The first thing to understand is that perfectionism and anxiety are two different things, and perfectionism is not a mental illness or disorder.
If it is extreme to the point of becoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), that is a different story (more on that later).
But simply being a bit of a perfectionist does not, by itself, cause anxiety or any other mental health condition.
What it does do is make you more susceptible to those conditions and make you more likely to experience them.
How that happens is what this article is about.
Unreasonably High Standards & Inevitable Disappointment Whether you’re applying them to yourself or other people (such as your friends and family), unreasonably high standards will lead to disappointment .
This is because you and everyone else you know are human.
In other words, you and everyone else you know are imperfect and you all even kind of suck sometimes.
It’s ok, we all do.
You’re all good sometimes, too.
Maybe even most of the time.
But not always.
If you have a standard of performance that can only be met even in theory by an omnipotent god or some other superhuman entity, then you will invariably find that neither you nor anyone else you deal with will meet that standard.
You will be disappointed.
And if you’re constantly disappointed every day for years or even for your whole life, you’ll most likely start developing other issues eventually, such as anxiety.
In this way, while perfectionism and anxiety are not the same, they are linked.
But luckily, you can often counter this before it becomes too much of a problem by taking a more big-picture view of things .
Excessive Criticism of Yourself This piggybacks off the previous section.
It’s entirely possible that you expect too much from yourself.
Now, to be clear, it’s ok to have hopes and dreams.
But that’s different from having expectations or demands.
Hoping that you become rich by the age of 40 is fine, especially if you take real steps to achieve that goal.
However, expecting to be rich by age 40 and thinking that you’re a failure or deficient in some other way if you aren’t is unhealthy and unreasonable.
The reality is that, unless they were born into a family that was already wealthy, the vast majority of people in this country and in this world will never be rich or have any of the experiences in life that are unique to rich people.
Not being rich by the age of 40 does not make you a failure; it makes you normal .
The only way to say that this alone determines whether or not you are a failure is to say that both you and the overwhelming majority of humans who have ever lived on this planet are failures, regardless of anything else you’ve done.
And that harshly unrealistic mentality brings us to…
Excessive Criticism of Others Just as you can do harm to yourself psychologically by insisting upon unrealistic standards for yourself, you can also do as much harm to yourself by setting yourself up for disappointment with other people.
What do we mean by this?
Well, imagine if everyone you know and everyone you don’t know is constantly disappointing you and never being as good as you want.
Suppose that none of them ever once live up to your standards .
You’re probably not going to be very happy about that, are you?
And you’re probably going to become more and more convinced over time that everyone around you is too stupid to be trusted, out to get you, or something else that’s going to make you feel like you’re not safe.
And a person who has no sense of safety, security, consistency, or structure is a person who is perfectly situated for a mental health crisis.
Paralysis By Analysis Going back to having unrealistic expectations of yourself, another problem this can cause is that it can prevent you from actually doing anything.
Yes, ironically, the expectation of perfection tends to create a crippling fear of failure that results in inaction.
This is because your fear of failure prevents you from trying new, uncertain things or attempting anything that isn’t a sure success.
And since there is no such thing as a sure success in this world, you just don’t attempt anything . Now, some might say that doing absolutely nothing at all is the ultimate form of failure.
But it’s best not to think in those sorts of terms.
Instead, simply try to ask yourself whether or not you’re happy with being so obsessed with perfection (or near-perfection) that you’re effectively paralyzed.
Now ask yourself whether or not the experience of being paralyzed by fear might also be similar to the experience of anxiety.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder First, don’t self-diagnose.
OCD is an actual condition that some people have, but most people don’t have it.
So the odds are good that you don’t have it either.
The fact that you like your toast a certain way or hate certain fabrics doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re OCD.
However, many people who suffer from perfectionism to the degree that it inhibits their life do suffer from OCD.
And if you think you might be one of those people, professional therapy could be a big help to you.
Even if you don’t get a clinical diagnosis, a good therapist can help you get through some of the counterproductive thought and habit patterns that are holding you back and worsening your perfectionism and anxiety.
But again, don’t diagnose yourself.
Be Good to Yourself We could go a lot more in-depth on this subject, but that’s what therapists and books are for.
And, yes, entire books have been written on this subject alone, lots of them.
But it’s probably best for you to not go down that rabbit hole, lest you just end up burying yourself in dozens of self-help books.
Instead, just read through this article again and really think about each paragraph separately.
Try to identify where these things might be true in your own life.
And if you feel that your perfectionism and anxiety are a bit too overwhelming for you to deal with all by yourself, don’t be afraid to reach out for help.
Needing help sometimes doesn’t make you a failure; it makes you a person.
