Antonyms for Perfectionist
Word starting with p. Perfectionist (13 letters)
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You are on the page for the word “Perfectionist”. Here you will find antonyms for the word “Perfectionist”. What are the opposite words for Perfectionist? The word “Blunderer” is the antonym of the word “Perfectionist”. This word belongs to the same part of speech, has a similar lexical meaning, but differs in sound and spelling. The antonym of the word “Perfectionist” (Tyap-lyapschik) can be used in various texts to make the sentence opposite in meaning. Perhaps it will be possible to express your thought more logically in one context or another by choosing the opposite word “Tip-Tapper” for the word “Perfectionist”. The antonym of the word “Perfectionist” has its own meaning. In order to avoid making common mistakes when using antonyms for the word “Perfectionist”, for example “Tyap-lyapschik”, you need to refer to their interpretation and ultimately choose the most appropriate one for the situation.
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Excellent student syndrome
The word “perfectionist” is most often used in a positive sense. Saying “I am a perfectionist in everything!” or “At work he is a perfectionist,” people want to emphasize their own or others’ merits, the desire to do everything perfectly. In fact, if a person is truly a perfectionist, then most likely he faces serious problems in life that can affect his mental and physical health.
“Perfectionism has several stages. The first, in which you can spend your whole life, is the desire to do everything in the best possible way, ideally, and there is nothing wrong with that, because it helps to achieve your goals and success,” explains psychologist Mikhail Khors. - But a significant part of perfectionists go to the next stage, when perfectionism already becomes a disease, turns into patho-perfectionism, a neurasthenic form, when the desire for perfection passes into all spheres of life, at this stage suffering and pain appear if it is not possible to achieve the ideal. The patho-perfectionist will suffer and worry if there is a threat to his ability to do the job in the best possible way. To be irritated, afraid, anxious, even if nothing has happened yet, to experience unpleasant mental states, and they will take away his resources of strength, and there will not be enough strength to realize his aspirations.”
A psychologist compares the state of a failed perfectionist to the withdrawal symptoms of a drug addict. Life becomes gray for him and seems wrong.
“A healthy person, if it didn’t work out, asks himself the questions: “Why didn’t it work out?”, “What mistakes did I make?”, “What resources were not enough?”, then asks the question: “How can I get these resources?”, “How to avoid making such mistakes?” — gets up, dusts himself off and continues on towards his goal. Not so with a perfectionist. He flies to his goal and sometimes achieves it by taking it impudently, but if it doesn’t work out, he suffers.”
A perfectionist experiences suffering quite often not only because of his own failures, but also because he is dependent on external circumstances that he cannot influence.
“This condition is often called excellent student syndrome, and rightly so: as a rule, perfectionists manifest themselves already at school, sometimes even in kindergarten,” says psychiatrist Mikhail Gordeev.
Socially approved perfectionism is actually not so good: people with inflated demands on themselves and others have difficulty both at work and in their personal lives.
“It is a mistake to think that perfectionists are born bosses. Often these are bad leaders, says Mikhail Gordeev. - Firstly, because such a boss demands excessively from his subordinates, and he has problems with staff - people do not stand up to the boss’s standards, his nagging and leave. And secondly, because a perfectionist, realizing that he is leading idiots, takes on the work that he should delegate to others, since he is sure that no one will do it as well as he does. As a result, he gets stressed out and overloaded.”
Another problem for perfectionists is deadlines. He can complete the task perfectly, but he will spend much more time and effort on it than his colleagues.
“There is such a model of success - 20 percent of efforts give 80 percent of success, it’s just important to find what to spend these efforts on effectively,” says Gordeev. - But for a perfectionist this is impossible, he needs to get 100 percent of success, even if 200, 300 percent of effort is spent on it. They tend to become good professionals, but it is very difficult for their colleagues to work with them. Another feature of a perfectionist: if he does something and fails, he will not try to correct it and move on, but will start all over again.”
Perfectionism
Creation date: 02/28/2012 Update date: 01/13/2020
Perfectionism is the desire for an absolute ideal combined with the inability to give oneself the “right to make mistakes” even in small things. Moreover, with “mind and logic,” a perfectionist may seem to be perfectly aware that “real people make mistakes,” but some internal, unconscious voice will still tell him: “People make mistakes, and you have no right to this.” As a result, a person experiences frustration, becomes depressed, and becomes a slave to his perfectionism, but, as a rule, he cannot get rid of this condition on his own.
