What Is Perfectionism?

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Perfectionism is a defense against self-doubt.

Perfectionists tend to believe that being perfect means being happy.

We can move away from pursuing perfection to learning how to tolerate complexity.

Perfectionism is the pursuit of a perfect environment and/or a perfect self in order to have perfect thoughts about oneself. Perfectionism and obsessiveness, more broadly, are defenses aimed at managing self-doubt. At their core is a mind plagued by extremely negative thinking about one’s essential self. Self-doubt can manifest with thoughts like “Am I bad?” “Am I ugly?” “Am I unlovable?” And the perfectionist often finds a plethora of purportedly good reasons to answer yes.

To attempt to challenge a mind prone to personalizing (believing that every bad thing that happens to them is because of them), mental filtering (being unable to perceive the positive aspects of their life), overgeneralizing (perceiving everything about them as bad, in this case), and disqualifying positives (finding reasons to disbelieve they have positive traits), perfectionists turn from thought to action. Believing they can’t directly tame their thoughts, they instead believe they can tame their exterior lives. This, in large part, explains their fixation on control.

So, they may become obsessed with changing and improving their appearance........

© Psychology Today