In fifth grade, seeing her report card say A-, Hailey Magee ran home from school and threw herself on the bed and cried.
Growing up, Maggie believed that the way to gain the affirmation and love of his family and teachers was to be a successful person. For her, A- means failure. "My whole being was broken," she said, "and at that moment, I felt like my value was also reduced by not getting an A or A+." ”
Heart-to-heart A+
Inferiority for a decent grade is a textbook case of perfectionism.
In recent years, perfectionism has intensified. Paul Hewitt, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia who has studied this phenomenon, co-authored a book called Perfectionism: A Relational Approach to Conceptualization, Assessment, and Treatment.
At the end of the semester, a college student approached Hewitt and said he had suicidal thoughts. This bright young man is equally obsessed with A+. Their school has a class that is very difficult and is specifically designed to weed out students who are not serious about their major. The young man said: "Although I still got an A+ in the end, it just shows that I am not smart. If I'm smart, I don't have to fight so hard for A+. ”
Hewitt said that perfectionism is a widespread personality trait that manifests itself in a critical relationship between man and self.
Nitpicking perfectionism
He believes that setting high standards and striving for excellence is a manifestation of positive character, but perfectionism is the result of dysfunction. Because perfectionism means that people are always concerned about their flaws, "they try to change that by becoming perfect."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > intensifying perfectionism</h1>
Researchers say perfectionism used to be a problem that plagued a few people, but due to the influence of modern family education, social media, and an increasingly competitive economic environment, perfectionism has become a growing cultural phenomenon. The struggle with perfectionism has been the subject of speeches, social media, Oprah talk shows, books. Even celebrities like Demi Lovato, Zendaya Coleman and Natasha Lyonne suffer from perfectionism.
Netflix star Lana Condor said in the mental health series Hi Anxiety: "We indulge in a life that is carefully designed and arranged on screen. "Seeing other people living perfect lives and my life not being like that." So if I go out and people find out that my life isn't perfect, I'm afraid they'll judge me. ”
Two sides of Lana Condor
Thomas Curran, a psychologist at the University of Bath, points out that if you look up, you will find that perfectionism is "everywhere" today. "I see perfectionism in my friends, colleagues, and my students."
In the information age, where people are constantly comparing their own lives with the lives of others through social media, perfectionism is only amplified.
Curran and colleague Andrew Hill collected data on more than 40,000 college students who underwent perfectionist psychological tests between 1989 and 2016. In 1989, about 9 percent of respondents scored highly on social perfectionism, but by the end of the study, that percentage doubled to around 18 percent. Hill said: "Overall, young people today are more perfection-seeking than young people of the past. ”
The intensification of perfectionism is a big problem because it leads to a range of mental health problems. A meta-analysis of 284 studies found that high levels of perfectionism can lead to problems such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, intentional self-harm and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The constant quest for perfection can make people tired, stressed, headaches, and insomnia.
Perfectionism leads to a series of mental problems
Writer Amber Rae, who works in Silicon Valley, was skinny in his early 20s. She even had to take stimulants to fulfill her exorbitant career expectations. "I've been working so hard, like two burning candles," she said. "I hardly sleep." After work one day, she fainted and woke up with no idea how long she had been fainting.
The doctor told her it was due to physical failure. "It's a wake-up call for me," she said. Only then did she realize that she had been instilling in herself the idea that as a human being, her cuteness and safety were inextricably linked to perfection.
The 34-year-old said: "I have been practicing this philosophy all my life, making my creations uninteresting. "Change has to be made."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > perfectionism=failure criterion? </h1>
There are three common types of perfectionism – the "self-directed type" that demands perfection;
"Other-oriented", requiring that the people around you (such as spouses, co-workers, friends, etc.) are perfect;
"Socially oriented", because of the pressure of the outside world and society, they demand perfection.
Carefully perfect
Gordon Flett, a psychologist at the University of York in Canada, believes that socially oriented perfectionism is the most harmful because it is always associated with health and emotional problems. He recently published a paper on people with chronic health problems such as fibromyalgia or heart disease. About a quarter of them scored higher on socially oriented perfectionism, believing that society or those around them wanted them to be perfect.
The pursuit of perfection is not the same as competition or the pursuit of excellence, because both are positive. Perfectionism is harmful because you set yourself a standard that you can never reach—essentially, you set yourself a standard that will never fail.
Perfectionist standards
Ray is a new artist who, when she was in middle school, she tore her work to pieces at the sight of any slightest flaw. She said: "My taste is high, but my talent can't keep up with my taste, so I will be very frustrated. I felt like I had potential, but I didn't play it out. Ray also made up for himself a story that perfection equals being loved. She believes: "If I can be perfect, people will like me, identify with me, and I will be safe." ”
"It's very painful when people feel like they're being asked to meet unattainable standards. If they do, they may worry that expectations from the outside world will increase further," Fret said, "and you're going to feel more and more stressed." ”
Karina Limburg, a clinical psychologist at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich, says that eating disorders are a common symptom of perfectionism. Limburg met a woman with anorexia nervosa who had extremely strict rules about diet.
