Kelsey reflects on being a bit of a perfectionist and has had a bit of a long road to where she is now. Her mental health really suffered while she was sitting her A-levels at college after doing well academically in her GCSE’s the year before.
Perfectionism like any trait can have positive and negative impacts on our lives. In its healthy manifestations, perfectionism motivates people to strive for excellence. This motive is key to the greatest human endeavours. It is difficult to imagine anyone becoming a violin virtuoso, a world-class ballet dancer, or a notable artist without a measure of that particular intolerance for mediocrity in oneself – at least, in a given domain – that is at the core of striving for excellence.
At other times, perfectionism takes a different – and self-destructive – form. Unhealthy perfectionism leads us to spending more time brooding than actually attempting to do anything.
One is a tendency to shift the focus of attention from the task at hand to how success or failure would reflect on us. Of course, in doing anything, we are more or less aware of the fact that both success and failure would show something about us – and we are not indifferent to what that something would be – but when we are focused on a task, this thought is in the periphery of our attention, not its focal point. Not so for the perfectionists, who are preoccupied with what success or failure would show about them.