PERFECTIONISM [fr. perfectionnisme < perfection perfection, highest degree]. psychol. Formed by upbringing and environment, an individual’s excessive desire for perfection in actions, deeds, and behavior. A perfectionist is one who is characterized by p. | P. can be the cause of mental disorders due to the perfectionist’s conflict with the surrounding reality with its imperfections. Explanatory dictionary of foreign words
“By perfectionism, psychologists understand a heightened desire for perfection, which can relate both to one’s own personality (and in this case results in the endless cultivation of all kinds of virtues) and to the results of any activity. At the level of everyday common sense, it is often regarded as a valuable personal quality, since it is associated with setting positive, socially approved goals. According to many psychologists, perfectionism is not so much a virtue as a serious personal problem, as it leads to the formation of low self-esteem, high anxiety and generally has a negative impact on a person’s worldview and the results of his activities.” Great Psychological Encyclopedia
As follows from various definitions, perfectionism is a person’s desire for an absolute ideal combined with the inability to give himself the right to make mistakes even in small things. Such a person is unable to tolerate the slightest imperfection in the area of activity that is covered by perfectionism: and this can be work, creativity, love/family, raising children, and appearance... you never know the options, sometimes combined with each other. Moreover, with his mind and logic, a perfectionist may seem to be perfectly aware that living people make mistakes, but some internal, unconscious voice will still tell him: “People make mistakes, and you have no right to this.” As a result, a person experiences frustration, becomes depressed, and becomes a slave to his perfectionism, but, as a rule, he cannot get rid of this condition on his own. In principle, this is quite difficult, because the origins of perfectionism are in the unconscious area.
In the psychiatric understanding, perfectionism is a type of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Those pictures that are circulating on the Internet under the name “Perfectionist’s Hell” - when all the tiles are smooth, and one in the middle is at an angle, and so on - rather refer to the “psychiatric variety” of this phenomenon. In this case, all human resources are aimed at achieving a certain ideal with a general reduced performance. But the specificity of this manifestation, firstly, is that such perfectionism manifests itself in one specific area; secondly, such a person usually demands “ideal” not so much from himself as from others; and thirdly, he himself is the main evaluator, deciding how far any particular action is from the “ideal”.
And in everyday understanding, the same thing happened with the term “perfectionism” as with many other concepts from the field of psychiatry, for example, with the same depression. The terms went among the people and began to mean something completely different from what they meant before. Yes, perfectionism is the desire for an ideal, and if you analyze the semantics of this word, then the ideal is related to the word “idea”, that is, something intangible. And for now it exists only in the head of its creator. An idealist is the antonym of the concept of “materialist”; idealism is life in some kind of abstraction. And by and large, an ideal is something that does not happen in real life. Not to mention that the concept of ideal can be different for everyone. And it is not always possible to guess what it will be like for the person who will make the final judgment on the result.
In understanding perfectionism, one false premise is often formed. Most believe that the perfectionist is convinced that an absolute ideal exists; but in fact, the perfectionist is convinced that an acceptable non-ideal does not exist. In other words, the quality of any business or thing can only be in two forms: either an ideal ideal, or... well, let's say “complete insignificance.” And everything that is not ideal is a complete insignificance for a perfectionist. If a perfectionist invented a refrigerator, he would not rest until the temperature in the refrigerator reached absolute zero. And if a perfectionist made boots, he would spend his whole life bringing only one pair of boots to absolutely perfect quality, and all his clients would still walk barefoot.
The second feature of a perfectionist is that he is most often internally convinced of the truth of his binary perception of “ideal - insignificance”: he does not have any thoughts competing with this position. Or all intermediate options are swept aside under far-fetched pretexts: “this is unworthy,” “this is the lot of lazy people,” and the like.
What’s curious is that a perfectionist often suffers from real delusions of grandeur: “I must be perfect!” More precisely - “I should not be imperfect.” As a matter of fact, one of the problems of a perfectionist is a pronounced dissonance between internal self-esteem and its real embodiment: on the one hand, a perfectionist is convinced that he is able to do everything better than everyone else and never make mistakes, and on the other hand, he faces problems all his life. the fact that his conviction in this is not confirmed in reality. In other words, a perfectionist, deep down in his soul, rarely doubts that he is capable of doing something better than anyone, looking the best, etc.: all he has to do is finally convince others of this.
