perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

Perfectionism is a trait that makes life an endless report card on accomplishments or looks. When healthy, it can be self-motivating and drive you to overcome adversity and achieve success. When unhealthy, it can be a fast and enduring track to unhappiness.

What makes extreme perfectionism so toxic is that while those in its grip desire success, they are most focused on avoiding failure, resulting in a negative orientation. They don’t believe in unconditional love, expecting others’ affection and approval to be dependent on a flawless performance.

If you’re wondering whether you are a perfectionist, there’s a good chance you are—at least to a degree. There's also a good chance you have some investment in being a perfectionist because of the positive connotations of the word "perfect."

Perfectionists are a lot like high achievers, but with some key differences. Here we share the differences, revealing ten telltale signs of a perfectionist — signs that you may be able to spot in yourself or people you know.

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resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

People with perfectionism hold themselves to impossibly high standards. They think what they do is never good enough.

Some people mistakenly believe that perfectionism is a healthy motivator, but that’s not the case. Perfectionism can make you feel unhappy with your life. It can lead to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm. Eventually, it can also lead you to stop trying to succeed. Even mild cases can interfere with your quality of life, affecting your personal relationships, education, or work.

Perfectionism can affect young people as well as adults. Children and teenagers are often driven to be overachievers in their schoolwork as well as activities such as sports, clubs, community service, and jobs. This can lead to an obsession with success. Ultimately, it can interfere with the ability to achieve it.

Perfectionism is a trait that makes life an endless report card on accomplishments or looks. When healthy, it can be self-motivating and drive you to overcome adversity and achieve success. When unhealthy, it can be a fast and enduring track to unhappiness.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

Perfectionism, in psychology, is a broad personality style characterized by a person's concern with striving for flawlessness and perfection and is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others' evaluations. It is best conceptualized as a multidimensional and multilayered personality characteristic, and initially some psychologists thought that there were many positive and negative aspects.

Perfectionism drives people to be concerned with achieving unattainable ideals or unrealistic goals that often lead to many forms of adjustment problems such as depression, anxiety, OCD, OCPD and low self-esteem. These adjustment problems often lead to suicidal thoughts and tendencies and influence or invite other psychological, physical, social, and further achievement problems in children, adolescents, and adults.

Although perfectionist sights can reduce stress, anxiety, and panic, recent data, compiled by British psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, show that perfectionistic tendencies are on the rise among recent generations of young people.

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resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

You can try to overcome perfectionism without relying on therapy. Some things you can do on your own to help manage your perfectionism include:

-Note down the advantages and disadvantages of being a perfectionist. Whenever you find yourself falling back into perfectionism, take another look at the disadvantages and move on.

-Set achievable goals for yourself. Setting attainable goals will keep you from pursuing unattainable perfection. This way, you can achieve your goals with the resources you have.

-Set time limits for tasks and make sure to follow them. To avoid spending excess time trying to perform a task perfectly, create a realistic time limit and stick to it.

-Avoid procrastination. Concentrate on the task instead of the end product. If you can break down your job into smaller, manageable bits to complete one step at a time, you may avoid overworking.

-Remember that mistakes are not bad. Celebrate them.

-Pursue different things that matter to you and make you happy. Avoid focusing on perfecting only one thing.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

The fear of failure can stem from a number of sources. Sometimes this fear might emerge in response to a specific situation. In other cases, it might be related to another mental health condition such as anxiety or depression.

The fear of failure may also be related to being a perfectionist. Because perfectionists have such high expectations for how they expect things to turn out, they may experience a nagging fear that they won't live up to those often unrealistically high standards.

This article discusses the signs of a fear of failure and what causes this fear. It also explores treatments that can help and how to prevent this fear from holding you back.

A fear of failure can produce emotional and behavioral symptoms. Some of the common signs of this fear include:

-Anxiety

-Avoidance

-Feeling a loss of control

-Helplessness

-Powerlessness

In addition to emotional and behavioral symptoms, people with a fear of failure may also experience physical symptoms including rapid heart rate, chest tightness, trembling, dizziness, lightheadedness, sweating, and digestive problems.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#perfectionism

Self-doubt is closely linked to self-esteem. And according to Schiraldi (2007), our self-esteem is built on top of three building blocks:

-Unconditional self-worth. A sense that our worth is neither increased nor decreased by external factors like the way people treat us, our decisions, or the amount of money we make.

