Understanding Perfectionism

Parents often reach out to me to ask how they can support their perfectionist children, who can't seem to cope with failure. I've been on the lookout for someone to talk with us for a while, but just as with our episode on anxiety, it took quite some searching to find an expert who doesn't take a behaviorist-based approach - meaning that if the behavior is fixed, the problem is fixed too. I was really glad to find today's guest, Dr. Paul Hewitt, who is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Hewitt has spent decades researching perfectionism and recently received the Donald O. Hebb award for his distinguished contributions to psychology as a science by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism, and trains clinicians in the treatments of perfectionistic behavior. In this interview, he tells us what we know about perfectionism, what we still don't know, and how to help our children who have perfectionist tendencies.   Books mentioned in the episode:

Perfectionism: A Relational Approach to Conceptualization, Assessment, and Treatment 

Perfectionism in Childhood and Adolescence: A Developmental Approach (Affiliate links).

  [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 01:01 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to look at a topic that bubbles up fairly often in online parenting groups, and that's related to perfectionism. The typical post goes something like this, my child starts an activity but as soon as something doesn't go exactly the way they hope to maybe a crayon wasn't the color they wanted, or they extended a mark too far on the paper. Or they got an answer wrong on a quiz for school. They screw up the paper in a ball and throw it away. And when this happens on a regular basis, it just seems debilitating. How can I help my child to overcome this now while they're still young, so it doesn't have a big impact on their life?   Jen 01:39 And I was actually in the library a while ago looking for books on another topic for another podcast episode and right next to the one I was there to get was an edited volume on perfectionism. And inside was an essay by our guest today Dr. Paul Hewitt. And when I read that essay, and I delved into his body of work, I knew he was exactly the right guest to speak with us.   Jen 01:59 Dr. Hewitt works mostly with adults. But just as we learned when we covered anxiety a few months ago, it can be really difficult to find someone to interview who doesn't just focus on treating the symptoms of the problem, and instead goes beneath the symptoms to understand the real causes, which is what Dr. Hewitt's work does so effectively. Dr. Hewitt is a professor of psychology, and a registered clinical psychologist who has conducted extensive research on the construct of perfectionism, which is the idea of what perfectionism actually is, and whether it's harmful to people. He's currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism and trains clinicians in the treatment of perfectionistic behavior. Dr. Hewitt received his BA from the University of Manitoba, his M.A., and his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan, and he currently leads the Perfectionism and Psychopathology Lab at the University of British Columbia. In 2019, Dr. Hewitt received the Donald O. Hebb Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Science for his work on perfectionism.   Jen 02:56 Welcome, Dr. Hewitt.   Dr. Hewitt 02:58 Thank you very much.   Jen 02:59 All right. So let's start with definitions because it seems as though this should be kind of an easy thing to do, right to define what perfectionism is, but the more you start poking at it, the more you realize it's a pretty nebulous concept. So, can you please tell us how you define perfectionism?   Dr. Hewitt 03:15 You're right it on first blush, it feels like something that should be fairly straightforward. And indeed, a lot of people in the literature, treat it as something that's very simple, straightforward - cognitions, or thoughts or attitudes - in reality, I've spent about 35 years doing research and clinical work with people with problems with perfectionism, and my definition has evolved over the decades. At this point, I couldn't really think of perfectionism as a really complex, sort of multi-dimensional, multi layered personality style. So, it's like a character style that people have that really serves a fundamental purpose for individuals.   Dr. Hewitt 04:00 So, it's, again, it's an ingrained, stable kind of personality style that people have. So, it's very generally, you know, we got, we got very specific in terms of what that might entail, and maybe I can work my way through that.   Jen 04:16 That would be great. Thank you.   Dr. Hewitt 04:18 One of the ways to think about perfectionism is that people - children, adults, adolescents, seniors - will have a requirement of perfection that is, some will need themselves, they'll require themselves to be perfect, or they will require other people to be perfect, or both. And when we talk about what we've talked about the need to be perfect, we talk really about perfectionism traits.   Dr. Hewitt 04:49 Actually, before I go any further, let me let me state this. The conceptualization that I've put together with my colleagues over the years has not come just from research or from reading in the literature. It's come from working with patients and it's come from working with people and my patients over the years have taught me what perfectionism is. So, this whole aspect of my work has really fueled everything that I do from the models we've created to the treatment that we've developed to the understandings.   