“The site Perfectionist.Ru is still under development.” Joke
If we analyze the history of the emergence of “everyday perfectionism”, or “quasi-perfectionism”, or “false perfectionism” - you can choose the option according to your taste - then its roots, oddly enough, most likely go back to the Protestant branch of Christianity, and in Russia - to the so-called Old Believers. What is characteristic of these societies?
First of all, the agricultural structure, brought to the absolute. Then - a mega-family, uniting several separate family branches into a single clan. Thirdly, the northern climate, which is little conducive to agriculture and survival in general, but provokes clan unification for “joint struggle against natural conditions.” Thus, a certain internal ideology is gradually formed: “Be content with little, work as much as possible.” Formally, this is ensuring survival for the entire society, for the entire mega-family. Moreover, as they say, “God is high, the king is far away, and the head of the clan is both king and god to everyone.”
The following follows from the “work as much as possible” attitude: “Never sit idle, there is always work in the house.” The concept of rest in such systems practically does not exist; rest is considered a change in activity. And the most important thing is that the internal hierarchy at the “bottom” of the system is built according to the quantity and quality of work accepted by the clan leader. The main evaluator of “whether it’s done well” is in this case the head of the megafamily, whose word is the truth. And a way to indicate that a subordinate did not work much in any case is the principle “Do not accept work based on quality.” Because if you want, there is always something to complain about: so that the performer in no way rests on his laurels, but continues to “smooth out his crookedness” for the benefit of the mega-family.
And besides, in systems with a hierarchical social structure, not a single leader can live in peace. After all, it’s not for nothing that this device is compared to a ladder: on the steps below there are always those who also intend to climb up, often by pushing and pulling up those above them. Therefore, some managers, concerned not so much with the quality and quantity of activity as with their own hierarchical position, develop a system of a priori humiliation of a subordinate by lowering the grade for his work, even if there is no real reason for such a reduction. But again, we can always say that the work “falls short of the ideal,” which exists only in the boss’s head and may not be fixed. And the fact that the ideal is unattainable is sometimes carefully hidden. Because we need that carrot that will be dangled in front of a person’s nose.
In general, as we know from the same fairy tales, the best way to give a subordinate a obviously impossible request is to send him “there, I don’t know where, to bring something, I don’t know what.” That is, no matter where he goes as a result and no matter what he brings, in the opinion of the external appraiser it will always be “not this or that,” if the appraiser in reality is not worried about the performance of the work, but about his hierarchical position.
One of the common sayings about daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is right on topic:
- Daughter-in-law! Isn't that how you cook cabbage soup? - How should I do it? - I don’t know how, but not like that!
But those who try to bring the work of their subordinates closer to the ideal forget one important thing: those who strive for the ideal (or who are forced to do so) will end up doing nothing useful at all. Because one day he will understand that it is impossible to please his customer. And do something, don’t do it, you’ll still get a reprimand and humiliation, but given equal final conditions, it’s easier not to do it. Or another option: a person would be happy to do it, but is literally afraid of “not doing it perfectly.” And here we remember that both hierarchical thinking and evaluative dependence are based on a binary approach: everything that is not rated excellent is considered bad.
And unlike the impostor syndrome, in which “you are initially a nobody, especially until you have found your Real Place,” everyday perfectionism is disguised as stroking “You’re great, you strive for the ideal! But here and here again I fell short: well, go ahead and strive further!” That is, a performer is designated “good” as long as he strives for the impossible, for excellent grades, and in everything (as opposed to psychiatric perfectionism). Because he has formed an experimental belief with evaluative dependence: he is praised for excellent achievements, but for non-excellent ones (read - bad, worthless!) - he is scolded and beaten. And given its sensitivity (since evaluative dependence is most often formed among carriers of the psychasthenic radical), this beating is perceived extremely painfully. And a person is ready to do anything so as not to be scolded.
Perfectionism is most often included in the so-called parental scenario: in cases where a parent wants to be considered “the best father/mother” in society, but only on the basis that “my child does everything better than anyone else in society.” He develops best of all, dresses best of all, reads poems best of all in kindergarten (and when the child is not given rhymes or is not given long enough, you need to go to the teacher “to find out what’s wrong with the child, he’s so capable!”) Thus, It turns out that perfectionist children are most often raised by perfectionist parents.
