What Is Perfectionism?

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Perfectionists, to feel secure, may obsessively search for a thing’s essence.

Black-and-white thinking contributes to oversimplifying ourselves, others, and life.

We can learn to find meaning in between extremes and essences.

If we think of perfectionism as a response to one’s uncertainty about oneself, a strategy devised to conclusively prove one’s worth, then we can also consider it to be a response to one’s uncertainty about others, in particular, how much they care. Perfectionists struggle with making sense of the world, fluctuating between extremes. This crops up in existential concerns, as well as more common ones. So, the world either feels magical or meaningless. The perfectionist is either brilliant or worthless. Others either care or they don’t. This mindset leaves little room for complexity, betraying a strong preference to consider life in terms of essences.

And the search for or cultivation of them can reasonably be thought of as perfectionism’s ultimate aim. The perfectionist desperately wants the world to be neat and predictable, to know that everything fits everything else, that everything is basically pure. Fundamentally, they struggle with adequately making sense of paradoxes, or the apparent inconsistencies associated with violated expectations. This is, in part, why perfectionists tend to struggle with episodic but deep depression. For example, plagued by doubt in relationships,........

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