Do you feel a lot of pressure to achieve “perfection”? Perhaps you feel that you must look a certain way, that you must do things right so that nobody else judges you, that you need to have a spotless home, or that you should never fail or make a mistake? There can be a lot of pressure to achieve “perfection” in our society.  Yet perfectionism is often something that can drive you down a path towards low self-esteem, anxiety and low mood.

Unhelpful perfectionism is where you set very high standards or goals for yourself and pursue these high standards despite negative consequences arising (eg. feelings of exhaustion or feeling down and anxious).  Often, unhelpful perfectionism involves focusing on one (or two) areas of your life to the detriment of all others.  So, for example, you may spend a lot of time focusing on your work life and this means that you don’t have much of a social life or have enough time to take care of your health. Or it could mean that you worry a lot about how you look and spend hours meal-planning and in the gym. But all this appearance-focus means that you cancel plans with friends and can’t concentrate at work.

Unhelpful perfectionism is different from just having high standards. When you have high standards, you can pursue them without it affecting your self-esteem and how you feel about yourself. Usually when you have unhelpful perfectionism your self-esteem is tied up in whether or not you are achieving your goals.  Here are some key differences between just having high standards and unhelpful perfectionism:

NORMAL HIGH STANDARDS	UNHELPFUL PERFECTIONISM
You set realistic and helpful goals in your life.	You set unrealistically high goals for yourself.
You have a good balance between the different areas in your life eg. between work/ hobbies/ family/ friends/ relaxation/ health etc.	A lot of your time, energy and focus goes into one or two areas of your life.
Going after your goals makes your feel good.	Going after your goals makes you feel anxious, down, stressed or tired.
You motivate yourself to get to your goals in a kind and compassionate way eg. “you can do this, I believe in you”.	You motivate yourself to get to your goals by being very harsh on yourself and very critical of yourself eg. “you are a failure unless you achieve this”.
Once you get to your goal, you congratulate yourself and celebrate what you have achieved.	Once you get to your goal, you are wondering “what is next” and what higher goal you can get to.
You feel good about yourself.	You often feel as though you aren’t “good enough”.

Unhelpful perfectionism can stand in the way of self love because when you are a perfectionist, you tend to only feel good about yourself if you are hitting your unrealistically high standards. Basically, your like and love of yourself is conditional.  True self love should be unconditional and shouldn’t be tied to what you are doing in life, how you look, or what goals you have hit. Really valuing yourself comes from knowing that you are worthy as a person for you who are, irrespective of what you are achieving or doing.

Having unhelpful perfectionism can make any self love you show or any self-confidence you have, very fragile.  Because you may only feel able to show yourself that love when things are going well and you are on track towards your goals.  But if you experience a set-back (which we all do sometimes) such as an illness, injury, loss, change in circumstances or something else, you may then not feel good about yourself due to factors beyond your control.

Also, unhelpful perfectionism tends to involve having a very harsh and critical little voice in your head.  This mean little voice is very incompatible with practising self-love and showing self-compassion. Speaking to yourself with kindness and compassion is a very important aspect of practising self love.

So, yes, there can be a lot of pressure to be “perfect” today.  You may feel the need to look just like that influencer on Instagram, to be earning more money than your friends or to never make a mistake or fail at anything.  But there is really no such thing as “perfect”. We are all different and we are all on our own unique journeys through life. In fact, once we let go of that need to be “perfect”, we often realise what is really important to us in life.  Striving after “perfection” often makes us tie our worth to what we have achieved… when actually, when we really think about it, so many other things are truly most important to us. 

 

Meet the author

Uxshely Carcamo is a psychotherapist, registered nutritionist, hypnotherapist and ex-lawyer. She founded The Food Therapy Clinic (www.thefoodtherapyclinic.com) and helps her clients to re-build their relationship with food, boost their confidence, believe in themselves and feel great about their lives and their bodies.  You can find her on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/your.food.therapist, Facebook here: www.facebook.com/thefoodtherapyclinic and LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/72440873 for some more posts to help you to nurture self-love.