At first glance, being a perfectionist may seem like an advantage in a world where productivity and achievement are so highly valued. As a student, what could possibly be better than having the drive to ensure everything you do is done perfectly?
As it turns out, recent research shows that perfectionism isn’t the asset it might appear to be. This is especially true when it takes on the form of self-critical (SC) perfectionism, which can have detrimental impacts on mental health. SC perfectionism is characterized by constant negative self-evaluations, doubts about one’s abilities, and fixations on mistakes. Personal standards (PS) perfectionism, on the other hand, focuses on achieving goals and having high standards rather than being overly self-critical.
David Dunkley is an associate professor at McGill’s Department of Psychology and a researcher at the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital who is interested in the impacts of perfectionism on well-being.
“Perfectionism is about setting and striving for high standards and goals, and in itself, it’s not maladaptive,” Dunkley explained in an interview with The Tribune. “It’s the self-critical aspects of perfectionism that are more closely associated with depression and anxiety symptoms.”
One of his students, Alexandra Richard, recently published a doctoral dissertation on the relationship between long-term self-critical perfectionism and symptoms of anxiety and depression in the journal Behavioural Therapy.
Under Dunkley’s supervision, Richard conducted a study that focused on two key manifestations involved in SC perfectionism: Anxiety sensitivity, which is the fear of interpreting physical symptoms of anxiety as signs of being physically or mentally unwell, and experiential avoidance, which is the tendency to try to avoid or suppress unpleasant thoughts or emotions.
Researchers collected data on the participants’ levels of SC and PS perfectionism, symptoms of anxiety and depression, experiential avoidance, and anxiety sensitivity at several points over two years, to investigate the complex relationships between these variables.
Richard’s research uncovered significant links between these manifestations and long-term symptoms of anxiety and depression. The study’s findings suggest that by addressing these specific tendencies, it’s possible to reduce the impact that SC perfectionism has on mental health.
The research found that anxiety sensitivity enhances the vulnerability of SC perfectionists who have high levels of experiential avoidance to symptoms of distress, and vice versa. Interestingly, while anxiety sensitivity was a risk factor primarily for symptoms of anxiety, experiential avoidance appears to be a broader risk factor, influencing participants’ levels of general distress as well as anxiety.
“What this study showed was that it is possible to be high on self-critical perfectionism, but not necessarily high on experiential avoidance or anxiety sensitivity [.…] If you can lower [the levels of] just one of those emotion regulation patterns, you’ll be less vulnerable to depressive and anxious symptoms,” Dunkley explained.
It is also important to note that these findings are only relevant to SC perfectionists; PC participants exhibited no or weak correlations between these variables.
These quantitative findings are in line with prior work on the pathology of perfectionism, and suggest that therapeutic interventions should focus on treating tendencies like anxiety sensitivity and experiential avoidance in order to improve outcomes for SC perfectionists.
The study additionally suggests that different types of perfectionism require different types of interventions. For those with SC perfectionism, introspective practices like mindfulness and self-compassion are found to be particularly helpful.
“This is important work that challenges arguments that anxiety sensitivity and experiential avoidance capture the same process, and also parallels clinical work where targeting and decoupling the co-occurrence of two related processes can be an important treatment goal,” Richard explained in an email to The Tribune.
Ultimately, the findings of Richard’s study show us that, while there is still more research to be done, being a SC perfectionist does not automatically lead to depression and anxiety. While we may not be able to control perfectionistic tendencies, there are strategies to limit the negative impact this form of perfectionism has on mental health. The study reminds us that there are ways to manage and improve well-being, even in a world that constantly pushes for perfection.
