Why perfectionism is bad for us

Should we celebrate our faults and flaws? We were hearing a little earlier about our obsession with social media - which arguably fuels our desire to look immaculate and appear highly successful as often as we can. But Tom Curran says that this quest for perfection is damaging our mental health. Tom’s new book is called The Perfection Trap...

Tom - Absolutely. It does have a definition. It's a combination of two things. The first is excessively high standards, standards that are well beyond comfort, but fused with a very harsh and punitive self criticism when we haven't met those excessive standards. So it's those two things, high standards and high harsh self-criticism, that characterise perfectionism

Chris - Is that, whether it's external, it's someone else or something else, or is it internal? Or is it both? And which one tends to play a bigger role?

Tom - It can be absolutely both. It can be internal, so it could be really rough and hard on ourselves when we've slipped up. 'How could you be so stupid? What were you thinking?' Sort of thing. But it can also be a perception that the outside world and people in the outside world are watching us, judging us and waiting for us to slip up so that they can let us know. So it can absolutely be, uh, both internal and external.

Chris - And what's the evidence, if there is any, that this is getting worse?

Tom - So that's really where my research has risen myself to prominence when it comes to this area of perfectionism, because I was a first researcher to show that perfectionism was rising among young people. And in my book I've updated our data with the most recent numbers. We basically got 25 years worth of data from young people. And we know that perfectionism is rising, rising really fast, but it's that social element of perfectionism we just discussed there. That idea that everyone else and everyone around me expects me to be perfect that's rising really fast. It's up about 40% since 1989.

Chris - And in what way is that impacting on the people concerned? Is it just that people are ending up paralysed by perfectionism? 'I can't be perfect, I can't meet others and my own expectations, therefore I won't do anything?' Or is it harming people in other ways?

Tom - I think it's harming this in a couple of ways. Mental health struggles are very closely tied to perfectionism. Perfectionists tend to be, as I said, very harshly self critical. And they are hypervigilant for other people's approval because the other people's approval tells them that they're good enough when they don't feel good enough inside. And seeking other people's approval leads us to want to be perfect, which if it inherently sets us up for failure, we feel anxious, we feel bad about ourselves, we overcompensate, we strive more. And so we begin to get a really negative cycle of self defeat that starts to get triggered by perfectionism. And so it is really damaging for our mental health. And data is also really clear about its links with performances too. Not only do we have all this kind of psychological distress that comes with perfectionism, but it's not clear that perfectionism has any link with success either.

Chris - That's interesting because I'd always thought that it was those obsessive people who do strive for perfection that ultimately almost set the bar that everyone else strives to meet. We mentioned, or I mentioned earlier, about the question of the online safety bill going through at the moment, making the internet a safe place. It could be easy to overlook its impact on perfectionism then, couldn't it? Is that part and parcel of what they'll be discussing or will there be some provision made for this subject in that?

Tom - I very much hope so because there's a lot of evidence coming through now to suggest that social media and for young girls in particular has quite profound impacts on their sense of self and their sense that other people and everyone else around me is perfect and therefore I must be perfect too. And that has a massive impact on the way that they feel about themselves, that self-esteem. And as I said, lots of data show that that's the case. And I would be very keen to see strides made in the right direction about controlling those limitless images of perfection that are kind of beamed at young people to stop social media companies targeting young people and when they feel vulnerable or insecure with advertisements for material solutions. All of these things we know play into young people's self-esteem. So I'd absolutely love to see that sort of thing going through parliament.

Chris - And just briefly, to what extent are we actually guilty ourselves? Because we filter what we put into online spaces. We don't tell people when we've had a bad day. We only tell them when we've had a really good day or that we got a wonderful present from somebody, or an amazing thing happened which tilts people's perception of what everyone else's life is like and makes us think our own life is poor in comparison, which I think feeds back and contributes to a lot of the damaging effects.

Tom - Absolutely it does. And social media is an echo chamber, and once it becomes a kind of hyper reality of limitless perfection, everybody responds by trying to match or ape those standards. And it is up to us. This is something that is going to be really slow to change if we wait for it to change from the top down. I think we need to start to think about how we can use social media in healthier ways and from the bottom up, create movements and communities within social media that kind of use it for what it should be used for, right? Like enhancing offline relationships, sharing common interests and shared goals. All of those things are wonderful things that social media could be used for. But unfortunately at the moment, it's used more as an area for us to curate our lives. And that's not necessarily healthy.