Perfectionism and Anxiety

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Perfectionism might be admired amongst high achieving individuals, but did you know that perfectionism as a trait is usually rooted in mental health struggles or even childhood trauma? And if the stakes of your perfectionism feel high enough, the pressure to succeed puts an undue amount of stress on you, leading to feelings of anxiousness. Over time, and with lofty enough goals, perfectionism can do more than just make you feel a little anxious, it can lead to an anxiety disorder, or even heightened anxiety sensitivity.

Perfectionism Causes

We all want to do well, and be well thought of. No one goes around hoping that people will think negatively about them, especially if they are people you respect or see regularly. But where does Perfectionism come from?

Mental Health Struggles

Low Self Esteem
- If you are not confident in who you are, it’s easy to think that if you can just be perfect, then you will be well liked and you will feel better about yourself.
Depression
- Keeping up the ruse of being okay is exhausting, and some people will try to pretend that they have it all together- perfectionism- just to avoid admitting their true struggles.
OCD
- With Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, meeting the standards surrounding your obsessions and performing compulsions perfectly in order to avoid distress can lead to a desire for constant perfection, even if it inevitably causes you more stress.
Generalized Anxiety
- Sticking to a perfect plan that allows you to be in control may be a coping mechanism for GAD, however, in the long run, perfection is its own self-destructing cycle that will only worsen any anxiety disorder.

Self-imposed Ideals

High Standards
- Maybe you aren’t OCD or fighting a mental health battle, but you like things to be done a certain way, or to always meet your own goals. So long as you’re meeting your own expectations, perfectionism may not feel like a detriment to you, however, studies have shown that people with self-imposed perfectionism tend to be at a greater risk for anxiety struggles and increased anxiety sensitivity.
Fear of failure
- People with perfectionism as a trait, tend to ‘fear signals of punishment or non reward’ in the face of failure and will do anything they can to avoid failure.
- You could be on the flip side of having high standards. Maybe you just don’t want to fail, or appear like you’re failing. It can be hard to feel like you aren’t doing as well as you should, but forcing yourself to meet unrealistic standards and to always be perfect because of your fears won’t allow you a path free from anxiety. If anything, your fears could spiral into an anxiety disorder, despite your attempts to mask them.

Childhood

People who are raised by parents who set unrealistic expectations are more likely to become perfectionists as they were conditioned to think that constantly overachieving is normal.
Childhood Trauma, along with other types of trauma, causes people to want to control their environment and any other facets of their life so that they will not have to face the same level of distress. Maintaining a perfectly in control environment, however, is stressful and unachievable.

Environment

Perhaps you had a normal, healthy childhood, with no history of trauma or mental health struggles, but you now find yourself in a work environment where anything less than perfection isn’t tolerated and it’s causing you anxiety.
Families and cultural expectations, real or perceived, can put a lot of pressure on you and make you think that you need to meet some standard that is unachievable for most if not all people, or simply isn’t the right fit for you.

Whatever your perfectionism is rooted in, it might be time to re-evaluate where your perfectionism comes from and assess if it’s helping you or hurting you.

Anxiety Sensitivity

Anxiety sensitivity has to do with how you experience your symptoms of anxiety. You may feel occasionally light-headed, or out of breath, or panicky. For a person with low anxiety sensitivity, you don’t really fear, anticipate or notice these physical symptoms of anxiety as much. For a person with heightened anxiety sensitivity, you notice every little nuance of breathing, cognition, emotional distress like it’s been amplified with surround sound and a fully interactive 3-D IMAX experience. Fear of these symptoms can worsen and how you perceive your anxiety or symptoms is sensitized in a way that not everyone with an anxiety disorder will experience.

People with heightened anxiety sensitivity tend to struggle with Panic Disorder or Social Anxiety as so much of their anxiety encompasses the fear of having their symptoms of anxiety noticed by anyone else, and the resulting embarrassment.

Panic Disorder

Studies have been done to measure the level of perfectionism a person with an anxiety disorder deals with in relation to other disorders, and Panic Disorder or Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia has come out as a top scoring (perfectionistic) anxiety disorder. This stat is perhaps best explained by the theory that people struggling with a panic disorder often hold the belief that they need to be -perfectly- free from their symptoms in order to function normally, even though they usually struggle with heightened anxiety sensitivity.

With an increased anxiety sensitivity, achieving full and perfect freedom from anxiety may not be an immediately attainable goal and will require cognitive treatment and slow exposure to anything that is likely already being avoided due to the Panic Disorder, as well as frequent reminders that you don’t have to be perfectly free from Anxiety in order to still thrive.

Social Anxiety

Where Social Anxiety, Perfectionism and Anxiety Sensitivity all intersect is when a person with Social Anxiety holds onto the belief that everyone is functioning so much better than themselves, and that other people expect more from them than is rationally possible. When they cannot meet these impossible and assumed expectations, their resultant embarrassment will then be too plainly observed, leading to increased judgment against themselves, if the standards they ‘failed to meet’ were self-imposed, and perfectionistic (unrealistic). Any physical, emotional or cognitive symptoms of their anxiety can then be plainly observed, which can only lead to a further regression in their struggles with social anxiety.

Health Anxiety

Anyone who deals with Health Anxiety may not struggle with perfectionism to begin with, but they have a higher chance of heightened anxiety sensitivity, and can be more vigilant for symptoms or signs of a health crisis. This hyper-vigilance engenders the expectation that if anything is going on, then something is wrong, and if something is wrong (no matter how serious it may or may not be) then there is a need to react, to seek treatment, to log the problem. The perfectionistic approach to managing your health can set you up for disappointment (or a feeling of failure) any time something happens that is a genuine cause for concern, (i.e. a cold, upset stomach, infection). Fear of a cycle of poor health becomes more difficult to deal with since any person is inevitably going to get sick one way or another and the distress that illness brings a person with Health Anxiety will always leave them longing for perfect health with no hint of negative physical symptoms.

High Functioning Anxiety

For anyone who’s ever dealt with HFA, this is an easy one to understand. Unfortunately, High Functioning Anxiety is an inevitable road to burnout if something isn’t done to readjust the expectations you set for yourself. If you think you might be someone who struggles with High Functioning Anxiety, take some time to read my post on Taking a Mental Health Day and allow yourself the space to reprioritize what needs doing in your life, and where you can afford to relax your standards so you don’t perpetuate a cycle of high-performing perfectionism and devastating burnout.

Perfectionism and Anxiety

Perfectionism inherently causes stress and Anxiety Disorders are mental disorders as well as stressor-related disorders. Sometimes it’s hard to break free of the pattern that Anxiety tells you to follow where you are meant to be always able to ‘do’ without fear and since you’re not, there’s something ‘wrong’ with you. Everyone struggles with something, but perfectionism and anxiety don’t allow for that truth to have its way in your daily thought patterns. If you struggle with perfectionism and anxiety, give yourself time to take a step back and realize that everyone has something that they deal with, anxiety is more than enough to handle, and perfectionism won’t help you, whether or not you have an anxiety disorder.

Trying is a good place to start. Don’t expect perfection, but give it the best you can do and let that be the highest standard you set for yourself, especially if you deal with perfectionism and anxiety.

May God Bless and Keep You.