-Unconditional love. Permanent love from ourselves and others.

-Growth. Developing desirable personal qualities, making good decisions, and building our strengths.

Thinking through these questions and developing a mindset that helps you maintain your self-worth may help self-doubts from taking over.

Use positive self-talk

Positive self-talk is when we say things to ourselves that are kind, positive, or supportive. Positive self-talk is generally thought to be good for mental health and has even been shown to improve performance (Tod, Hardy, & Oliver, 2011).

​Use affirmations for self-doubt

Positive affirmations may be considered a type of positive self-talk because we repeat statements to ourselves to shift our mindset in ways that make us feel more self-confident and optimistic. For example, we might say, "I am strong and capable", "I am doing my best and that is enough", or "I am capable of anything I put my mind to". These affirmations may help us feel more sure about ourselves even when our lives feel wobbly.

Practice self-compassion

We can likely decrease the negative impact of mistakes and failures by being more compassionate towards ourselves. For example, we might treat ourselves like we would treat a friend, replace our inner critic with an inner cheerleader, or remind ourselves that we are only human and we deserve to be treated kindly, at the very least by ourselves.

Find your strengths

Rather than focusing on your weaknesses or challenges, it can be helpful to focus more on your strengths. First, find your strengths by asking yourself what you're good at. Then try to focus on these strengths when and if you find that you are doubting yourself.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

1. You have very high standards for yourself and others.

While expecting a lot out of yourself isn’t a bad thing, expecting perfection can cause more stress and anxiety than you need.

This becomes a major obstacle when you are up against a deadline. Perfectionists will keep tweaking and tweaking until they think that whatever it is that they are working on is totally perfect.

This also causes issues if you are working in a group with others. They may think that you are being critical of what they are doing, and stop attempting to help.

2. You can’t stop thinking about it when you mess up.

We all make mistakes. If you aren’t making mistakes then you aren’t truly pushing yourself to become the best version of yourself that you can be.

Perfectionists get very upset when they make mistakes. Failure isn’t an option for perfectionists, even though failure is the best way to actually build confidence in yourself.

If you catch yourself being too self critical after making a mistake, then take a step back and remind yourself that mistakes are the best way to learn and get better.

3. You are highly focused on results.

Setting goals is an important part of personal development, but if you are only focused on the results of those goals then you will never be able to achieve your full potential.

The problems arise when you are so hyper focused on the results that you forget to trust the process. Part of achieving the most out of life is learning what processes work best for you.

I talk more about how achieving your goals and dreams depend totally on the processes that you have in place for yourself in my goal setting guide. It totally changed the way I do things when I started to understand to look at the small daily actions that I’m taking rather than just looking at the results.

4. You procrastinate. A lot.

This is one of the effects of a few of the signs that we talked about above. You are hyper critical of yourself. You are afraid of failure. You can’t stop thinking about it when you mess up. So you just don’t do anything.

You put everything off until the last minute because you know that as soon as you start on the task, you will start stressing and judging yourself. It makes you so much less productive when you expect perfection from yourself.

5. You never celebrate your successes.

Being a perfectionist means that no matter how well you do something, you will always think that you can do better.

You could give a killer presentation, build an awesome project, or even write an amazing article, but you will still feel like you should have done better.

It’s hard to be a perfectionist for this reason alone, not to mention all of the others that we talked about. It means that you can never be happy with your performance.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism

#MentalHealth #perfectionism

Perfectionism is often seen as a positive trait that increases your chances of success, but it can lead to self-defeating thoughts or behaviors that make it harder to achieve goals. It may also cause stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. People who strive for perfection out of feelings of inadequacy or failure may find it helpful to speak with a therapist; this can often help people manage excessive self-criticism.

Perfectionism is often defined as the need to be or appear to be perfect, or even to believe that it’s possible to achieve perfection. It is typically viewed as a positive trait rather than a flaw. People may use the term “healthy perfectionism” to describe or justify perfectionistic behavior.

Brené Brown, a writer and research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, distinguishes between perfectionism and healthy behavior. She says, "Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfection is not about healthy achievement and growth." She explains that perfectionism is used by many people as a shield to protect against the pain of blame, judgment, or shame.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/how-to-overcome-perfectionism