The fear of not doing it perfectly

Three perfectionisms

The psychologists Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett, in a paper published in 1991, distinguished three forms: demanding perfection of yourself, demanding it of others, and believing that it is others who demand it of you. In that same paper, with 77 psychiatric patients, each form was related in a different way to different psychological problems.

The third has something especially hard about it: someone who feels they will only be loved if they never fail lives with an exam that never ends.

More and more common

Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill brought together, in a 2019 meta-analysis, data from more than forty thousand university students in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom who answered the same questionnaire between 1989 and 2016. All three forms of perfectionism rose over the years. The one that grew most was the feeling that other people expect more of you.

Knowing this can lift a little of the weight: as well as being part of who you are, it is something in the air around you.

It is not the same as doing things well

Wanting to do something well feels good and lets you enjoy what you have achieved. Perfectionism does not let you enjoy it: when something goes well, all you see is what was missing. That is why it sometimes leads not to doing more, but to putting things off or never starting.

It also weighs on your mood. A 2017 meta-analysis of 284 studies found that perfectionism is associated with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders, among other problems. Its authors see it as a factor that turns up in many different kinds of distress.

What helps

• Trying handing in something “good enough” and seeing what happens. Almost nothing ever does.
• Setting yourself a time for each task, and stopping when it is up.
• Asking yourself what you would say to someone else who had done the same. That way of speaking to yourself has a name: self-compassion.
• Telling someone about a mistake out loud. It loses its force when you say it.
• Remembering that people love you for how you are with them, not for your marks.

A practical way to start is to choose one small task this week, an email, a meal or a drawing, and decide beforehand when it will count as finished. When you are done, write down what you feared would happen and what actually happened. Over time, that list shows that the disaster you foresee hardly ever arrives, and that “good enough” usually satisfies other people long before it satisfies you.

When a mistake turns into shame

Perfectionists find it hard to separate “I got it wrong” from “I am no good”. That is the difference between guilt, which focuses on what you did, and shame, which focuses on what you believe you are. We explain it in the article on guilt and shame.

Practising with small mistakes, on purpose, helps you see that getting something wrong does not break everything.

It can be as simple as sending a message without checking it a third time, or leaving a task with one detail unpolished, and noticing how you feel. The unease will probably rise for a while and then settle, and each time you see that happen, the fear loses a little ground.

When to ask for help

If the fear of failing stops you starting things, keeps you awake, leads you to control food or your body very tightly, or comes with a sadness that won’t lift, it may help to talk it over with your GP or a psychologist. Asking for help is not another exam you have to pass.

Saying it just as it is

In A shared universe nobody corrects what you write. You can light a star with what weighs on you, without it having to be well put, in no more than 280 characters and without anyone knowing who you are.

Other people can keep it company with a tap or a few words, and if one day the thing you feared goes well, you can come back and tell them.