The parent of the future perfectionist, step by step, convinces his child that he is “the very best,” but in connection with this, the parent’s demands on him will be increased: “Petya can study for C grades, but you can’t!” “Masha can draw a crooked Christmas tree, but you can’t!” “It’s others who can fail in college, but you can’t!” Because you are capable of more, but precisely because of this, firstly, you are completely deprived of the right to make mistakes even at the learning stage, and secondly, you will constantly be forced to face reality with its actual unattainability of absolute ideals.
Another way to make a perfectionist is the phrase “You will get what you ask for, but only if you are a good boy (girl).” But alas, the “goodness” of a boy or girl is determined by the parent, and if he has a conscious or unconscious goal for some reason to refuse the child’s request, then he will never be good. Firstly, the criteria for goodness will be as vague as possible, unattainable and inconsistent; and secondly, even for a priori good deeds, the child will never receive praise: only complaints. Because there is no such thing as a perfectly executed job.
Parental influence often dresses up in decent clothes: “Who will tell you the truth if not the person closest to you.” But firstly, there is no common truth for everyone, and secondly, even unpleasant things can be said in different ways. It’s one thing - “It seems to me that this blouse doesn’t go well with this skirt, maybe you can try this one?”, and another thing - “This blouse doesn’t go with this skirt, well, you’re stupid, you can’t even dress properly!”
And the leitmotif of parental comments in the case of the formation of a perfectionist is “You are so capable that you have no right to live without striving for perfection! You literally have to do everything better than everyone else! You are special and should do everything in a special way!”
Sometimes you can notice one thing that if a future perfectionist had realized in time, he would not have become a perfectionist: no matter how wonderfully he strives to do something, his external evaluator will always be dissatisfied with at least something. Because, as a rule, he has not only his own ideal, but also his own goal: “I don’t need the wood to be chopped, I need you to get sick of it.” Thus, even if the required thing is done without a hitch, the external appraiser will still find at least one hitch. Even from a taste standpoint. The grade is excellent - but the notebook is dirty, the notebook is clean - but the pants are wrinkled, the pants are ironed - but yesterday I didn’t help my mother... In general, as they say, “you can’t please the living.” But most often this is the ultimate goal of the “expertise”: to show that everything is not perfect again, keep working hard, my friend. And don’t even think about being proud of your intermediate achievements and praising yourself for them: they are not ideal, which means they are no good.
Yes, which is significant: quite often the everyday perfectionist has long integrated such an appraiser into his personality, into his own Parental subpersonality (according to E. Bern). Once upon a time, he most likely had a real mother or grandmother, or another significant adult who constantly showed him that “you are not perfect again, try harder!” And over time, this external Parent contaminates (contaminates, infects) the internal Parent, that is, such an irreconcilable evaluator settles inside the person himself. And a person always carries this expert with him, no matter how far he is now from his long-time mother or grandmother.
How to recognize a perfectionist? He wants to do everything flawlessly or not do it at all. He can't stand it when he does something worse than others. He demands perfection from those around him. He believes that asking for help is a sign of weakness. He noticed an error in the title of this list. From the network
Alas, in many societies - and in ours in particular - everyday perfectionism quite often has a positive connotation. “A person strives to do everything as best as possible!” Sometimes it is even customary to be proud of him. To a large extent, this pride is fueled by those leaders who wear their hierarchical shirt closer to their bodies and who provoke a perfectionistic approach in their subordinates, since this provides unlimited opportunities for manipulation and humiliation. But those for whom activity is more important than hierarchy usually prefer not to hire perfectionists. In the same way, they are often not liked in the work team. At a minimum, because a perfectionist tends to delay the deadline for submitting his part of the work until the last minute, or even does not submit anything at all, because he “didn’t do it perfectly.” A perfectionist really cannot complete a single task properly, since, for example, if you ask him to “saw off a block 1 meter long,” he will achieve maximum accuracy (one milliangstrom or less), and no device that can can be measured, and a tool that can be used to saw.
Theoretically, everyday perfectionism in the situation of “do what is impossible in reality” is a banal situation of neurosis, when internal censorship comes into conflict with the unconscious. So those who proudly declare themselves “I am a perfectionist” are, at best, actually saying “I am neurotic”!
