The Problem With Perfectionism

5 min readJul 27, 2021

The Problem With Perfectionism

Perfection can be a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, we hold in high regard a person who strives for perfection in the form of excellent quality and success. For example, corporate business and sports place a premium on these attributes. Additionally, marketing and advertisement depend on a whole range of perfection metaphors to capture demand for specific products and services. On the other hand, numerous people who latch onto a specific idea of perfection catalyze within themselves a rigid, myopic, and obsessive drive for fulfillment. All too often, their behavior results in debilitating mental, emotional, and even physical consequences. This is the problem with perfectionism, or what some refer to as “toxic perfectionism.”

Who Suffers Most From Perfectionism

While it’s generally said that more women than men are perfectionists, there’s a paucity of data to support this claim. However, one large study of Australian corporate workplaces found that 33 percent of women and 22 percent of men received high perfectionism scores.

The Downside of Perfectionism

While the field of psychology has a set of criteria to diagnose clinical perfectionism. In my experience, there are many more women under the spell of perfectionism even if they don’t meet the clinical definition.

If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll likely identify with several of these signs, at least, in certain circumstances.

Signs of Perfectionism

As a perfectionist, you have high and even unrealistic standards. You’re apt to judge your final product and yourself harshly. In fact, you may rarely, if ever meet your own standards of perfection, at least, in your eyes. As a result, you may suffer from depression. You might, like some perfectionists, hold others to your standards. In doing so, you judge them critically and become frustrated with them when they fall short.

In addition, you give considerable attention to the potential downside of your professional and personal actions. As a consequence, you obsess, worry, and even become anxious.

Due to fear of failure, you may resist initiating a task, regularly fuss over and oscillate between different options and decisions, and repeatedly redo tasks. Because these behaviors consume time, you often work frantically up to the last minute or fail to meet deadlines altogether.

Costs Of Perfectionism

Health and Wellness

Perfectionists suffer in much the same way as others who are chronically stressed, anxious, frustrated, dissatisfied, or depressed. Ultimately, the stress and negative thoughts and emotions manifest in a wide array of physical ailments and conditions.

Disharmony Among Colleagues

When you believe there’s just one perfect approach or one perfect outcome, you limit your ability to collaborate with others and gain from their valuable input.

Additionally, your rigidity hampers your ability to spot unexpected opportunities and the need for midstream adjustments. This will only frustrate or even infuriate colleagues who reluctantly gave in to your controlling behavior.

Procrastination and excessive attention to your sense of perfection tend to push you right up to the last minute of a deadline leaving your colleagues on edge or worse lacking your critical input to their own contributions to the activity.

Siffled Professional and Personal Growth

Adherence to one way — the right way — stifles your and your colleague’s professional growth. Many ideas and suggestions are left unexplored and on-the-job learning is curtailed.

Rigid attention to internally or externally defined standards blocks curiosity, creative flow, and the accumulation of new knowledge and wisdom, all of which are critical ingredients to finding improved processes and solutions.

Procrastination, over-thinking, waffling between options, and reworks have a detrimental impact on other tasks and opportunities because there isn’t enough time or resources. One small example can illustrate this point. You sit down to write an informal email explaining to a colleague why a deadline needs to be extended. How much time do you spend crafting that email to ensure that it’s perfect: four minutes, an hour, half a day? Consider what the opportunity costs are with this kind of attention to detail?

Three Ways To Address Perfectionism

If you explore the topic of perfectionism, you’ll likely find many suggestions on how to address the problem, including, but not limited to those available within psychotherapy. However, many coaches can provide good assistance as well.

Offered here are three simple techniques. The main idea behind all three is to challenge the typical obsessive rigid thinking of the perfectionist.

What you’ll practice with these techniques is opening yourself to alternatives. This will build your capacity to think and act with more flexibility.

1. Just Notice

Practice noticing yourself as you process information, make decisions, and interact with others. When do perfectionism and rigid thinking come up? Note when you see it, but don’t judge yourself. Just acknowledge the perfectionist in you. Feel free to give your perfectionist self a silly name. It helps you separate (unmerge) with this part of you.

Notice that this is just a part of you and you are so much more. Does noticing give you space and room to form alternative reactions? This technique gets easier over time and with practice.

2. Fostering Flexible Thinking

Challenge an approach you’ve recently outlined for yourself. It can be related to work or your personal life. And, it can be something significant or relatively insignificant.

Quickly jot down three alternative approaches to achieve the same outcome. Don’t dwell on the approaches or dig into their details. They don’t have to be practical and accessible at this moment. But, try to keep them within the realm of possibility even if the conditions for realizing them seem unrealistic at the moment.

Now one by one, consider what you would do to carry out each alternative approach without dwelling on the availability of time and resources and other practicalities.

Notice what got your attention or surprised you throughout this process. Does the exercise clarify or alter your original approach in any way? Notice if you feel any different and how?

3. Uncommitted Exploration of Others’ Suggestions

Consider others’ points of view and suggestions. There’s no need to commit to pursuing anything. You don’t even need to admit that you’re considering something. Just be willing to explore one suggestion as if you had no idea what you would do instead.

With an open and curious mind, come up with two or three steps you could take to further access or adopt this suggestion. How would you move forward with this idea? Can you think of two or three reasons why the option could be as successful or even more successful than what you suggested, even if you don’t expect to adopt it over your own? What does this process reveal about the task and potential solutions? Notice if you feel more open or less rigid in your thinking.

If after practicing these three approaches, you find you need more help, consider contacting a therapist, counselor, or a coach. To get an idea of how these three service providers differ, see my blog post: What’s the Difference Between Therapy and Coaching.