People, in general, perceive perfectionism as a positive concept. However, ruminating about your imperfections and attempting to painstakingly correct them can threaten mental health, causing anxiety and dissatisfaction.
Although researchers and experts can't compromise on a single definition, perfectionism generally refers to the state of placing excessively high expectations on yourself and being very concerned about reaching these expectations, thus being overly critical of yourself.
Simply put, it is "seeking perfection." People with this type of perfection-seeking are often overly focused on failure, tend to ignore their successes, place greater meaning on their mistakes, and have negative feelings about themselves.
Turkish clinical psychologist, Nida Bal, commented on the subject providing information about perfectionism, which affects social relations, business life and the academic life of an individual. Mentioning that the perfectionist structure lays the groundwork for many psychopathological disorders, Bal outlined the thinking models of perfectionists.
“All or nothing thought model, the desire to constantly postpone responsibilities with the motive of not being complete, the desire to control one after the other, the person's over-concern with one's appearance, feeling defective, having difficulty in attempting, withdrawing with the motive of being incomplete, the feeling of postponing things, feelings of inadequacy and unhappiness,” she said.
“The factors that trigger or create the perfectionist structure are hidden in the person's schemas. It consists of our first automatic thought schemes that come to our minds in the face of events. People involved in our lives during our childhood, our peer relations, teachers, in short, the environmental factors of that period lay the foundations of our mentality, similar to software coding. In our future lives, we feed our feelings toward events with these thought patterns and these feelings dictate our behaviors. When a person discovers their schemas, they can also manage their behavior with the awareness of their thoughts," she added.
According to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program, our thoughts are related to our emotions and behaviors. A person is in need of therapist support if that negative thinking pattern starts disrupting daily life. Through behavioral techniques and therapists, perfectionist rumination can be avoided.
