Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Marks a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
The American Psychological Association
defines perfectionism as,
"the tendency to demand of others or oneself
an extremely or even flawless level of performance,
in excess of what is required by the situation."
I like that definition, because it focuses on perfectionism
as a performance demand, it's not about attributes per se,
meaning you're not hung up on having flawless skin,
you're focused on the things you do to get what you have.
There's a certain amount of healthy perfectionism
and we call it perfectionistic strivings.
If this is you, you're naturally more driven,
you push yourself to be excellent and you set high goals
for yourself, and you can even overdo it sometimes
when you try to meet these goals
by losing sleep or neglecting other obligations.
But since you're not pathologically perfectionistic,
you can reign in your perfectionistic strivings.
You can accept falling short of your goals
or accept things being good enough.
You may be disappointed, but good enough
doesn't chip away at your self esteem.
So what does pathological perfectionism look like?
There's been a lot of research on this topic leading
to the development of perfectionism scales
that measure how perfectionistic you are.
One such scale is the multidimensional
perfectionism scale by Dr. Randy Frost.
The scale uses questions
to measure six facets of perfectionism.
The first two are having concerns over making mistakes,
and having doubts about your performance.
With these facets, you hate being less
than the best at something.
You measure yourself or you measure yourself worth
by your ability to perform without making mistakes.
You assume people like you more
if you don't make any mistakes,
and if you fail at something, you see yourself as a failure.
The person with a healthy level of perfectionism
can separate their failed performance
from their view of themselves.
Number three is setting high personal standards.
With this facet you aren't comfortable lowering the bar,
the high standards feel natural and required.
Number four is having high standards set by your parents.
You feel your parents wanted you
to be the best at everything.
You may wonder, why should this be a problem
if I'm out of their home?
Because your parents don't need to be in your home,
they live up here in your head.
And even if you don't agree with everything
they want for you, you still internalize their wishes.
And what you do with those internalized wishes
depends on your personality makeup.
If what they want is in alignment with what you want,
you adopt their beliefs and they become your own.
If you're less prone to perfectionism,
you can modify their wishes to make them a better fit
for what you're capable of.
If you reject their wishes, the conflict between
what they want and what you want
can turn into anxiety and neuroticism
as you struggle to reconcile the two opposing views.
I talk about what it means to be neurotic in this video.
A fifth facet or aspect of perfectionism
is experiencing your parents as excessively critical.
You may feel like your parents never allowed you
to make mistakes, or you always had to outperform people
to get their approval.
The last facet is being over focused
on organization and order.
And with this facet being neat and orderly in all things
is very important to you.
A person with perfectionism may score high
on some of the facets and low on others.
The big three that predict more emotional
and interpersonal problems are concerned over mistakes,
doubting your performance, and parental criticism.
And I think the reason that these are the most impactful
is because these are the ones that have
the most direct impact on how you feel about yourself.
Perfectionism can show itself in many forms,
it can be a part of a personality disorder
like obsessive compulsive personality,
avoidant personality, and narcissistic personality,
but it can also be underneath the surface
of anxiety and depression.
Think about it, if you're anxious and insecure
you can defend against those thoughts and emotions
by making sure that things are just so,
or aiming for perfection to reassure yourself
that you're capable.
Restarting a project and redoing it until it's right,
can decrease your fear of being rejected or criticized.
Interestingly enough, the compulsive checking
with obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD,
can be driven by some perfectionism,
but it's not always the root cause.
People with OCD use checking to reduce anxiety
related to an obsession.
For example, I may need to count
these ceiling tiles 15 times to offset my fear
that my house is going to burn down.
Stopping at 14 is unacceptable
not because I'm perfectionistic,
but I have it set in my head that it takes a full 15 times
to prevent whatever disaster I'm worried about.
OCD obsessions can be very rigid like that,
but the rigidity is not perfectionism
that stems from a distorted self-concept.
Another place we see perfectionism
is with the eating disorders
like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
And so that makes it important
to address perfectionism as a treatment issue.
And lastly, perfectionism
is a hidden villain behind procrastination,
because you need things to be perfect
and you will work overtime to make it so,
you may avoid committing to things
or put off starting something because you know
that once you jump in, you're all in
and sometimes it's a burdensome commitment.
What can you do to help your perfectionism?
Perfectionism is so multidimensional
that there's not one approach.
What helps you depends on what facets
of it affect you the most,
and what purpose the perfectionism serves.
Does it mask anxiety or depression?
Is it a way to compensate for low self-esteem?
Is it a way to feel in control?
Figuring this out take some self reflection
and a therapist can help you recognize
your perfectionistic tendencies.
And that brings me to today's sponsor
of this video , BetterHelp.
BetterHelp is a platform that will match you
with the therapist for a very reasonable flat monthly fee.
You can have a weekly virtual meeting with your therapist
and send messages or ask questions every day if you want to.
They have group webinars on general help topics,
and you get an online journal with daily prompts
that you can share with your therapist.
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Some of the goals of therapy for perfectionism
are exploring your strengths, improving your self-esteem,
and developing more balanced thinking.
If you don't have a therapist,
I have some free tools to get you started.
One is my self-esteem video that includes
a strengths exploration worksheet that you can download,
the download links are in the description.
Number two is my video
on identifying self-defeating thoughts.
I explain eight common distorted thoughts
that anyone can have, and these include beliefs
that keep your perfectionism going.
Two distorted beliefs that I didn't discuss
that are associated with perfectionism are,
ignoring the positive and labeling.
With ignoring the positive, it's as though the only thing
you see are flaws, you overlook any
and all positive attributes of something,
and one less than perfect item takes up
your entire field of view.
With labeling, you label your identity
based on your failures, so if you make a mistake
you're a loser instead of seeing yourself
as a capable person who happen to have lost this time,
and except that you just you won't always get it right.
The cognitive restructuring exercise helps you recognize
these thoughts and patterns and build flexibility
into your belief system.
The third tool is my video on two ways
to challenge your thoughts.
And that video comes with a thought record
and a cognitive restructuring exercise.
The worksheet is one of many ways to challenge
or restructure your thoughts
to make them more flexible and adaptive.
So those are the three resources
to help get you started, now go forth and transform.
Thanks for watching, see you next time.