Pursuit of perfection has its price

By Martin Faber Jun 23, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Hamburg - Professional athletes and musicians are often perfectionists. They have to be or else they never would have made it to the top.

But there are people who make themselves sick by always striving to be perfect. When they fall short of that goal, the result is the opposite of perfection. They are constantly overloaded with challenges and their lives become very one-sided.

Psychologists say they would live better lives if they could focus on their strengths and skills rather than trying constantly to get rid of their faults.

The desire to improve is entirely normal, but psychologists say there is a difference between healthy perfectionism and the type of perfectionism that can limit one's life instead of making it better.

'Perfectionism becomes a problem for people when fulfilling their own high expectations becomes too strenuous and they suffer,' said Christine Altstoetter-Gleich, a psychologist at the University of Landau in Germany. These so-called dysfunctional perfectionists are seldom satisfied with their achievements. 'When they can't come to terms with the standards they set for themselves, they can't deal with it.'

Because they seldom reach their nearly impossible goals, they are more likely than other people to have the feeling that they are failing.

'Their self-esteem is strongly linked to success and performance,' said psychotherapist Nils Spitzer of a behavioural therapy institute in Wuerzburg. 'If they feel their own achievements are poor, they devalue their entire personality and they feel like total losers in all areas of their life.'

Scientists believe the cause stems from how a person was raised. Most likely they had parents who were demanding but emotionally cold. That meant the child received recognition when things went well and his or her mistakes were identified more readily than their achievements, said Altstoetter-Gleich.

Such negative tendencies were then reinforced through similar experiences in life, and an unhealthy struggle with perfectionism led to the feeling of being perpetually overworked. Stress, withdrawal, eating and sleep disorders, burnout and depression can result.

The path away from perfectionism, however, doesn't lie in simply dropping all of one's high expectations.

'Dysfunctional perfectionists should think about what they actually want, where their skills lie and how much energy they would actually like to invest in a particular area of life,' said Altstoetter-Gleich. 'Depending on how an individual sets his or her priorities, there can easily be areas in which he or she can raise her expectations.'

At the same time dysfunctional perfectionists must recognize their own limits in other areas in which they are not so good.

This is, however, precisely what is so difficult for perfectionists. They want their abilities to shine in everything they do, but in the end they lead a one-sided life. This is what they need to be made aware of, said Doris Maertin, an author and life coach from Augsburg.

Her advice is it's better to be able to accomplish a few things well than do just one thing perfectly. The time and energy saved could be used in areas of life where the person feels they come up short.

People with unhealthy perfectionism often are insecure and lose themselves in details. There are some simple experiments that can help.

'Dysfunctional perfectionists should try to overcome their problem by making a decision about something insignificant in their lives within a short period of time,' said Spitzer. 'This exercise can strengthen their intuition and help them learn to find answers with a limited number of arguments.'