PERFECTIONIST Personality: Meaning, Characteristics and Flaws

Are you a perfectionist person?In today's society it seems that perfectionism should be the goal of the human being, in the face of the insatiable search for success. We can come to think that the fact of being a perfectionist could help us to achieve our goals more easily and achieve success sooner, however excessively Perfectionism has been linked to a greater predisposition to suffer from anxiety disorders, depressives, eating disorders or abuse of consumption, such as alcohol.

The search for perfectionism can help us improve our goals, but taking this trait to the extreme can have serious consequences. If you are interested in knowing the drawbacks and characteristics of this type of personality, keep reading this Psychology-Online article: perfectionist personality: meaning, characteristics and flaws.

Index

1. Perfectionist personality: meaning
2. Perfectionist personality: characteristics
3. Advantages of the perfectionist personality
4. Perfectionist personality flaws

What is the perfectionist personality? The perfectionist personality, also called ananchastic personality, is defined as a set of emotions, cognitions, behaviors and interpretations, about which the person has the tendency to pin up very high expectations and assesses your progress against your goals very rigid. The perfectionist person values ​​himself based on his self-imposed achievements. Faced with this, the perfectionist will seek to achieve perfection in everything that is proposed. It is considered a stable personality trait, which already manifests itself in childhood.

The perfectionist personality traits or ananchastic personality are:

1. High self-assessments: the perfectionist person sets very high standards, on which he doubts about his performance, believing that he will fail. Critical evaluation of your own potential causes many times that when you achieve your goals, you minimize your achievements with cognitive biases such as: "It was very easy, everyone could have done it."
2. Dichotomous thinking: self-assessment of achievement or failure leads them to polarized thinking, in which all their actions translate into all or nothing, that is, if they have failed in one of their goals, they feel they have failed in everything.
3. Self-criticism and negative self-evaluation: the cognitive biases dichotomous thinking, fear of failure and constant doubts about their abilities on the performance of their goals, makes them constantly produce negative and critical self-evaluations about them themselves.
4. Insecurity about oneself: the perfectionist personality is closely related to feelings of lack of self confidenceBecause the scope of their achievements is what gives them their own personal worth, in the same way that failure leads them to think that they are worthless. It is the very insecurity in themselves that leads them to need to achieve their goals, to be able to prove to themselves that they are good at something.
5. Importance of the opinion of others: the fear of being rejected or that others do not see what they expect in them, causes them to act on many occasions based on how they believe they will be accepted by others and not as they are.
6. Own merits: When thinking of a perfectionist who wants to achieve his deepest ambitions, it may come to mind a person who will do whatever it takes to achieve her goal, even if it means taking advantage of or hurting third parties. In the case of perfectionists, the opposite happens, this trait causes the person to seek to achieve her goals on her own merits and will never attempt to achieve her goals at the cost of malicious intentions to third parties.
7. Need for control and order: one of the main characteristics of this trait is the need for control, but not only in one's own actions, but also in those of others. The perfectionist person will seek that their loved ones exploit their maximum potential, because they believe in them, but their demands towards the other can cause emotional damage in the other person. On the other hand, they tend to have an excessive need for order and cleanliness.
8. Responsibility: their high levels of demand lead them to be very responsible people in front of the tasks they have to do.

Perfectionism in psychology can have advantages or disadvantages depending on the degree to which the perfectionist personality trait manifests itself. Faced with their high self-demands on themselves, they tend to very hardworking people and who always seek to achieve the best results, for this reason they tend to be great professionals. Besides that, they don't give up easily facing the different obstacles, trying to assess all the possible solution alternatives. They maintain attitudes of perseverance and perseverance, regardless of the time they have to dedicate to their goal and the emotional wear it may cause.

Adaptive perfectionism It can bring us many advantages in our day to day life, since people with adaptive perfectionism are those who struggle motivated to achieve their goalsHowever, failure does not generate such a high emotional cost or suffering. Faced with failure, these people continue to fight despite difficulties, without falling or entering a loop, learning from mistakes.

Perfectionism in psychology can also have drawbacks depending on the degree to which the trait is manifested. The consequences of non-adaptive perfectionist personality are as follows:

1. Rigidity: the dichotomous thinking on which perfectionists act, on the "all or nothing" and the need for order and control in their lives, cause that in many Sometimes these personality traits lead to inflexibility, with great difficulties to allow oneself to be carried away by spontaneity, thereby configuring very thoughtful thoughts. rigid.
2. Obsession: the same need for control commented previously, the need to achieve perfection in all its objectives and the critical evaluation and negative about oneself, which causes nothing to ever seem perfect enough to them, can develop obsessions
3. Maintenance of insecurity: In the characteristics of the perfectionist person we have talked about the insecure personality that is at the base, on which the perfectionist personality is based. Fear of failure and doubts about their abilities in achieving their goals, which cause them to never feel satisfied, maintain low levels of self-confidence.
4. Tendency to pessimism: Faced with the insatiable search for perfection, the perfectionist conceives this perfection as his goal, without giving importance to the effort that he finds involved. However, before the Fear of failure and that the result is not good enough, it always tends to anticipate events in a negative, pessimistic and fatalistic way.
5. Anxiety and depression: the perfectionist personality is related to high levels of anxiety and high chances of suffering from a depressive disorder. The high self-demand that represent their goals, causes high levels of anxiety and frustration at the criticism of not having done enough, can gradually develop depressive feelings.
6. Irritability and tension: In addition to anxious and depressive feelings, they tend to manifest tense behaviors and to be irritable most of the time, because they always feel dissatisfied. Faced with this, they have little capacity to enjoy what they are doing, enjoy spontaneity and flexibility, because of their way of doing so structured.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Perfectionist personality: meaning, characteristics and flaws, we recommend that you enter our category of Personality.

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