Imagine a species so obsessed with being flawless that it refuses to adapt. It can’t climb a tree because its claws aren’t perfectly aligned. It won’t eat a new kind of berry because it isn’t the ideal berry. You’d be extinct before lunch.
And yet we sometimes do exactly the same thing. Except our “species” is just ourselves, and the extinction isn’t literal. It’s emotional, social, and sometimes just plain miserable.
The Survival Strategy That Backfires
Perfectionism feels like a strategy. Follow all the rules, tick all the boxes, and hope life bends in your favour.
There’s a reason it feels sensible. When the world is predictable, getting things exactly right can work well. Nature has its specialists too: animals perfectly suited to one particular kind of forest or one particular food. They do brilliantly, right up until something changes.
When the environment shifts, flexibility tends to win. In a 2005 study, the ecologist Daniel Sol and his colleagues looked at hundreds of cases where bird species had been introduced to new parts of the world. The ones most likely to survive and settle weren’t the fastest or the most striking. They were the species with relatively larger brains and a track record of trying new things, such as eating unfamiliar food or finding new ways to get at it. In other words, the birds that experimented.
It’s an animal study and a metaphor, not a model of human psychology. But I find it a useful picture. Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. Our ancestors survived ice ages, plagues and the occasional neighbour with an unhealthy grudge. They survived by experimenting, learning and failing spectacularly.
Perfectionism, ironically, rejects all that. It turns growth into a high-stakes game with only one acceptable outcome: a flawless performance. Spoiler: nobody wins at that game.
The Bargain That Doesn’t Pay
Most perfectionists have made a private deal with themselves: this is exhausting, but at least it makes me good at what I do.
The research suggests the deal is worse than it looks. In 2018, Dana Harari and her colleagues brought together 95 studies on perfectionism at work, covering four decades of research. Perfectionists didn’t perform any better than anyone else. They did, however, have higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression, and the kind of perfectionism driven by fear of failure was most strongly linked with burnout.
All that effort, and no extra reward to show for it.
It’s worth being fair here. Researchers have argued for years about whether there’s a “healthy” kind of perfectionism. Striving for high standards, on its own, isn’t the problem, and it can go with real engagement and motivation. What consistently causes trouble is the other side: the fear of mistakes, the harsh self-criticism, and the feeling that you’re only acceptable if you get everything right.
What It Looks Like Day to Day
In therapy, perfectionism rarely introduces itself by name. It’s more likely to show up as something else.
It can look like people-pleasing to the point of exhaustion, or going over a mistake long after everyone else has forgotten it. It can mean turning down opportunities unless you’re sure you can do them perfectly, or over-preparing for a meeting, a dinner, or even a small chore, because anything less feels unacceptable. It’s the project that never gets finished because it’s never quite good enough, and the idea you don’t share because you can’t be certain it’s flawless. Sometimes it’s trying to feel only the “acceptable” emotions, or apologising for things that don’t need an apology, just in case.
One thing worth separating out: not every rigid routine is perfectionism. For many people, especially autistic people and others who find unpredictability draining, routines are a way of conserving energy, not a fear of getting things wrong. The question isn’t how structured your life looks, but whether the structure supports you or whether you’re living in fear of what happens if you step outside it.
A Pressure That Comes From Outside, Too
It’s easy to think of perfectionism as a personal flaw. But some of it seems to come from the world around us.
The psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill analysed data from more than 40,000 university students in the UK, the US and Canada, from the late 1980s to 2016. All three types of perfectionism they measured had risen. The biggest increase, around a third, was in what they call “socially prescribed” perfectionism: the sense that other people expect you to be perfect, and that you’ll be judged harshly if you aren’t. They pointed to competitive education, rising expectations about careers and money, and the pressure of comparing ourselves online. In later work, they also found that young people increasingly felt their parents’ expectations and criticism were high.
I find that helpful to know. If perfectionism partly grows out of an environment that keeps raising the bar, then struggling with it isn’t a personal failing. It’s an understandable response to the conditions many of us grew up in.
Practising Imperfection
So what’s the alternative? Not lower standards, necessarily, but more room to move.
One approach comes from cognitive behavioural work on perfectionism, developed by researchers including Roz Shafran, Sarah Egan and Tracey Wade. It uses small “behavioural experiments”: deliberately doing something imperfectly, then noticing what actually happens. Perhaps you send a message without rereading it three times, leave a picture slightly crooked, or serve dinner that’s fine rather than impressive. Most of the time, the world keeps turning. The point isn’t the mistake itself. It’s giving your mind new evidence that things can be imperfect and still be all right.
The research on this approach is promising. Several reviews suggest it can reduce perfectionism along with anxiety and depression. The researchers themselves have also cautioned that the evidence base is still quite small, and that some reviews have been more confident than the studies justify. So it’s a good option to have, not a guaranteed fix.
Other approaches come at perfectionism from different directions, and they can work well alongside each other. Self-compassion work focuses on softening the inner critic that turns every mistake into a verdict. Other kinds of therapy look at where perfectionism came from: when being good, careful or impressive first felt like the safest way to be accepted. Understanding that history can make the pattern feel less like who you are, and more like something you learned for good reasons and can gradually loosen.
Laugh, Stumble, Survive
Perfectionism feels like safety, but it’s a narrow kind of safety. It only works when conditions are ideal, and life is rarely ideal.
If the birds have anything to teach us, it’s that survival tends to favour the ones who try things, get them a bit wrong and try again. So relax a little, stumble a little, and stop trying to be a flawless specimen. Your species will thank you.
If this resonates, you might also like The No That Costs Less Than You Fear and Why Rest Isn’t Fixing It.
If perfectionism is taking more from you than it gives, therapy can be a place to understand where it comes from and to practise loosening its grip, at a pace that feels manageable. At Trueform Therapy, I offer one-to-one sessions in person in Cardiff and online across the UK and EU. You’re welcome to get in touch to ask any questions before booking.
If You Want to Explore These Ideas Further
Thomas Curran’s The Perfection Trap (2023) looks at why perfectionism is rising and how much of it comes from the culture around us, not just from within.
Overcoming Perfectionism by Roz Shafran, Sarah Egan and Tracey Wade (second edition, 2018) is a practical self-help guide based on the cognitive behavioural approach described above.
Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion (2011) offers a different route: changing the way you speak to yourself when you fall short.
And if you’d like to look at the research directly:
Egan and colleagues on the evidence for cognitive behavioural therapy for perfectionism: critique and response
Harari and colleagues on perfectionism at work (2018): summary
Curran and Hill on rising perfectionism (2019): summary
Sol and colleagues on brain size, flexibility and birds in new environments (2005): study