Are you a perfectionist person? In today’s society it seems that perfectionism should be the goal of human beings, given the insatiable search for success. We may think that being a perfectionist could help us achieve our goals more easily and achieve success sooner, however, an excess of perfectionism has been related to a greater predisposition to suffer from anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders or abuse. of consumption, such as alcohol.
The search for perfectionism can help us improve our goals, but taking this trait to the extreme can lead to serious consequences. If you are interested in knowing the drawbacks and characteristics of this type of personality, continue reading this Psychology-Online article: perfectionist personality: meaning, characteristics and defects.
Perfectionist personality: meaning
What is the perfectionist personality? The perfectionistic personality, also called ananchastic personality, is defined as a set of emotions, cognitions, behaviors and interpretations, on which the person has the tendency to fixate very high expectations and evaluates its evolution against its goals very rigidly. The perfectionist places value on himself based on his self-imposed achievements. Faced with this, the perfectionist will seek to achieve perfection in everything he sets out to do. It is considered a stable personality trait, which already manifests itself in childhood.
Perfectionist personality: characteristics
The traits of the perfectionist personality or ananchastic personality are:
- High self-evaluations: the perfectionist sets very high standards for himself, about which he doubts his performance, believing that he will fail. The critical evaluation of his own potential often causes him to minimize his achievements with cognitive biases such as: “it was very easy, everyone could have done it.”
- Dichotomous thinking: self-assessment about achievement or failure leads them to polarized thinking, in which all their actions translate into all or nothing, that is, if they have failed in one of their goals, they feel that they have failed in everything.
- Self-criticism and negative self-evaluation: those with dichotomous thinking, the fear of failure and constant doubts about their abilities and the performance of their goals, make them constantly produce negative self-evaluations and criticisms about themselves.
- Insecurity about oneself: the perfectionist personality is closely related to feelings of lack of achievement, since the scope of their achievements is what gives them their own personal worth, in the same way that failure leads them to think that they are worthless. It is the same insecurity in themselves that leads them to need to achieve their goals, in order to prove to themselves that they are good at something.
- Importance of other people’s opinions: the fear of suffering rejection or of others not seeing in them what they expect, causes them to often act based on how they believe they will be accepted by others and not how they are.
- Own merits: when thinking about a perfectionist who wants to achieve his deepest ambitions, perhaps we think of a person who will do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, even if it means taking advantage or harming third parties. In the case of perfectionist people, the opposite happens, this trait causes the person to seek to achieve their goals through their own merits and will never try to achieve their goals at the cost of malicious intentions towards third parties.
- Need for control and order: one of the main characteristics of this trait is the need for control, but not only in one’s own actions, but also in those of others. The perfectionist person will seek his loved ones to exploit their maximum potential, because he believes in them, but his demands towards the other can cause emotional damage to the other person. On the other hand, they tend to have an excessive need for order and cleanliness.
- Responsibility: their high levels of demand lead them to be very responsible people regarding the tasks they have to do.
Advantages of the perfectionist personality
Perfectionism in psychology can have advantages or disadvantages depending on the degree to which the perfectionistic personality trait is manifested. Faced with the high self-demand they have of themselves, they have a tendency to be very hardworking people and who always seek to achieve the best results, for this reason they tend to be great professionals. In addition to that, they don’t give up easily facing different obstacles, trying to assess all possible alternative solutions. They maintain attitudes of perseverance and perseverancewithout paying importance to the time they must dedicate to their objective and the emotional wear and tear that it may cause them.
Adaptive perfectionism It can bring us many advantages in our daily lives, since people with adaptive perfectionism are those who struggle motivated to achieve their goalsHowever, failure does not generate such a high emotional cost or so much suffering. Faced with failure, these people continue to fight despite the difficulties, without falling or going into a loop, learning from their mistakes.
Perfectionistic personality defects
Perfectionism in psychology can also have drawbacks depending on the degree to which the trait is manifested. The consequences of the non-adaptive perfectionist personality are the following:
- Rigidity: the dichotomous thinking on which perfectionistic people act, about “all or nothing” and the need for order and control in their lives, causes that on many occasions these personality traits lead to inflexibility, with great difficulty in letting go. led by spontaneity, thereby configuring very rigid thoughts.
- Obsession: the same one mentioned previously, the need to achieve perfection in all your objectives and the critical and negative assessment of oneself, which causes nothing to ever seem perfect enough, can develop obsessions.
- Maintenance of insecurity: in the characteristics of the perfectionist person we have talked about the insecure personality that is the basis, on which the perfectionist personality is based. Fear of failure and doubts about their abilities in achieving their goals, which cause them to never feel satisfied, maintain low levels of self-confidence.
- Tendency towards pessimism: faced with the insatiable search for perfection, the perfectionist conceives this perfection as his goal, without giving importance to the effort that has been involved. However, before the Fear of failure and the result is not good enough, he always tends to anticipate events in a negative, pessimistic and fatalistic way.
- Anxiety and depression: the perfectionist personality is related to high levels of anxiety and high chances of suffering from a depressive disorder. What your goals entail causes high levels of anxiety and frustration due to the criticism of not having done enough, which can lead to depressive feelings.
- Irritability and tension: in addition to anxious and depressive feelings, they tend to exhibit tense behaviors and be irritable most of the time, because they always feel dissatisfied. Faced with this, they have little ability to enjoy what they are doing, enjoy spontaneity and flexibility, because of their very structured way of doing things.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
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