When Perfectionism Leads To Unhappiness

Have you ever had to deal with perfectionist people ? Probably yes. Their behavior is very curious and sometimes funny.

Perfectionists need to achieve perfection in everything they do. From work to the arrangement of things, everything has to be in the right place.

They can’t stand the breakfast cup to be moved to the right, they need it to be perfectly placed in the center. A perfectionist mind goes to these extremes.

Why am I a perfectionist?

There are many factors that can develop a perfectionist personality. In fact, very often that of perfectionism is considered a syndrome or “obsessive-compulsive personality disorder”.

Some experts believe that the cause of being a perfectionist may be a genetic predisposition.

Other experts, on the other hand, believe that several environmental factors influence this behavior:

• When self-esteem depends on constant praise and praise.
• Having suffered humiliation in childhood and wanting to be socially accepted.
• The parents were very authoritarian.
• Having grown up surrounded by successful people and not being one of them.
• Having a low tolerance for failure.
• Be aware that the company is highly competitive.

Since we came into the world, we are in contact with continuous stimuli that will mark us for the rest of our life. Even if it is difficult to believe, we are very influential and having experienced one of the situations described above has its consequences.

The society in which we live, with its norms, its laws, its tendencies, its way of living life, pushes us to want to be better than others.

Being a failure is not well regarded. Society believes that success is the key to true happiness. But, can we really live with this pressure? That’s when being a perfectionist starts to become a problem.

Perfection doesn’t make me better

Being correct in everything, doing things well, never exceeding the limits, all of this does not make us better. If we think about it for a moment, the more we try to be a perfectionist, the less we are.

People are not perfect, in fact they have to accept their imperfections as a hallmark of who they really are.

Only when we embrace imperfection can we achieve perfect happiness. Because forcing ourselves to be something we are not will not make us happy, quite the opposite. It will be a source of great frustration and stress.

How is the everyday life of a perfectionist person? For starters, she lives underestimating herself all the time, so much so that not even other people’s praise will make her feel comfortable with her job.

Guilt, pessimism and obsession are three words that clearly define a perfectionist person. He will never achieve what he wants because it is impossible to achieve absolute perfection.

This can cause him to often fall into the tunnel of depression, unwittingly. The disappointments and frustrations, in fact, follow one after the other.

As in the case of many other syndromes, perfectionism can also be overcome, as long as the person is aware that this attitude is not helping him to achieve happiness.

Once you understand that you have a problem, that the desire to always seek perfection is the result of a pressure to which the person himself has submitted, then he will be ready to give way to acceptance.

Of course, trying to improve is always positive. We should all learn to be better, but never fall into terrible perfection.

We need to embrace imperfection and work hard to make things the best we can, but without obsessing over wanting to accomplish something we can’t actually accomplish.