Dr. Hewitt 05:23 So, we can go back to this need to be perfect. We talk about perfectionism traits, and traits are personality characteristics that we have that are stable, they are long standing, they've been there for a long time, often, most of our lives. They don't change very easily. And we've talked about perfectionism traits. And these traits, these perfectionism traits, drive and energies, perfectionistic behavior.   Dr. Hewitt 05:55 So, it's these traits that drive first off the need to be perfect. And there's three ways that we've talked about people needing to be perfect. The first, we've just called self-oriented perfectionism, meaning, I need me to be perfect, I have the requirement that I have to attain perfection. And so that's one element. It's kind of what everybody thinks about when we talk about perfectionism. There's another element whereby individuals don't, I don't necessarily need me to be perfect, I need you to be perfect, or my children, or the other drivers on the road, or my wife, or my students or the world, in general, I need everybody else to be perfect. And I will be harsh and critical of those people when they're not perfect. In the same way, that when I have a requirement for myself to be perfect, I will be harsh and critical of myself.   Dr. Hewitt 06:53 There's a third element. And this one really came from my clinical work, where it became clear that there were people who needed to be perfect, but it wasn't arising from themselves, it wasn't this intrinsic kind of need. It was more that other people require me to be perfect. And it's the perception that other people require me to be perfect. Now that can be absolutely true. Or it can simply be a perception that's not objectively accurate. But nevertheless, the person has that experience of their world where I am expected to be perfect. And that can come again, from spouses from your boss from the world in general, where a person feels like the expectation by others is that I need to be perfect. And those are the traits and they kind of drive. All of this need to be perfect.   Dr. Hewitt 07:51 So that's one element of perfectionism. Another one that came out of my clinical work was not the need to be perfect. But the need to communicate to the world that I am perfect. So, you may know people that you had described, yeah, that person needs to be perfect, I can see them being really concerned with being perfect, or maybe even striving or driving to be perfect. I don't know these other people who don't necessarily strive and drive, or even concerned about striving, they are more concerned with communicating to everybody that I am perfect. There are certain politicians that exist in the world, for whom that rings very, very true.   Dr. Hewitt 08:37 So, there's three ways that I can essentially appear perfect to you. One is I can communicate to you how perfect I am, I'll tell you all kinds of things that I do, I might even show you something that I do incredibly well, I will promote myself as perfect in with the goal that you will then see me somehow as perfect. Another way to do that, and that's by me kind of doing the opposite is I will conceal things from people, I will not show you any behavior that I exhibit that might be imperfect. So, I might have a concern with you'll never see me public speak, for example, because if I speak publicly, I might falter. And you will then see an imperfection in me. And that is very aversive. So, there's that element. There's also and this is particularly pernicious one where I will not disclose or verbally reveal imperfections. And if you think about the establishment of intimate relationships, it's all about this process of more and more kind of revealing truly who we are as people - perfections, imperfect and everything. You can see that there's a whole domain of revealing of the stuff felt that this kind of perfectionism would really interfere. So, there's that domain, you can start to see that we're talking about a complex personalities found here. And that is in the interpersonal domain, that's about how the perfectionism is expressed: interpersonal.   Dr. Hewitt 10:20 The third element that we focused on is more intrapersonal, that is within the individual. And the way I like to frame it is when we're talking about needing to appear perfect to others, that is about the relationship one has with other people. The intrapersonal is about the relationship one has with oneself. And one of the ways best to capture that is we all have this internal dialogue that we have going on, not necessarily constantly, but a lot of the day. So, prior to this podcast, as I was getting ready, you know, I'm quiet, so my wife is there, she just sees me kind of doing whatever. But in my head, I'm doing okay, well, I've got 15 minutes, I got to make sure that I do this, I got to do that sort of thing and make sure my headphones are on. And it's this simple dialogue that I have with myself. Often, it's just something like that but sometimes it can be a dialogue that really reflects how the relationship I have with myself. So I could be us the self-statements, things I say to myself, Oh, I got a task, I've got to do this perfectly, I've got to make sure I don't come across as silly or stupid, or flawed or defective or anywhere like that. It's just dialogue. And if you think about that, if you had a partner that you were doing this podcast with, and you sent those words to your partner, okay, you got to do this perfectly, you got to make, it would cause real problems. And you probably wouldn't have a partner for very long.   