If you spend a lot of time on any work you do, but still think that the work you have done is not very good, you should try to make it better, or the idea that you should do the best keeps creeping into your mind, you may have fallen into the sweet trap of perfectionism. Perfectionism becomes a problem for a person when it prevents a person from achieving and being happy and causes sadness and anxiety. The negative outcomes of perfectionism are worrying about making mistakes and worrying about not doing the job well. Unfortunately, in this case, the person begins to doubt his own abilities.
The negative emotions and failure caused by the perfectionist cycle wears the person down psychologically.
Or are you a perfectionist too? Are you trying to be the best in your relationships at work or school? Unfortunately, the slogan of "be the best, be a competitor" imposed on us by the modern world triggers depression and anxiety diseases.
If we focus on the intellectual processes of perfectionism, we need to talk about some cognitive distortions (thought errors). In psychology, there are ten thinking styles that you define as thinking errors (cognitive distortions). I define thought errors as follows: Mistakes we make while thinking. Yes, we all make these mistakes, some a little, some a lot. But we can say that there is no person who has never experienced this. So, if we all experience this to a greater or lesser extent, where does the problem arise? The answer is frequency. As the frequency of our thinking errors, also known as cognitive distortions, increases, our lives begin to be negatively affected.
We said there are ten cognitive distortions, let's stop at the thinking error that feeds perfectionism, that is, let's talk about the Black and White Thinking Error. There are two categories in this thinking style, the person puts his experiences into one of these two categories, that is, he places them in either the black or white category. There are no gray or other color options for the person. For example, he labels a job he does as either very good or very bad. Of course, when we perform a job, we want it to be good and we work hard for it, this is a functional behavior. However, the person who makes a black and white evaluation can strive for the best. This The situation will naturally cause concern. Because trying to do your best increases anxiety. If anxiety increases enough to affect us negatively, we will have difficulty performing. Under the "I must do my best" standard, it is expected that anxiety will increase. “I was so excited I couldn't show my performance.” You may have heard the sentence from your acquaintances.
Black and White thinking is blind to other colors. There are 2 situations that are evaluated, the others are ignored, that is, they are not evaluated. For example, when a person evaluates himself, he only takes into account the works that he considers to be the best and ignores the good ones. Therefore, the number of items that a person will write under the heading of positive self-evaluation decreases. This situation will inevitably lower the person's self-confidence.
Let's take a student. Let's assume that you think that if I am not successful in all exams, I am a failure. If this student fails an exam, he/she will label himself/herself as a "failure" without taking into account the other exams he/she passed. Is there anyone who can feel happy and peaceful when he thinks he has failed? I guess it can't be. This person will probably feel unhappy and anxious, and these feelings and thoughts will negatively affect the person's behavior. Let's look at the situation in reverse, let's imagine a student who aims to be successful in most exams that do not set a standard for success in all exams. This person experiences more functional anxiety when he takes exams, that is, he will have a level of anxiety at which he can perform better.
In general, perfectionism seems to get things into trouble rather than supporting us. I think we need to listen to a quote from William Shakespeare here: "Be good, but not too good."
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