What Is Perfectionism?

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Perfectionists struggle to find joy in immediate experiences, which often fail to live up to expectations.

Rather than relying on experiences to make you happy, you can learn to rely on your tendency to overthink.

Overthinking can provide a bird's-eye view of your life, which can help you see how your experiences mattered.

Unlike with cognitive behavior therapy, where new thoughts help you overcome old feelings, many who are struggling with depression hope for positive, new experiences, and the positive, new feelings they elicit, to help them overcome old thoughts. When people say they want something external to help them feel better, they tend to mean they hope for something to make them happy by silencing their overactive mind. While this is possible in some cases, it’s much harder with perfectionism, where few external things or experiences elicit joy because few of them live up to your standards.

So, hoping for immediate gratification is akin to a dice roll. It isn’t that it never happens; it’s that it can’t be relied on. However, since perfectionists are overthinkers (i.e., people who think deeply about topics, even when unnecessary), it’s possible to use the ability to project yourself into the future and your ability to take a bird’s-eye view to your advantage. On its own, overthinking isn’t good or bad; the label depends on your goals, even if unconscious. If overthinking is making you worry about the distant future or obsess over your essence, whether you’re truly a good or bad person, then it should be considered harmful. However, if used to assess meaning and cultivate joy, then it’s a necessity.

As a perfectionist, it’s challenging for me to feel grateful for much of anything; most of the joy I feel stems from hope, as opposed to real-world experiences. Few of them turn out as wonderful as envisioned, thus few ever silence my mind—I’m always able to find loopholes, indicating why they aren’t important and why they don’t prove anything good about me. This applies to romantic experiences as well as professional ones. While this reality can easily make someone feel hopeless, it isn’t the entire story. My overthinking mind plays an important role in motivating me despite my seemingly innate inability to find meaning in any particular thing.

I learned to distance myself from my immediate feelings, including disappointment. Whether pursuing a romantic partner or some professional endeavor, like writing for a publication, I mentally zoom out and then assess it. While I try to stay away from essentializing, labeling anything good or bad, the long-term view provides me with enough details to help me make up my mind about whether or not I made a good choice. With writing, for example, while no one post made me happy, even with an inordinately high view-count, my writing over the past, let’s say, year, when I really think about it, does. I’ve used examples from favorite movies and shows, which I didn’t do before; I’ve shared more personal experiences, which I never tended to do; and I received speaking opportunities that I didn’t have in the past. On the whole, it feels as though all of it mattered, despite, again, nothing in particular feeling like it did at the time.

We can make a similar case for romance. While many search for a spark, perfectionists have to be honest with themselves about two things: 1) You hardly ever feel it because of your expectations. 2) When you do, you’re eventually disappointed anyway. Our immediate feelings often aren’t good indicators of a decision’s quality. The exception is when you just absolutely hate something, which differs from apparently lukewarm affection or moderate discomfort. As painful as it may be, and as much as we may need immediate gratification, for perfectionists, any sort of joy, and even gratitude, seems to rely heavily on our minds’ abilities to reason and create meaning from a broader perspective, meaning it takes a lot of work.

However, you’re likely going to overthink anyway. It isn’t as though anything is ever going to completely shut off your mind. The wider perspective made me feel grateful for my experiences as a writer, on the whole, and for repeatedly making the choice to continue writing, despite no grand payoff from any published piece. Since perfectionists always expect a big payoff, they have to reconcile themselves to mainly finding meaning retroactively, where it’s offered. You can feel grateful for experiences that supersede your alternatives (like scrolling on your phone); you can feel proud of yourself for continuing to do something that isn’t by itself pleasurable and maybe even somewhat difficult; and you can see how much your life mattered in the combination of experiences—how they all led somewhere. (Additionally, this sort of perspective makes rejection feel easier, because you can see how it fits the bigger picture.)

Finally, if you wish to essentialize to some degree, you can make the case that these experiences define you. They symbolize your tenacity, conviction, empathy, conscientiousness, and passion, traits that can be discovered only through this sort of lens. Fortunately and unfortunately, your feelings don’t always matter—again, unless we mean moderate-severe pain and/or dislike. For perfectionists, they may matter less than they do for the general population, largely because they’re often based on unreasonable demands. Sometimes, despite your resistance, it’s best to keep going.

What Is Perfectionism?

Take our Perfectionism Test

Find a therapist near me

© Psychology Today