And the concept of “healthy perfectionism” is the same as “healthy neurosis”. A perfectionist differs from someone who “did well, but sees that he can do even better” by one serious fact: if the latter gives away what he did well, then the perfectionist does not. He breaks what he did well (and not perfectly or perfectly), so to speak, over his knee and throws it away. So that no one sees what he did “imperfectly”. The world will never see good enough - but not flawless - his products, whether material or creative, it doesn’t matter.
By the way, it can be noted that a perfectionist, as a rule, especially at first, strives not for his own ideal, but for the ideal of an external evaluator. And here the task becomes completely insoluble: not only is it much more difficult to achieve someone else’s understanding of the ideal than your own, but also an external evaluator - remember? – not so much interested in perfect execution as in still clinging to something. Even if this external evaluator is already inside the person himself: he still does not give this person any right to make a mistake, even the most trifling one. By the way, one of the synonyms for the word “ideal” is the word “impeccable”. That is, when there is nothing to reproach for. And again, if you want, you can always find it - for what.
In the case of perfectionism, we especially clearly see that very “double-edged sword of self-esteem”, when a person either feels obligated to be ideal, almost a god, then his self-esteem plummets to an all-time low - because he was once again unable to become ideal . But he again does not see or perceive the middle.
A perfectionist, accustomed to criticism from an external evaluator as an a priori means of humiliation, unconsciously perceives any critical remark as an attempt to humiliate him. On an emotional level, he cannot separate constructive from non-constructive criticism: and he strains at everything at once, dismissing useful comments that allow him to grow professionally and creatively. Yes, with such a person, as a rule, it is extremely difficult to collaborate, co-author, etc., but again, this is not his fault, but his misfortune.
We can say that a perfectionist wants everything at once. From the outside it looks quite funny, like the excuse “I won’t do such and such a thing because I will never do it as well as that professional over there.” Yes, one can understand with one’s mind that it won’t work out just as well right away, that the path of any professional is strewn with failures, his experience is “the son of difficult mistakes,” but a perfectionist with his fear of “doing it imperfectly, which means absolutely bad” is deprived of the opportunity to achieve such experience, and in essence - the opportunity to learn by making mistakes during learning: we remember that he (or rather, his inner Parent) does not give himself the right to make mistakes. And if the one who does nothing makes no mistakes, then he, accordingly, does nothing.
In hell for perfectionists there is neither brimstone nor fire, but only chipped cauldrons standing slightly asymmetrically From the network
In the treatment of perfectionism, sound skepticism and logic are extremely important. For example, someone says to a perfectionist who got a “B” instead of an “A” in childhood: “A “F” is not a grade!” And here it is important to be able to ask the question: why not an assessment? It is displayed by the teacher, entered into the journal, it means good. Yes, not great, but good. “You must / must do everything perfectly!” - Why? Who do you owe? How did this debt arise? Where's your IOU? And most importantly, how realistic is it for a living person to do everything perfectly, especially if he himself does not feel personal motivation for this, but someone from the outside obliges him to do this?
Any instruction contains such a concept as “tolerances and fits.” The higher the accuracy class of the product, the smaller these tolerances are, but they still exist: moreover, increasing the accuracy class, that is, reducing the tolerance run-up, sometimes requires disproportionate costs, therefore, in each specific case, how important is it to do everything without tolerances at all? And the most reasonable thing is when a person sets these tolerances for himself. Let's say: I must complete this work in such and such a time frame with such and such acceptable quality. Not ideal, but acceptable. Who determines acceptable quality? Me and my customer (not the appraiser, but the customer, if there is one: and if not, then you yourself are such a customer. That is, you determine, first of all, those same quality tolerances).
However, the problem is that not every person can set tolerances for himself and determine precisely from the standpoint of forecast and analysis when and where something will be sufficient. Once on the Internet I came across the following comparison: jerboas that live in the desert get used to getting water drop by drop from a variety of sources. But if you put a bowl of water in front of them, they will not understand what to do with it. They don't know how to use a bowl. They never saw her.
This is approximately the same thing that happens to a person with evaluative dependence: he has not yet learned to form his own criteria, he does not know what the “right to make a mistake” is, he is not able to formulate his goals and objectives: because he has been trained since childhood, firstly, focus exclusively on an external evaluator, and secondly, subordinate your entire life to these external evaluations. In part because he was once intimidated by his potential independence: “You can’t do anything without us!”
