Perfectionism and anxiety

"'Good enough' may be good enough for other people, but it's never good enough for me."

"When I make a mistake, I feel like a failure."

"I study hard because I'm afraid to disappoint my parents."

Do any of these lines sound like something you'd say? Then you're a perfectionist.

According to "Pitfalls of Perfectionism", from Psychology Today, perfectionists "are made and not born, commonly at an early age." Once established, perfectionism tends to get in the way of one's ability to live life to the fullest:

Perfectionism seeps into the psyche and creates a pervasive personality style. It keeps people from engaging in challenging experiences; they don't get to discover what they truly like or to create their own identities. Perfectionism reduces playfulness and the assimilation of knowledge; if you're always focused on your own performance and on defending yourself, you can't focus on learning a task. Here's the cosmic thigh-slapper: Because it lowers the ability to take risks, perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation—exactly what's not adaptive in the global marketplace.

Yet, it does more. It is a steady source of negative emotions; rather than reaching toward something positive, those in its grip are focused on the very thing they most want to avoid—negative evaluation. Perfectionism, then, is an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation—reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.

Perfectionism, of course, leads to heaps and loads of anxiety. Nobody's perfect, after all -- so expecting perfection is by definition a doomed enterprise. No wonder, then, that it's so prevalent among those with anxiety disorders:

Perfectionists fear that a mistake will lead others to think badly of them; the performance aspect is intrinsic to their view of themselves. They are haunted by uncertainty whenever they complete a task, which makes them reluctant to consider something finished. "People may not necessarily believe they made a mistake," explains Frost, "they're just not quite sure; they doubt the quality of their actions." Intolerance for uncertainty characterizes obsessive compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, too.

Unfortunately, according to the article, more and more Americans are growing up to be perfectionists. Why? Parents who overschedule and overmanage their kids' lives:

"I don't understand it," one bewildered student told me, speaking for the five others seated around the table during lunch at a small residential college in the Northeast. "My parents were perfectly happy to get Bs and Cs when they were in college. But they expect me to get As." The others nodded in agreement. Today's hothouse parents are not only over-involved in their children's lives, they demand perfection from them in school.

And if ever there was a blueprint for breeding psychological distress, that's it.

So lay off your kids. Let 'em know it's okay to make mistakes -- that mistakes are in fact valuable, in that they provide important lessons. I don't mean you should stop holding your kids to high standards, just that you should strive to let them know you'll love them just as much whether they succeed or fail in whatever they do. Maybe, just maybe, it'll give them the self-acceptance and flexibility of thought and behavior they need to avoid developing panic, anxiety, or OCD.