Perfectionism and Negative Thinking

Do you need everything arranged a certain way before you can relax? Does it all have to come out perfect, or you can't let it rest? Answer yes to both and you might be leaning toward perfectionism, or toward the kind of control that leaves little room for anyone else. Psychologists have a name for the habit of sorting the world into only two categories. They call it black-or-white thinking, and they count it among the common signs of a negative thought pattern. People who polarize this way tend to pay a price in how they feel about themselves (2015). The internal script starts sounding like, 'If my grades aren't excellent, I'll never get into a decent college.'

Search the web for 'negative thinking' and you'll turn up article after article, some listing the varieties, others walking through therapies meant to interrupt them. A single piece might name ten or fifteen distinct patterns. What almost never makes those lists, at least in the reader's own mind, is perfectionism. Most people simply don't connect the two.

So how are they connected? The short version: low self-esteem. Someone who doesn't think well of themselves may reach for control over every corner of their life as a way to keep those feelings out of sight (2013). Picture a manager who hovers over every task an employee touches. That micromanaging can be a tell. The manager may feel inadequate and would rather no one noticed, may feel intimidated by a coworker and would rather that stayed hidden too. Jerry Kennard's article 'Control Freaks Exposed' lays out why perfectionists so often carry low self-esteem underneath.

If you recognize yourself here, the goal isn't to stop caring about quality. It's to keep the perfectionism from running you. A few things that help:

First, look for the other solutions. Perfectionists tend to lock onto one right answer and miss the rest. There really is more than one way to skin a cat. When a perfectionist slips up, it can feel like the ground gave way. My own first job drove this home. I was a case manager deciding who qualified for government assistance, and the work was mostly following the program manuals step by step. Then a case landed on my desk that the manual didn't cover, and I panicked. I had to improvise, weigh the information I had, and make the best call I could without a direct answer in front of me. The fuzzy, in-between answer turns out to be the right one more often than you'd expect.

Second, don't panic. Panicking after a mistake does two bad things at once. It can make the mess worse, and it pushes you toward decisions you wouldn't make with a clear head. Often the cleaner move is to own the error and take responsibility for it. You're human. Admitting a mistake also gives you a way to reason through it: name the problem, figure out what caused it, then work out how to keep it from repeating. Better still, build a coping mechanism you can lean on. Mine is my faith. Religion and psychology sit in separate rooms, but the teachings of Jesus Christ are what steady me when things get sticky. A coping mechanism can be as plain as a phrase pinned up in your office or at home. Working under a terrible boss, I came up with two: 'don't sweat the small stuff' and 'this is only part of the bigger picture.' Counting to ten sounds silly, and it still works for most people. The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance's 'Saying NO to Negative Thinking Worksheet' is a solid resource, with a worksheet at the end that helps you work through the pattern.

Third, learn to let go. You cannot control everything, not even the things that are genuinely wrong. Sometimes the healthiest response is to release it instead of letting it sit and sour. Carrying every battle has a cost your body eventually collects, through higher blood pressure and heart trouble among other things. So pick your battles. I've had to accept that you can't talk everyone around to your view, and that my view isn't always the one worth defending.

- Heather Browning, MBA

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Saying No to Negative Thinking Worksheet. Retrieved January 15, 2015. Kennard, J. (2013, August 23). Control Freaks Exposed. Retrieved January 15, 2015.