And, therefore, if your everyday perfectionism personally bothers you, then psychotherapeutic work with it begins with analysis and elaboration of its basis: that evaluative dependence that makes a person strive to do perfectly, because the internal evaluator tells him: “Everything that is not ideal is Badly". By the way, in Russian there is no word “strived.” I have achieved it, I have reached it, but it turns out that striving (including for an ideal, which does not exist) cannot end (with achieving the goal). You can only stop it as a repair.
Should one consider one’s own desire to improve further, supposedly not for an external or internal evaluator, to be considered perfectionism? Including the desire to learn something new and/or climb higher on various steps. When you say to yourself: “Here I’m great and this quality is enough, but I can and want higher, better, further, more difficult!” At first glance, this is not perfectionism, but at second glance, the nature of the motivation for this desire is extremely important. If it comes from the inner Child - “I want to see what’s next! I’ve never poked that thing with a stick before! I want to try to see if I can jump over that bar over there?” - this is a natural pleasure and drive for life (especially when your inner Adult is looking after the Child’s walk and keeps him from experiments like “Can I jump over a five-story building”). And if the Parent is the motivating subpersonality – “you can do more! you have to do better! you need higher!” - and without explaining who owes it and who needs it - then this is much more like a perfectionist attitude.
Imagine that the Child and the Parent came somewhere for lunch - say, in a hotel - where a buffet was served. And that’s when the Child himself determines what and in what order he will eat, and how much - “first I want that sausage over there!” A piece... another piece... more... no, I don’t want this sausage anymore, now I want that cheese... another piece... more... no, I need to leave some room; Now I want that meat! Two pieces! No, I don’t want three, because I want another cake... this one... and this one... no, these two will be too much, because I want to drink more juice, two glasses, no, not three, but two, three won’t fit” - this is pleasure and drive for life, especially under the supervision of an Adult. And when a Parent says to a Child, “until you eat EVERYTHING here, you won’t leave here” – this already smells very much of perfectionism.
Counseling therapy is useful for a perfectionist when he himself is ready to logically perceive the real picture of his situation: including admitting to himself that he is not at all ideal and is not a standard, and has the right to make mistakes, like an ordinary living person. In the case of perfectionism, this is the most difficult and painful thing for the client: when he has to realize that he is an ordinary living person. Many who come with an order like “help me achieve the absolute ideal” have great difficulty accepting the new alignment in their situation. And in general, the order “to work with perfectionism” rarely happens independently: most often it pops up in the process of work among other other orders.
But perfectionism in any form, as mentioned above, is always destructive: it does not allow a person to learn and move forward, and it is not for nothing that the Russian proverb says that “the best is the enemy of the good.”
And a person who has the word “enough” in his vocabulary (in terms of “I did it well enough in this particular case”) is not a perfectionist. By the way, sometimes it is useful to create the appearance of perfectionism: for example, when you are asked to do something under obviously inadequate conditions (for example, to give an interview without preparation), you can say: “I either do it well or I don’t do it at all.” This, as you remember, has positive connotations in society - and in fact is one of the options to politely say “no” if the conditions of a particular task do not suit you. Orders from the “Electronic Doctor” that are most relevant to the article: I want to live without complexes I want to find out the reasons for complexes I want to know the reasons for complexes I want to know my complexes I want to get rid of complexes I want to learn how to attract attention I want to free myself from complexes I want to stop having complexes I want to allow myself I want to allow myself to be adequate Topics: shyness, excellent student complex, complexes, contamination by external censorship, perfectionism.
© Naritsyn Nikolai Nikolaevich psychotherapist, psychoanalyst © Naritsyn Marina psychologist, psychoanalyst, Moscow
“Help teach them to live correctly”
The situation when at work a person is demanding of himself and his staff, strives for the ideal, but in his personal life it is easy to get along with him, according to psychologists, is rare. Most often, problems extend to family and interpersonal relationships. Mikhail Gordeev claims that it is difficult for such people to create a couple and maintain a family.
“For them, the concept of “building a family” does not mean creating, but training, adjusting to themselves. And until a certain moment, the partner endures, because at the beginning there is a bouquet period, love, emotions, children are born, and then there is no strength left.
