Perfectionism
Perfectionism is holding yourself to standards so high that falling short feels like failing as a person. Researchers split it in two: high standards, called perfectionistic strivings, and the fear of mistakes and harsh self-criticism, called perfectionistic concerns.1 It's not a diagnosis. Among college students in the US, Canada and the UK, it rose from 1989 to 2016.2
Take one "If it isn't perfect, it's a failure" thought and look at it step by step. Nothing you type leaves your device.
The moment
Just the facts, as a camera would record them.
If writing this out leaves you feeling worse, it's fine to stop and come back later, or to talk to someone you trust. If you're thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US, or see crisis resources.
Research links perfectionism with suicidal thoughts.3 If you're having them, you don't have to wait until things get worse to reach out.
Who the demand comes from
In 1991 Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett sorted perfectionism into three kinds by asking a simple question: whose standard is it?4 The examples are ours, written for this page.
Self-oriented
You demand perfection of yourself.4
"I got an A minus. Why wasn't it an A?"
Other-oriented
You demand it of other people.4
"If I let him load the dishwasher, I'll just have to redo it."
Socially prescribed
You believe other people demand it of you, and will judge you if you fall short.4
"Everyone at work expects me to have the answer. If I say I don't know, they'll see I'm not good enough."
The text rewritten four times
Day to day, it looks more like these five habits.
Waiting for perfect conditions
When the result has to be flawless, starting feels risky, so the task waits. The procrastination page follows that loop further.
"I'll start the application when I have a whole free weekend to do it properly."
Checking and redoing
The email gets reread eight times. The slide gets rebuilt at midnight.
"I've rewritten this two-line text four times. It's to my friend."
Moving the goalposts
Hit a goal and it stops counting, and a harder one takes its place.5
"Running a 10K was supposed to feel like something. Now I just think about the half marathon."
Harsh self-talk after a mistake
One error outweighs everything that went right.5 CBT calls it all-or-nothing thinking.
"I stumbled over one word in the toast. The whole thing was a disaster."
Worth tied to results
How you feel about yourself rises and falls with your last performance.5
"I'm only as good as this quarter's numbers."
- Set the bar: Pick a standard that's hard to meet.
- Push: Work long and check often to meet it.
- Fall short: Criticize yourself harshly.
- Or meet it: Decide it was too easy, so it doesn't count.
- Raise the bar: The next standard is higher, and the cycle starts again.
Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper and Christopher Fairburn described this cycle in 2002.5 Look at steps 3 and 4.
Either way the task goes, the standard wins.
Relief for a minute, then the list
A finished task brings a minute of relief, and then a list of everything that could have been better. Praise feels uncomfortable, because you know the flaws the other person didn't see.
The tasks you care about most can become the ones you avoid. Stopping can be hard, since "good enough" feels like giving up, and rest may only feel earned once everything is done, which it never is.
Some of the pressure seems to come from outside you, from parents, a boss or social media. That's the socially prescribed kind, and it has risen fastest.2
The pressure from outside rose most
Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill pooled 164 samples covering 41,641 college students in the US, Canada and the UK, tested between 1989 and 2016, and all three kinds of perfectionism went up.2
The socially prescribed kind, the sense that everyone around you expects flawless work, rose by 33%, against 10% for the self-oriented kind and 16% for the other-oriented kind.6
Is there a healthy kind?
Some researchers argue that high strivings are fine as long as you aren't consumed by fear of mistakes.1 The data are less kind to that idea, because when a meta-analysis pooled 284 studies, it linked both strivings and concerns with symptoms of depression, anxiety, OCD and eating disorders.7
High strivings, then, aren't automatically healthy.7 Shafran and colleagues locate the core problem somewhere else: self-worth that depends on meeting the standard.5
The link to suicidal thoughts
Perfectionism was linked with suicidal thoughts across 45 studies with 11,747 people, and the socially prescribed kind also predicted those thoughts increasing over time.3 Strivings were linked too, which the authors said "draws into question" the idea that such strivings are healthy.3
If you're having thoughts like these, please reach out now. Help is free and confidential.
Fifteen trials of CBT for perfectionism
A 2022 meta-analysis gathered 15 randomized trials with 912 people, average age 23.8 Compared with the control groups, CBT for perfectionism lowered perfectionism itself, and symptoms of depression, anxiety and eating disorders went down along with it.8
There's a catch. The trials were few, and they didn't compare CBT with other active treatments.8
A good-enough week
These five steps borrow from the CBT approach in those trials. Treat them as practice, with no promise attached.
- Write the standard down before you start. "Done" means three pages, proofread once, sent by Friday. When you finish, check the work against what you wrote, and ignore what you now think it should have been.
- Run a good-enough experiment. Pick one low-stakes task and do it well enough. Before you start, write what you fear will happen; afterward, write what did. The behavioral experiment page walks through the steps.
- Set a time limit. Give the email 10 minutes and the slide 30, then stop. A limit replaces "until it's perfect" with an end you can see.
- Catch the "should". "I should be able to do this without mistakes" is a should statement. Write it on paper and ask what you'd say to a friend who said it.
- Count the whole record. After a mistake, list three things that went right in the same task, which is moving the goalposts in reverse.
Think of one thing you finished this week. What was your standard before you started, did you meet it, and what did you tell yourself once it was done?
Answer this with JoyIf it's costing you hours
Get help if perfectionism takes hours out of your days, keeps you from starting things, or comes with low mood, anxiety or disordered eating. Ask about CBT, the approach tested in the trials above.8
Joyful is an AI journaling companion, not therapy. Joy can show you the pattern in your own entries, and that's where its job ends.
Questions people ask
Is perfectionism OCD or ADHD?
It's neither one. Perfectionism is a way of thinking that turns up alongside many conditions, OCD, anxiety, depression and eating disorders among them, which is why researchers call it transdiagnostic.7 A doctor or psychologist can assess you if you're wondering about a specific condition.
Can perfectionism exist on its own?
Yes. It runs across several conditions, and it can also show up with none of them.7 It's worth working on either way.
Is perfectionism a form of anxiety?
It isn't classed as one, and the two often travel together.7 Fear of mistakes and of other people's judgment sits at the center of both.