Perfectionism is a badge that many achievers wear with pride. But when does healthy striving for high standards become a health problem? All too often, my research has found.
In 20 years working with those affected by eating disorders, I have noticed a worrying tendency among sufferers to aim for impossible standards, and to be overcome with a sense of worthlessness when these crippling expectations are not met.
Colleagues and I discerned similar patterns among patients struggling with depression, anxiety and other common but debilitating disorders.
We discovered that treating this unhelpful perfectionism paid dividends, with patients’ other disorders often improving as a result. Now we are conducting research to further investigate the possibility of reducing anxiety, depression and anxiety by treating unhelpful perfectionism.
There is nothing wrong with high standards, unless we allow ourselves to feel somehow worth less should we stumble in achieving them. When we allow ourselves to indulge in noxious self criticism, rather than accepting our weaknesses and learning from perfectly valid mistakes, we risk doing ourselves emotional damage.
Many patients that we work with recognise that their obsession with impossible achievements is affecting their life and relationships, but many fear that lowering their sights will make them second-rate and unacceptable.
What few see is that their fears of underachievement are often holding them back, because their fear of error allows them no scope to learn and grow, and accept this process as an essential part of healthy human development.
Often these patterns start in adolescence and so we are now trialing a program in schools in which we work with teenagers to encourage them to practice compassion for themselves and acceptance, seeing themselves as more than just a tally of achievements.
We have found 15 a good age to intervene, as the pressure to achieve academically and in other pursuits such as music and sport intensifies and children are suddenly expected to know where they want to go in life.
Adolescents respond well to hearing about famous figures who achieved despite – and perhaps because of – early difficulties or failures that they successfully overcame. JFK failed his law exam twice before passing, while Abraham Lincoln suffered an early demotion before becoming US president.
These are just some examples that we can all do well to embrace. And the lesson we should learn, and teach to our children, is the importance of self-compassion. The cost of the failure to exercise this – we see so often in the mental health setting – is just too high.
Professor Tracey Wade of the School of Psychology at Flinders University is a member of the College of Clinical Psychologists. She is co-author of the book Overcoming Perfectionism (Constable & Robinson, $32.99).
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