Perfectionists come to psychotherapy more often than phlegmatic people or people who are calm about their successes in order to cope with increased anxiety, panic attacks, and addictions.
“Panic attacks are a consequence of an overloaded nervous system,” explains psychologist Mikhail Khors. — Addictions are a consequence of avoiding a reality in which a person experiences constant pain. However, he does not believe that his perfectionism is a problem. And the psychologist’s task is to show him the reason. Unfortunately, the modern approaches of many of my colleagues are to work with consequences that are removed with pills, the same as antidepressants. But they will not affect perfectionism in any way; they affect the symptom, not the source of pain. And after some time the problems will return.”
The anxiety of perfectionists is increased by the cult of success and the idea of limitless possibilities, which are actively promoted by famous coaches, says the psychologist.
“For example, Tony Robbins and many of his colleagues teach that there is no bar for opportunity. I don't agree with this, every person has limitations. Yes, we try, we give our best, we work, but I would like to remind you that not everything in life depends on us. And it happens that the obstacle is within ourselves - fears, complexes, ignorance of something - they also stop us. More than half of the European population is on antidepressants because they are so pumped up that they can do everything, that they have to smile, be forever happy, energetic, successful, and they are living people. People cannot be happy forever. The modern and popular approach to the fact that a person cannot be in negative states leads to the fact that he forbids himself from them and contradicts his essence.”
In therapy, perfectionists learn to be calm about the imperfections of others, to accept that the world does not work the way they want, that people can do bad things, be wrong, behave badly, that they have the right to beliefs that are different from their own beliefs .
“Such patients should never be told that they are wrong. For them this is a disaster,” says Gordeev. - No, on the contrary, he is good, but he can become even better if he accepts that the world is not ideal, that it does not always rain at the right time, and so on. We are talking about the price he pays for his idealistic attitude towards life. When it comes to relationship problems, I immediately ask the patient's blood pressure numbers, and I don't remember them ever being normal. And a person begins to understand this. We teach you to be calm about other opinions if they are not ideal, to delegate authority when it comes to a team, and we teach you to appreciate the advantages of others.”
How do people become perfectionists?
Nadezhda Solovyova, a psychiatrist at the Scientific Center for Personalized Medicine, believes that perfectionism can be innate and acquired.
“A person has an endopsyche - something that is inherited, something that cannot be corrected, and an exopsyche - something that a person acquires throughout life and with which one can work. Perfectionists and those who don’t really worry about anything have both components. If the genotype contains anxiety, if it is an endopsychic component, then a person has a greater chance of becoming a perfectionist. And then his environment and upbringing shape him. If a child's loved ones are worried, he will try to imitate adults. If the environment is relaxed and phlegmatic, the child will adapt to it. But in adolescence he will begin to choose for himself.”
Psychiatrist Mikhail Gordeev believes that the influence of parents on the formation of a perfectionist is stronger than heredity.
“It happens that perfectionist parents raise perfectionists. And sometimes parents themselves could not achieve something in life, but consider it very important and realize their aspiration through the child. This, in their opinion, is what their child should achieve, he should be the best, despite the fact that the parent himself could not do this.”
Mikhail Gordeev notes that perfectionists in childhood were subjected to moral punishment for failures, for example, a mother might not talk to her child for several days for bad behavior, a bad grade, a bad grade, or a bad grade, or not learning a lesson.
“Perfectionism is a state that is brought up by the fear of punishment, and we are not just talking about physical punishment. Moral rejection can be much worse for a child than deprivation of sweets, a ban on walks and cartoons, even physical punishment. And when a perfectionist grows up, he is no longer afraid of rejection from his mother, but from friends, colleagues, and lover; for him, the punishment is disrespect and rejection from others.”
Perfectionists are not only afraid of disrespect, they are afraid of being embarrassed. And these attitudes are also laid down by close adults.
“These fears are social, they are normal for our lives, the question is how strong they are,” says Mikhail Khors.
Perfectionists often hear phrases from parents: “You must be the best,” “You only need to study for A’s,” “A B is a bad grade.”
“There are a lot of such parents,” explains the psychologist. — When such a child is faced with the fact that he cannot always be the first, to get an A in life, he first goes into achievement: “Oh, it’s not working out? I’ll work harder,” but at some point he hits the bar and faces a situation where he can’t do it. Maybe it doesn’t work out now, but it will work out in a year, but he needs it right now. And then his pain appears.”