If she doesn't follow the rules and eats prohibited food, a normal person might say, "Oh, well, I didn't follow the rules." "But for her, a small mistake can completely destroy her self-worth." Her self-worth is built on perfect weight. Limburg said. This impossible standard led to her failure.
Self-worth built on a perfect weight
Perfectionism seems to be inherited, but it is unclear whether perfectionism is an innate, heritable character, or a character caused by acquired learning or environmental stimuli.
Fret explains, "If you're a perfectionist, your parents should be perfectionists too. Perfectionism can be hereditary, but it can also be caused by learning and environmental influences. ”
Growing up, success was the way she emotionally communicated with her father. She said her father would only pay attention to her when she was successful in something, such as kicking a football or achieving a good result. "I knew from a very young age that when I achieved something, people were most likely to see me and value me," she says. ”
This success-centered approach to education that Maggie experienced is likely to become increasingly common. Simon Sherry, a professor and clinical psychologist at Dalhousie University, says that the love children crave doesn't depend on math scores or a soccer game, but now many parents, under competitive pressure, will transfer the pressure on their children. Either to force the child to get good grades so that the child can enter an elite school, or to sign up for extracurricular activities for the child to prepare for college later.
Unhappy kids
But if children are rewarded only for success, over time they will feel that a person's worth depends on whether he is perfect or not. "Parents' love for their children should be unconditional." Shirley said.
Social platforms have also fueled the trend of comparison. "It's a really big problem — the images on social media become a benchmark for people to compare, and a perfectionist is always trying to catch up with someone of equal social status." Shirley said. Comparing with people has never been an easy task, and now it is the hardest. Social media is filled with the illusion of perfection of others, constantly bombarding us.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > perfectionism doesn't automatically disappear with age</h1>
Martin Smith, a researcher at York St. John's University in the United Kingdom, said perfectionism does not automatically disappear with age, but instead becomes more intense.
As we get older, perfectionism intensifies
He led the team to publish a meta-analysis of the relationship between perfectionism and other personality factors, and found that people who scored higher on perfectionism's "age" seemed to be more likely to become angry, anxious, and irritable, and their attention was constantly inattentive.
Over time, Smith says, when perfectionists can no longer meet those standards that are impossible, they may begin to have a pessimistic view of their past. They tend to see most of their experiences as failures because they rarely achieve the perfection they seek. He believes that in a school or competitive sports environment, it is often easier to measure one's performance with others through scores or other statistics.
But in the workplace, comparisons with colleagues can be more subjective, and it can be harder for a perfectionist who always strives to be the best. "It's hard to say you're 95 percent perfect at work, it's hard to calculate."
Decades of perfectionist research have shown that perfectionism may lead to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Shirley points out that perfectionists have suicidal thoughts and impulses that are much more common than most people think.
Perfectionism can lead to suicidal thoughts and behaviors
Perfectionists who bother to hide their pain, or actively appear perfect, are dangerous signs. Generally speaking, these outward manifestations of perfectionists can be discovered by those around them.
Ray realized that she had established an identity for her perfectionist needs that she would have to give up if she wanted to get rid of perfectionism. In order to find out when she fell into the quagmire of perfectionism again, Ray gave her inner perfectionist a name, Grace.
This practice helped her establish a sense of distance that she could be aware of when caught up in a perfectionist way of thinking. "I can say, oh, that's Grace. I should sympathize with her more than I would criticize her. Ray would ask himself, what does Grace need now? This answer can help her understand what her perfectionism bubbles up to try to do.
Hewitt says healing perfectionism is a bit like treating a child who is afraid of having monsters under the bed. He remembered a patient who called herself a perfectionist, and when we first met, she inadvertently mentioned something. When she was five years old, her parents sent her to a relative's house to deal with immigration. When she saw her mother again, she was stunned by her beauty. Later, she made it her lifelong pursuit to be a perfect daughter, subconsciously believing that as long as she was perfect, she would never be separated from her mother again.
Hewitt explained that cases like these tend to be more about the underlying relationship than about other factors. Hewitt points out that many people pursue perfectionism, believing that it makes them more acceptable to others, but ironically, they are often more likely to be perceived as irritable, wary, or hostile. "I want to be accepted and close to others, but I just push people further away – this is the neuro paradondox."
Maggie's perfectionism makes it difficult for her to harvest friendships. She is always looking for recognition and affirmation, rather than the fragile relationships needed to maintain friendships. She said, "I'm going to have all kinds of relationships, but they're all acted out, not real." Maggie, now 26, lives in Seattle and is a drag recovery coach. Now, she finally realized that she had to relax a little and allow herself to show her imperfect side.
"I have to learn to say, 'I'm anxious today, but I'm still going to hang out with you.'" It takes practice, but she eventually understands that she can be imperfect and even then be valued. She still needs more time to get out of perfectionism, but she now has two or three good friends.
The friendship made her understand, "Even if I'm not perfect, everything can still be fine".
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Text & Layout | Tian Xiaona
Proofreading | Huang Yicheng
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