Perfectionism: high standards without burning out

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If a failure, or the mere thought of one, makes you think that your life is no longer worth anything or that others would be better off without you, talk about it the same day to your doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line; in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country. See a doctor promptly, too, if your standards concern food, weight or exercise and you are losing weight fast, repeatedly skipping meals, making yourself sick or having fainting spells; or if you are barely sleeping any more and can no longer stop working. Allow fifty-five minutes to read.

1. Before you begin

It is eleven at night. The presentation is at nine tomorrow morning, and it has been ready since early in the evening. Yet you are still working on it. You have changed the colour of a chart three times, reworded the title of the fourth slide, checked a date you had already checked. Your colleague sent hers yesterday at five, with a typo in the contents page, and she is asleep. Tomorrow the meeting will go well. People will congratulate you. And you will spend the whole evening going back over the one question you answered badly.

Or it is something else. The two-line email reread five times. The report you do not start, because you do not have three clear hours to do it "properly". The dinner you spent two days preparing, of which you remember only the slightly dry cake. The 17 out of 20 that spoils your week.

Three things, straight away.

Having high standards is not the problem. Aiming high, loving a job well done, throwing yourself into things wholeheartedly can make life richer. The problem begins when your worth as a person depends almost entirely on success, when a mistake becomes a threat, and when the bar goes up every time you reach it.

Perfectionism does not make you better. It presents itself as the price of quality. The studies that have looked for this benefit at work find no clear link with performance, and one study of students even observed lower marks among those who aimed for perfection than among those who aimed for excellence. What it costs, on the other hand, can be counted: time, sleep, relationships, pleasure.

It can be worked on, and the method has been evaluated. Some fifteen controlled trials have tested a cognitive behavioural therapy focused on perfectionism, with clear effects on perfectionism itself, moderate effects on mood and more modest ones on anxiety. It does not ask you to become careless. It asks you to check, by experience, what happens when you do a little less.

Who this guide is for

For you if you spend much more time than other people preparing, rereading, checking and redoing, and you pay for it in tiredness.

For you if a tiny mistake can occupy your mind for days, while your successes leave you strangely empty.

For you if you put off important things because you will not be able to do them perfectly.

For you if people often tell you "you're overdoing it" and you cannot see how to do otherwise without everything falling apart.

2. High standards that help, perfectionism that hurts

Two students, the same 18 out of 20

Take two imaginary students, Léa and Marc. They sit the same exam and get the same mark. Léa is pleased. She looks at the two marks she lost, works out what she had not understood, and has stopped thinking about it by that evening. Marc goes over his paper again and again. Two marks down is proof that he did not work hard enough; the others surely did better; he will revise twice as much. Three weeks later he gets 20. He concludes that the exam was easy.

The same standards, the same result. What separates them is not the height of the bar, it is what the bar means to each of them.

What sets them apart

The first attitude is often called the pursuit of excellence, and the word perfectionism is kept for the second. The difference comes down to a few precise points.

• What is at stake. Léa cares about doing well, but her worth is not put back on the line with every test. For Marc, it is his whole self that is judged through the result.
• Mistakes. For one, a mistake is information. For the other, it is a threat, and a source of shame.
• When you stop. Healthy high standards know the feeling of "that's fine as it is". Perfectionism stops only from exhaustion or because time runs out.
• After a success. The satisfaction lasts a while, or evaporates at once because the goal "was too easy".
• The cost. Healthy high standards take it into account. Perfectionism carries on despite lost sleep, neglected friends, health wearing thin.

The Canadian psychologist Patrick Gaudreau proposes calling the pursuit of goals that are high but attainable "excellencism", to set it clearly apart from the pursuit of perfection. His first studies show that aiming for perfection brings nothing more than aiming for excellence, and may even do harm.

It is not a diagnosis

Perfectionism does not appear, as such, in the classifications of mental disorders. It is a way of functioning, present to very different degrees, sometimes confined to one area: work, studies, the body, the home, bringing up children. We speak of clinical perfectionism when it causes suffering or clearly gets in the way of life. It is not the same thing as obsessive-compulsive personality, a more global and more rigid way of functioning, in which the need for order and control extends to almost everything and weighs heavily on the people around.

Towards yourself, towards others, from others

In 1991, Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett described three directions. Self-oriented perfectionism: I am the one I demand perfection from. Other-oriented perfectionism: I demand it of my colleagues, my partner, my children. Socially prescribed perfectionism: I am convinced that others expect perfection from me and will reject me if I fall short. These forms often go together.

Researchers also distinguish two families. Perfectionistic strivings: setting yourself very high goals and holding to them. Perfectionistic concerns: fear of making mistakes, doubt about what you have done, dread of being judged. It is above all the second family that causes suffering.

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