Next month features one of the most critical weeks in students’ life: finals week. Some of us, including myself, may fall into the trap of perfectionism during this time of year.
Q: What is perfectionism?
“A lot of time when you think about what perfectionism is, perfectionism often is something created in your head. It is rarely physically displayed. Sometimes, the idea of perfectionism keeps you from doing perfect work because you are thinking about how to make it perfect. It ever so often works.” explains Parkland counselor Joe Omo-Osagie. “Perfectionism enhances procrastination. It stifles progress.”
Q: How is perfectionism hindering? How does it affect a college student’s life?
“It deters you from getting decent work done.” Parkland psychology student Pavana Chandrasekhar expresses. “Students who are in the perfectionist mindset often do not want to start on their projects if they do not believe it will be immediately perfect. It will cause students to get little to nothing done as opposed to something done. From what I have seen, the higher expectations are set, the less work is completed.”
Omo-Osagie states that the expectations of perfectionists are extremely unrealistic. It affects the cause, it affects the work, and it affects the person because they never begin on what they aspire to do. The anticipation of a perfectionist is “If it is not perfect, I cannot do it.” and so, they are in a never-ending state of planning and continuously being in that state will raise anxiety. The anxiety rises because what is being planned will never happen and can never happen. “They will trap themselves in a box that will be difficult to escape out of.”
“Perfectionists affect themselves by having already created a compressive past and are creating an anxious future.” Chandrasekhar adds that perfectionism will severely hinder one’s self-esteem by doubting their abilities. It will cause negative effects eventually with future tasks and work.
Q: Do you see a lot of students who suffer from a perfectionist mindset? What are the tells that they do?
“The tells that the students do who suffer from a perfectionist mindset do are usually heavy stress about something that seems logically insignificant if you are to look at it objectively. They will be stressing and obsessing over the planning and results. I have seen this firsthand amongst Parkland students, especially myself even.” Chandrasekhar shares.
“Making mountains out of molehills.” Omo-Osagie quotes. “Perfectionists cause themselves to view their projects as insurmountable that they do not know how to start.”
As perfectionists, we can feel less confident and have low self-esteem. We can rely on approval and validation from either people or results. We often live in an imaginary world where we constantly worry and want to control all and every aspect of ourselves and our lives. We confirmed within our beliefs that we need to go beyond with significant efforts and extreme measures to be content and valued.
But this mentality of perfectionism will destroy our livelihoods. It will rob us of being able to truly live. It will rob us of the greatest relationships we could ever have and — the relationship with yourselves. We should know that no one should expect us to be perfect and if they do, it is only them who need to confront themselves with their expectations and faults. Not us. It is not our responsibility to do that.
Parkland has been a wonderful support system of a community to help me heal through this trauma. Admittedly, I am still healing. I do not expect this to be an overnight sensation of healing for those that relate to perfectionism as this will be a journey. Healing is to learn how to attend to ourselves in a more generous and kinder way. The more we treat ourselves and each other well in generosity and kindness, the more opportunities we are allowed to grow up and do the best that we can in our own work.
I wish for this reading to be of benefit to you.
Ways to Overcome Perfectionism
- View large projects as small goals
This will actively allow you to take care of yourself as we are making sure we are acknowledging your success at every stage at what you do during the project. If the project is a major, time-consuming task, we want to break down the project into single steps leading into the project as the whole task to recognize the success in each step of your learning process and your growth.
“You need and want to see yourself learn and grow organically. Not systematically. If you can understand this concept, you are able to see how your goals can build off each other.” says Omo-Osagie.
Chandrasekhar advises that perfectionism can blind us from the ability of how we learn to be able to accomplish something. If we can honor ourselves in our work, we can begin to recognize our daily achievements and improvements. Note your milestones! We can grow more self-compassion and self-confidence towards how we approach our goals.
- Access your personal goals
“You need to understand what the goal is. You need to understand what your goal is.” explains Omo-Osagie. “Some of the questions you should ask yourself should be: “What is the goal of the assignment? What is my goal in learning? What are my goals being a student?”
You need to align yourself with your goals rather than viewing your success in any class based on what other people, such as your instructors and classmates, say that you should be receiving in that class. Projected outcomes are known to be what the instructor hopes for you to gain out of the class by the end of it. Projected outcomes exist as much for the instructors as they are for the students to stay on schedule of their lesson plan. However, this does not mean that you need to measure your own success-in-progress based on those said projected outcomes.
Start to think about what you want to get out of your classes, what you need from your classes, and what your motivations are to take those classes in the first place.
In some cases, you may have to take a prerequisite class in which you only need a passing grade. In truth, you would not need to become an expert or devote too much of your energy to the subject of the required class. Rather, you can use the time to benefit yourself from the class by focusing on the basics and achieving the baseline that you need. This will allow you to utilize your time and energy that you can devote to your personal investments or priorities that will further your educational career.
We can tend to measure whether a class is useful for us comes from information such as why other students have taken that certain class and/or what faculty say are the most useful things from the class whether it applies to us or not. It is likely you will take the approach to a class that is crucial for your career choice differently than how you may approach an elective that you are participating in for fun and leisure. It is important you consider the method of how you approach the workload of the classes depending on your goals. Look at your planner on how you are going to succeed in your class and make sure they stand within your personal goals and not projected outcomes set by somebody else.
- Practice honest communication
“Perfectionists struggle with and fear of vulnerability. But they yet understand that vulnerability can present themselves as honest. We need to bring other voices that we trust into our lives to expand our well-being.” Omo-Osagie exclaims.
“Perfectionists and students who have either perfectionist or anxious tendencies have a timid time with honest communication as it challenges them to practice their authenticity.” Chandrasekhar continues.
You need to know how to communicate with your peers, your classmates, and your instructors when it comes to your learning environment. As perfectionists, we tend to communicate in terms of either success or failure. This way of communicating will not allow us to find a middle ground between what we succeeded in and what we found difficult. This is a block that does not allow us to feel, see, and think about what our learning experience was.
Try to talk about what was challenging in the work we do and what is enjoyable about the work that we do. If we do this with our peers and classmates, we open a safe space for a more honest way of communication where we can benefit from one another’s advice, struggles, and allow room to be more humane in the work that we do at school. Also, if we do this with our instructors, we open the opportunity to ask more questions and learn more with ease.
Perfectionism is a display of our fear of failure. Allowing yourself to communicate about this can release the fear that is holding you back from achieving your best abilities in your work.
