Living as a perfectionist is incredibly tough: clients talk to me about that all the time

There are times when patterns emerges in my practice. Times when I can see a trend in the discussions I have with clients. Sometimes, there is an obvious trigger or factor which helps explain the trend - for example, the social anxiety that has developed for a number of my clients after COVID and lockdowns, or the difficulties that many have with their mood during the dark, cold, winter months. 

Now, something else. Something I have wanted to write about for a while, but until today haven’t been able to commit pen to paper (fingers to keyboard!). The exam season (for GCSE and A-level students) is likely bringing it to the fore for a number of my clients, but it is a challenge that many of my clients experience, regardless of their age, education and background. It manifests in many different, difficult ways. 

Often with high levels of anxiety; what would be called “OCD” behaviours (although I am cautious about using this term as it is very often misused and trivialised - I am referring to routines and rituals which are involuntary and become a large part of someone’s daily life and can be deeply distressed and stressful - not a mild tendency to be tidy or particular about certain things); panic attacks; procrastination and rumination; low mood and struggles with motivation; intrusive thoughts and/or negative thinking and/or negative self-talk.

Overall, a really tough time. 

This challenge is living life as a perfectionist. 

Let’s start with a definition. This is adapted from two US academic’s work on perfection, by Flett and Hewit: 

(Perfectionism is characterised) “by a person's concern with striving for flawlessness and perfection and is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others' evaluations.” https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-02485-000

Their work looks at the maladaptive (not in our own best interests) nature of perfectionism, which drives people to focus on achieving unattainable ideals or unrealistic goals that can lead to other problems. This is what I discuss on an almost daily basis with clients. Often their distress is caused by a feeling of failure - failure to achieve the goals they have set and/or meet the expectations that they, or what they believe others, have set for them. I also see it often as a fear of failure - they are not actually “failing” to achieve goals and/or meet expectations because they are working, studying, or trying so hard to not let anything (no matter how minor) fall below the standard they believe must be met. These two experiences - the perception of failing, or the fear of failing - becomes their overriding life experience and produces extremely high levels of stress and anxiety, which then needs coping mechanisms to handle. 

This high level of stress and anxiety is itself draining and painful but is often exacerbated by the things the client feels they have to do to handle the stress and anxiety. That is where the OCD and other actions come in, which themselves are draining and distressing. It becomes a vicious and painful cycle, which is hard to break. It becomes hard to break often because the client believes that if they stop doing the coping stuff (working incredibly long hours; using counting rituals; completing routines with their phones, or tapping, or repeating phrases or words to ward off the negative thoughts) things will get even worse. The perfectionism which drove the original anxiety now is driving the maladaptive coping mechanisms, leaving the client needing to do the coping stuff perfectly too, otherwise they face even greater feelings of failure, let down and disappointment. 

I see this most often - but not always - in my female clients, and most often, but not always, in high-achieving, academically and/or professionally-successful people. It is often described to me as an overwhelming pressure to keep achieving the standards and goals they have set for themselves by doing well - whether that be in school, work, sport, music or in any other aspect of their life. This pressure - which is (in my experience) rarely directly articulated by others - often comes from within the client and from their sense that anything less than being the perfect student, colleague, daughter, friend or person, will result in others (parents, friends, partners, colleagues and others) being disappointed in them.

The pressure on girls and women overlaps a lot with boys and men, but there is something in addition that I experience with many of my clients that is unique for them - the unique pressure being the perfect representation that society (which is still incredibly male-dominated in positions of power and influence) has set for girls and women - a representation that is deeply damaging. 

Sometimes this perfectionism can contribute to needing other coping mechanisms, such as an eating disorder(s), to help the client manage the feelings. As I have written before, eating disorders are never about food, they are about feelings. Sometimes those feelings are of “not being good enough” because the client is not meeting the standards, goals and expectations they have set. Standards, goals and expectations that only a machine could achieve - not a human being. 

These standards, goals and expectations are unrealistic and unsustainable. They cannot be met. If we cannot do something - it is literally impossible - and yet we keep striving to meet it, pushing ourselves harder and harder, we inevitably feel disappointed or worse, when we don’t achieve them. That feeling of failure is hard to take - especially for someone who is not used to failure, having spent years achieving hard stuff and also studying, working and trying so hard every day to avoid failing at anything. No wonder the fear of failure, or the feeling of failing, feels so bitter and painful. 

The conversations I have with clients often focus on the feelings surroundings the perfectionism; why we feel the need to be perfect; who is the perfectionism for; is the perfectionism helping or hindering us; is perfection possible? They also focus on how to break perfectionist cycles and working to reframe “failure” as normal and not a threat to our identity, but the inevitable experience of human beings: trying and failing is healthy and normal. Stumbling, falling and getting back up is how we learn to walk.

As so often, if we think about how we treat others if they experience a setback, make a mistake, or feel they have failed, and compare it to how we treat ourselves in these moments, we will see a big difference. We can be kind to others, suggest they keep it in perspective (“it’s not the end of the world”) and offer words of support, but to ourselves we stick the boot in (“why have you done that; you are useless; you are stupid; you are a disappointment”). 

One client described their perfectionism to me as “totalitarian perfectionism” - a sense of it being overbearing and requiring subservience, as in loyalty to a dictatorship or brutal regime. It got me thinking about a word to sum up the opposite of totalitarianism as a way to charting a course out of it. Freedom. We can free ourselves from this sort of regime - a regime of striving constantly for flawlessness and perfection - because it is within our gift - we are the dictator - we are in power - and perfection is not achievable. 

Freedom means choice and choice means picking something we want and need, not something we feel we have to have.

In the conversations I have with clients about perfectionism, I hope to try to help them see an alternative path - one that helps them be happy, not traps them in never-ending cycles of fear and failure. Freedom is choice. And choice means we can pick a life of high standards and stretching goals - it doesn’t mean settling for second best - but it means than rather than striving to reach the moon, we can recognise that enjoying life on earth is more achievable.