Children, from whom their parents do not demand to be the best, grow up as more harmonious individuals, Horse believes.
“Such a parent does not have this feeling of inferiority, which he tries to satisfy at the expense of the child; he loves and appreciates the child, regardless of his success. He brings him up in a more realistic-philosophical atmosphere, more phlegmatic: “You’re doing great, go ahead, try, but if it doesn’t work out, it’s okay, you get up, dust yourself off and move on.”
The antipode of a perfectionist
The opposite of perfectionism is relaxed, phlegmatic individuals who do not suffer from failure. They are not particularly worried that their boss scolded them at work, that they cannot buy the car of their dreams, they will not worry about rudeness on public transport, or get angry at their family for scattering socks and toys. But considering them indifferent, devoid of empathy and goals in life is also wrong, says Mikhail Gordeev.
“Just like for a perfectionist, for such a person in life something is more important, something less important.
According to Gordeev, a student who is not at all worried about failing at school and is not successful in his studies can later achieve great success in the field of creativity.
“Perhaps he clearly knew from childhood that he needed something else,” explains Mikhail Gordeev. — If a person is not worried about failure at work or in school, he may have another area of interest. Can we call the classic Manilov indifferent, who always thinks about something, dreams, but does nothing? It's hard to say, you can call him a dreamer. It’s just that his ideals are not recognized by society.”
Antipodean perfectionists can also become clients of a psychotherapist, despite a calmer attitude towards other people’s and their own mistakes, says psychiatrist Nadezhda Solovyova.
“If we talk about neuroses, minor psychiatry, about overcoming some kind of disorder, anxiety, panic attacks, then both come. For severe perfectionists, the problem is anxiety. And the so-called “don’t care” people have apathy, depression and sociopathy. And inside such people can feel their inadequacy and suffer from it. And in fact, both perfectionism and indifference are two defensive reactions of the psyche that say that a person has problems.”
What is perfectionism and what are its manifestations in society?
An ideal example of social perfectionism is Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopia “We.” A totalitarian state, complete control of activities and life (including sexual contacts), a set daily routine, a strictly limited number of hours for “free” leisure.
Such a society is represented by a clock - a perfectly calibrated mechanism operating on the basis of a perpetual motion machine (watch the video on the Internet). Apparently, this is why society is falling apart - the engine has not been created.
People without skin
Perfectionists are often very sensitive people. But sensitive individuals are not always perfectionists. They are called people “without skin,” when a rude word or a dismissive look can hurt, and betrayal or separation unsettles them for a long time and becomes a tragedy.
Sensitivity can also be biologically determined when a person is born with a very delicate, receptive nervous system, says Mikhail Khors. But sometimes such a feature speaks of a “god complex.”
“Such a person does not necessarily strive for success, he may not have good grades at school or higher education, he may not have a prestigious job, salary, recognition of colleagues, but at the same time he has a complex of an omnipotent and omniscient being who knows exactly how to it should be, how the world should be. And if it is structured differently than what he imagined, then it is a bad world. It is painful for such people to live in a world that is not structured according to their laws. In religion this is called “pride”. Pride is the sin that is the mother of all other sins.”
Nadezhda Solovyova believes that in this case we are not talking about perfectionism, but rather about intolerance.
“You cannot put an equal sign between intolerance and perfectionism. There are intolerant people who are not perfectionists, and vice versa.”
A psychotherapist will help you cope with the “God complex”. Hypersensitive people can also improve their quality of life through therapy sessions and learn to react less painfully to traumatic situations and events.
I am a Perfectionist, what to do, how to live with it?
Do nothing if the form of perfectionism is healthy: you want to work for pleasure and to achieve high results, you know how to stop if you understand that the matter is losing, you don’t quit halfway if you know that a reward awaits you in the end. This is healthy self-criticism.
Remember: perfection is hardly achievable, so be able to limit perfectionist tendencies without leading them to the point of absurdity. Jumping over tile joints is a fun game for a child, but a psychological disorder for an adult.
Feeling that the desire for ideal is pressing, stop: set short-term goals (they are easier to achieve), remember what has already been done (will give confidence), redirect some of the work to colleagues/family/friends (learn to trust people).
