Is perfection possible? And if so, is it worth the cost to your mental and spiritual health?

The quest for perfection haunts many people: students, athletes, employees, parents—and the children of those parents!

While this quest is often framed as the pursuit of excellence, virtue, and success, perfectionism often results in various maladaptive behaviours—such as procrastination, people-pleasing, relational stress, and mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression disorders.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Dr. Kenneth Wang, Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology, to talk about the psychological and spiritual dynamics of perfectionism.

Together, they explore the connections between perfectionism and a range of personal and mental health issues, such as depression, achievement, religiosity, racial identity, and self-esteem. They reflect on the cultural obsession with perfection; the severe psychological and social burdens of trying to be perfect; the toxicity of comparison to others; the meaning of being “good enough”; and the spiritual impact of encouraging perfection in education, career, relationships, and personal life.

About Kenneth Wang

Kenneth Wang is Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology. He’s an experienced therapist, and has conducted extensive research that spans the psychology of religion, to mindful meditation, to coping with trauma, mental health and race, moral character and virtue formation, diversity, and cross-cultural adjustment. His expertise is in the psychological study of perfectionism in familial, educational, religious contexts—looking at the phenomenon across a variety of cultures. Visit Dr. Kenneth Wang’s website to take an online assessment for perfectionism and consider guidance and coaching from Dr. Wang.

Show Notes

• Societal perfectionism and the lure of the perfect through technology
• Comparing perfectionism in Asia vs America
• Comparing ourselves to others
• “Editing for the perfect shot”
• “There’s no time to relax or rest.”
• “One thing that's underlying challenges of perfectionism is that we compare ourselves with others and we feel like we're not good enough.”
• Rank-ordered report cards in Taiwan
• The psychological weight of pressure to perform
• Competition and perfectionism
• The elusive search for contentment
• The difference between performance and perfectionism
• Perfectionism’s two core dimensions: (1) striving to meet very high standards of excellence / (2) discrepancy or evaluative concerns—being truly bothered by any amount of imperfections
• “Extreme perfectionists can’t tolerate any imperfection.”
• Shame, rumination, and anxiety
• Kenneth guides Mark through a live perfectionism evaluation
• “Is your best good enough?”
• “Adaptive perfectionism”
• “I did the best I could” vs “I’m sure I always could have done better.”
• Cross-cultural dimensions of perfectionism: wanting to fit in, the exhaustion of trying to get things right, and language apprehensiveness
• Timidity and fear to make a mistake
• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and perfectionism
• The view of oneself: performance achievement mentality, seeking validation, unstable self-worth
• Perfectionists magnify imperfections
• Inner critic
• Kenneth Wang’s recovery as a perfectionism
• Can perfectionists forgive themselves for displeasing others?
• How to deal with the emotions that come along with perfectionist catastrophizing
• Training mental muscles to become more resilient to negative emotions
• How to “sit with emotions”
• Japanese Kintsugi practices and the visibility of a history of brokenness: gold paint that highlights brokenness and imperfect repair
• Theological reflections on perfection: “Only God is perfect.”
• How does Christianity speak into perfectionism with grace and truth?
• “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
• Shame and giving up on our illusions of perfection
• Coping with inadequacy
• Allowing God to lead us into the broad place instead of the narrow place
• Fuller Theological Seminary’s “Imperfect Culture Lab”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.