Perfectionism and hyper-criticism
In the Western society we live in, every one of us is constantly pushed to improve and always give our best. Perfectionism is present in many areas of our life: work, school, social relationships, taking care of how we look, and so on.
From a young age, most of us learn that to gain other people's approval we have to meet certain standards of behavior. Beyond these external pressures, many people also feel a strong inner drive to reach or maintain certain levels of performance.
It would be useful to ask ourselves a question: are we talking about perfectionism, or simply a healthy desire to improve aimed at reaching important life goals?
Perfectionism becomes unhealthy when standards are excessively high and unrealistic, well beyond what is actually possible, and it can show some of these features:
- Expectations so unreasonable they often hurt one's own performance;
- Reading any mistake as a sign of failure;
- Harsh self-evaluations based on all-or-nothing thinking;
- Lack of trust in one's own abilities;
- Overestimating the expectations of others;
- Fear of being judged.
Perfectionism often walks hand in hand with hyper-criticism: extremely strict self-imposed standards combine with the inability to accept one's own mistakes. Bringing these two together is very hard, which is why if you add a dose of hyper-criticism on top of perfectionism, even when you reach your goals something will still feel off, because you took too long, you should have done it sooner, it isn't the way you expected, and so on.
Pleasure is an essential and necessary ingredient for pursuing our goals. Human beings work this way, we want gratification. Otherwise we lose motivation and the joy of doing things.
Succeeding in things actually depends on the balance between duty and pleasure. They are two interdependent and necessary dimensions.
