down your accomplishments, it’s important you also take the time to celebrate them. And it doesn’t have to be anything crazy big! Celebrate that week you ate healthy. Celebrate your ability to not be so hard on yourself. Celebrate getting out of bed a little earlier.
Remind yourself that failure is not negative. With the negative conception of failure we’ve all been raised with, it’s important to understand that in the real world, failure is actually good. It’s a stepping stone to success. But now, you need to reconstruct that idea in your mind so frequent reminders that failures are positive when processed accordingly will greatly improve your life.