By Klaus Döring
This famous line is spoken by Osgood Fielding III, played by Joe E. Brown, in Some Like It Hot (directed by Billy Wilder, 1959).
Is it true that nobody is perfect? It is true! No one is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes. It is part of being human. If someone you know makes a mistake, try to be understanding and forgiving instead of immediately criticizing them.
Many of us believe perfectionism is positive. You may count me among them.
More often than I would like to admit, something seemingly inconsequential will cause the same feeling to rear its head again. Something as small as accidentally squashing the makeup I was bringing to my first girlfriend’s family for Christmas can tumble around in my mind for several days, accompanied by occasional thoughts such as, “How stupid!” and “You should have known better.”
Falling short of a bigger goal, even when I know achieving it would be nearly impossible, can temporarily flatten me. When a former agent told me that she knew I was going to write a book someday but that the particular idea I had pitched to her did not suit the market, I felt deflated in a gut-punching way that went beyond disappointment. The negative drowned out the positive. “You’re never going to write a book,” my internal voice said. “You’re not good enough.” That voice did not care that this directly contradicted what the agent had actually said. And, to this day, I have not finished my first book.
That is the thing about perfectionism. It takes no prisoners.
If I have struggled with perfectionism, I am far from alone. The tendency starts young — and it is becoming more common. Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill’s meta-analysis of perfectionism rates from 1989 to 2016, the first study to compare perfectionism across generations, found significant increases among more recent undergraduates in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. In other words, the average college student in the study’s most recent year was much more likely to have perfectionistic tendencies than a student in the 1990s or early 2000s.
“It is heading toward an epidemic and a public health issue.” It is a striking quotation from Katie Rasmussen.
“As many as two in five kids and adolescents are perfectionists,” says Rasmussen, who researches child development and perfectionism at West Virginia University. “We’re starting to talk about how it’s heading toward an epidemic and public health issue.”
The rise in perfectionism does not mean each generation is becoming more accomplished. It means we are getting sicker and sadder and even undermining our own potential.
Here is another striking example: French artist Claude Monet, a perfectionist, often destroyed his paintings in a temper while saying, “My life has been nothing but a failure.”
Perfectionism, after all, is an ultimately self-defeating way to move through the world. It is built on an excruciating irony: Making and admitting mistakes are necessary parts of growing, learning, and being human. Doing so also makes you better at your career, relationships, and life in general. By avoiding mistakes at any cost, perfectionists can make it harder to reach their own lofty goals.
But the drawback of perfectionism is not just that it holds you back from being your most successful, productive self. Perfectionistic tendencies have been linked to a long list of clinical issues: depression and anxiety, even in children; self-harm; social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia; obsessive-compulsive disorder; binge eating, anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders; post-traumatic stress disorder; chronic fatigue syndrome; insomnia; hoarding; dyspepsia; chronic headaches; and, most damning of all, early mortality and suicide.
“It’s something that cuts across everything in terms of psychological problems,” says Sarah Egan, a senior research fellow at Curtin University in Perth who specializes in perfectionism, eating disorders, and anxiety.
Culturally, I learned, we often see perfectionism as positive. Even saying you have perfectionist tendencies can come across as a coy compliment to yourself; it is practically a stock answer to the “What’s your worst trait?” question in job interviews. Past employers, now you know! I was not just being cute.
It is difficult to tell who is motivated and conscientious and who is a perfectionist. In my daily teaching at the University of Southeastern Philippines and Ateneo de Davao University in Davao City, I meet students who work hard and receive poor marks. If a student tells herself, “I’m disappointed, but it’s OK; I’m still a good person overall,” that is healthy. If the message is, “I’m a failure. I’m not good enough,” that is perfectionism.
That inner voice criticizes different things in different people — work, relationships, tidiness, and fitness. My own tendencies may differ greatly from somebody else’s. It can take someone who knows me well to notice them. When I messaged one of my friends to say I was writing this story, he immediately sent back a long line of laughing emojis.
Perfectionists can turn smooth sailing into a storm and a brief ill wind into a Category 5 hurricane. At the very least, they perceive it that way. And, because the ironies never end, the behaviors perfectionists adopt ultimately make them more likely to fail.
Thinking of perfectionism makes me think of my own childhood, which was peppered with avoiding — or starting and quitting — almost every sport there was. If I was not adept at something almost from the get-go, I did not want to continue — especially if an audience was watching. In fact, multiple studies have found a correlation between perfectionism and performance anxiety, even in children as young as 10.
Mental health problems are not just caused by perfectionism; some of these problems can lead to perfectionism, too. One study, for example, found that over a one-year period, college students who had social anxiety were more likely to become perfectionists — but not vice versa.
When it comes to the most dramatic example, suicide, numerous studies have also found that perfectionism is a lethal contributor on its own. One found that perfectionism made depressed patients more likely to think about suicide, even above and beyond feelings of hopelessness. A meta-analysis, described as the most complete examination of the suicide-perfectionism link at the time, found that nearly every perfectionistic tendency — including being concerned about mistakes, feeling as though you are never good enough, having critical parents, or simply having high personal standards — was correlated with thinking about suicide more frequently. The two exceptions were being organized and being demanding of others.
Some of those criteria, particularly pressure from parents and perfectionistic concerns, were also correlated with more suicide attempts.
In many ways, poorer health outcomes for perfectionists are not that surprising. “Perfectionists are pretty much awash with stress. Even when it’s not stressful, they’ll typically find a way to make it stressful,” says Gordon Flett, who has studied perfectionism for more than 30 years and whose assessment scale, developed with Paul Hewitt, is considered a gold standard. In addition, he says, if your perfectionism finds an outlet in, say, workaholism, it is unlikely that you will take many breaks to relax — something we now know both our bodies and brains require for healthy functioning.
After all, many of us live in societies where the first question asked when we meet someone is what they do for a living. We live in societies where we are so literally valued for the quality and extent of our accomplishments that those achievements often correlate directly with our ability to pay rent or put food on the table. Complete strangers weigh these on-paper values to determine everything from whether we can rent that flat, buy that car, or receive that loan. We then signal our access to those resources through our appearance — these shoes, that physique — and other people weigh that, in turn, to determine whether we are the right person for a job interview or dinner invitation.
Fear of failure is being magnified in other ways, too. Take social media: Make a mistake today, and your fear that it might be broadcast, even globally, is hardly irrational. At the same time, all those glossy feeds reinforce unrealistic standards.
In my opinion — and I am not alone in this — you do not have to be perfect to be lovable or to be loved. It is a work in progress. What I have also noticed is that each time I am able to replace criticism and perfectionism with compassion, I feel not only less stressed but also freer. Apparently, that is not unusual.
How do you accept that nobody is perfect? If I could give you five tips to help you accept who you are, they would be these:
See your perceived flaws in a whole new light. Nothing is ever completely good or completely bad.
Practice gratitude daily.
Recognize that you are not your thoughts.
Be vulnerable with others.
Look after yourself.
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