Jen 12:04 Mm hmm.   Dr. Hewitt 12:05 It's very hostile and aggressive. And yet, so if we think of that the way we're interacting with ourselves, it's a very hostile and aggressive way of interacting with ourselves. We can also do things like after the podcast, we say, Oh how can I be so stupid, I can't believe I said, after all these errors, I'm just horrible, I should quit this, I'll never succeed. And these self-recriminations are self-critical element. Also, if you said that to a partner would be very abusive. And so, we can have this abusive relationship, we can also have a soothing self-congratulatory relationship with self-love for perfectionism, this relationship with self tends to be perfectionistic. As I said, I've got to do this perfectly, but also very harsh and critical.   Dr. Hewitt 12:57 So, we've got these three domains, three layers of perfectionism and perfectionistic behavior. And again, this is this is the truth is we're very complex creatures. And it's great to try to have simple models. But when the models sort of eliminate the humanness of people in all their complexity, it's really not much help to us at all. That's what we call a descriptive model of perfectionism. That's how the group that I work with, that's how we see perfection.   Jen 13:33 Okay. And...   Dr. Hewitt 13:35 So yes, it's broad.   Jen 13:39 It's big, and it's complicated. And so, this is really driven. I mean, the vast majority of your academic career, right? I mean, why is it so important to understand so much about perfectionism?   Dr. Hewitt 13:51 One, because as soon as people kind of hear about it, it very often resonates with them. They say, Oh, I understand that, oh, I can relate to that. Or I don't know how many thousands of times I've given a talk both professionally and to the public. And people come up afterwards, all the time. And they're often moved simply because I've described something that resonates.   Jen 14:16 Finally, somebody understands me.   Dr. Hewitt 14:18 That or now I understand, my beloved aunt, or my beloved father or grandparent where they want my sibling or my child. And so, it really kind of resonates with people first off, but also it's important because when I first started this work, I was actually an undergraduate, third year undergraduate. And I discovered that people kind of written a little bit about nobody done any research. And there were these implications that might be associated with depression, and anxiety, and eating disorders, and this, that and the other thing, and nobody checked it out. So did some initial work and developed ways to kind of do that. Some research and then began a process of finding out what not only perfectionism was, but all these different components that we've talked about. That, what are they related to, and we just find a gain into that it's related to all kinds of different problems, and problems in things that we might call psychological or psychiatric diagnosis, very significant relationship problems, very significant achievement problems, and very significant physical health problems, including a study that was done by a colleague of mine here in Canada, on early death, that perfectionism is associated with knowing your control some of the other death factors is predictive of earlier death. So, it's important because it's really associated with all kinds of difficulties for people. Now, there's lots of reasons theories we have as to why that, why that might be and how that works, and that sort of thing. So, a big part of my research and many others across the world has been to try to figure out what are the problems with this personality style? And then how does it work? Ultimately, how do we help people with it?   Jen 16:20 Mm hmm. Yeah. Okay. So, it's associated with a lot of negative things. But one idea that I've seen both in the literature and that I think parents have heard of, as well as this idea of positive perfectionism. And the first reference that I was able to find on it was back in 1978, and I kind of traced it through the literature a little bit, and found a definition in a paper from 1988, where the author's described positive perfectionism, I'm going to quote, as cognitions and behaviors that are directed toward the achievement of certain high level goals to obtain positive consequences. That is positive perfectionism is driven by positive reinforcement and desire for success. And they actually described developing a positive and negative perfectionism scale that drew heavily on a model that you would develop. So, I'm wondering, can you talk us through your ideas about whether this idea of positive perfectionism exists?   Dr. Hewitt 17:11 Oh, no, it doesn't.   Dr. Hewitt 17:15 From my perspective, there's nothing positive about perfectionism. And there is within the field of perfectionism research, there's somewhat of a controversy, although it's becoming less and less of a controversy as we actually understand it more. The truth of it is, perfectionism is about perfecting the self, don't define it as perfecting things like to make sure everything on my desk is perfectly aligned. That's something entirely that's obsessionalism, or compulsive behavior. Perfection is about having a sense of being defective, flawed,