Our dangerous obsession with perfectionism is getting worse | Thomas Curran

Mar 14, 2019

Social psychologist Thomas Curran explores how the pressure to be perfect -- in our social media feeds, in school, at work -- is driving a rise in mental illness, especially among young people. Learn more about the causes of this phenomenon and how we can create a culture that celebrates the joys of imperfection.

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this Ted Talk features personality psychologists Thomas Curran recorded live at tedmed 2018

I'm a bit of a perfectionist now how many times have you heard that one

over drinks maybe with friends or perhaps with family at Thanksgiving it's everyone's favorite floor it's that now quite common response to the difficult final question a job interviews my biggest weakness that's my perfectionism is he for something that supposedly holds us back it's quite remarkable how many of us are quite happy to hold our hands up and say we're

factionists but there's an interesting and serious point because our begrudging admiration for Perfection is so pervasive that we never really stopped the question that Concept in his own terms what does it say about us and our society that there is a kind of Celebration imperfection we tend to hold perfectionism up

as an Insignia of worth the emblem of the successful

yet in my time studying perfectionism I've seen limited evidence of Perfections are more successful quite the contrary they feel discontented and dissatisfied amid a lingering sensor they're never quite perfect enough we know from clinician case reports that perfectionism conceals a host of psychological difficulties including things like depression anxiety anorexia bulimia and even suicide ideation and what's more worrying is that over the last

five years we have seen Perfections and rise at an alarming rate and at the same time we assume more mental illness among young people than ever before rates of suicide in the us alone increased by 25% across the last two decades and we're beginning to see similar Trends emerge across Canada and in my home country the United Kingdom now our research is suggesting that perfectionism is rising as Society is changing

changing and a change society reflects a change sense of personal identity and with it differences in the way in which young people interact with each other and the world around them and there are some unique characteristics about our preeminent Market based society they include things like unrestricted choice and personal freedom and he's a characteristics that we feel are contributing to almost epidemic levels of this problem

so let me give you an example young people today more preoccupied with the attainment of the perfect life and lifestyle in terms of their image status and wealth of data from Pew show that young people in born in the u.s. in the late 1980s 20% more likely to report being materially rich as among the most important life goes relative to their parents and their grandparents Young

also borrow more heavily than did all the generations and they spend a great a much greater proportion of their income on image goods and Status possessions these possessions their lives and their lifestyles are now displayed in Vivid detail on the ubiquitous social media platforms of Instagram Facebook Snapchat in this new visual culture the appearance of perfection is far more important than the

see that one side of the modern landscape that we have so lavishly furnished for young people is this idea that there's a perfectible life and then there's a perfectible lifestyle then the other is surely work nothing is Out Of Reach for those that want it badly enough or so we're told this is the idea the heart of the American dream of opportunity meritocracy the self-made person hard work the notion that hard work always pays off

above all the idea that we are captains of our own destiny these ideas they connect our wealth our status and our image with our innate personal value

but it is of course complete fiction because even if there were equality of opportunity the idea that we are captains of our own destiny disguises a much darker reality for young people they are subject to an almost ongoing economic tribunal metrics rankings League tables have emerged that the yardsticks for which Merit can be Quantified and used to sort young people into schools classes and colleges education is the the first Arena where measurements of

he played out and we're metrics are being used as a tool to improve standards and performance and it starts young young people in America's big city high schools take some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade no wonder young people report is strongly to strive perform and Achieve at the center of Modern Life they've been conditioned to Define themselves in the

tricked and narrow terms of grades percentiles and league tables

this is a society that preys on their insecurities insecurities about how they're performing and how they are appearing to other people this is a society that amplifies their imperfections every floor every unforeseen setback increases the need to perform more perfectly next time or else bluntly you're a failure that feeling of being flawed and efficient is especially pervasive just talk to Young how should I look how should I be

she look like that model I should have as many followers that Instagram influencer I must do better in school

in my role as mentor to many young people I see these lived effects of Perfections and firsthand and one student sticks out in my mind very vividly John not his real name was ambitious hardworking and diligent and on the surface he was exceptionally High achieving often gaining first class grades for his work you no matter how well John achieve he always seemed to recast is successes as

failures and in meetings with me he would talk openly about how he'd let himself and others down John's justification was quite simple how could he be a success when he was trying so much harder than other people just attained the same outcomes see John's perfectionism his unrelenting work ethic was only serving to expose what he saw as his in a weakness to himself and to others I cases like John speak to the the harmfulness of perfectionism is

way of being in the world contrary to popular belief perfectionism is is never about perfecting things up affecting tasks it's not about striving for excellence John's case highlights this vividly at its root perfectionism is about perfecting the self or more precisely perfecting an imperfect self you can think about it like a mountain of achievement the perfectionism leads us to imagine ourselves scaling and we things ourselves once I reached

Summit and people will see on the floored and I'll be worth something

what factions and doesn't tell us is that soon after reaching the summit we will be called down against the fresh lowlands of insecurity and changes to try and scale that Peak again this is a cycle of self-defeat in the pursuit of unattainable perfection of perfection is just cannot step up and it's why it's so difficult to treat now we've known we've known for decades and Decades of perfectionism contributes to a hose or psychological problems but there was never a good way to measure it

that was until the late 1980s when two Canadians Paul Hewitt and Gordon flat came along and developed a self-report measure of perfectionism so that's right folks you can measure this and it essentially captures free core elements of perfectionism the first is self going to perfect the irrational desire to be perfect I strive to be as perfect as I can be the second is so she prescribed perfectionism the sense that the social environment is excessively

panting I feel that others are too demanding of me and the third is of oriented perfectionism the imposition of unrealistic standards and other people if I ask somebody to do something I expect it to be done perfectly now research shows that all three elements are professional associate with compromised mental health including things like height and depression heightened anxiety and suicide ideation but by far the most problematic element of perfectionism is socially prescribed affection that sense that everyone expects me to be perfect

this element of fiction has a large correlation with serious mental illness and with today's emphasis on Perfection at the Forefront of my mind I was curious to see whether these elements of Perfections were changing to date research in this area is focused on immediate family relations but we wanted to look at it amongst more and more broader level so we took all of the data that had ever been collected in the 27 years since Paul and gold developed that perfectionism measure me isolated the datum College

this turned out to be more than 40,000 young people from American Canadian and British colleges and with so much data available we look to see if there was a trend and you know it took us more than three years to collate all of this information crunch the numbers and write a report but it was worth it because I know Alice has uncovered something alarming

all three elements of perfectionism have increased over time but socially prescribed perfectionism saw the largest increase and by far in 1989 just nine percent of young people report clinically relevant levels so she prescribed fixed those are levels that we might typically see in clinical populations by 2017 that figure had doubled to 18 percent by 2050 projections based on the models that we tested indicate that almost

one in three young people report clinically relevant levels of socially prescribed perfectionism remember this is the element of perfectionism that had large correlation with serious mental illness and that's for good reason so she prescribes affections feel a unrelenting need to meet the expectations of other people and even if they do meet yesterday's expectation of perfection then raise the bar and sort of an even higher degree because these folks believe that the better they do

do the better that they're expected to do this breeds are profound sense of helplessness and worse hopelessness but is there hope of course it's whole perfectionist can and should hold onto certain things they are typically bright ambitious conscientious and hardworking and yes treatment is complex but a little bit of self-compassion going easy on ourselves when things don't go well can turn those qualities in

greater personal peace and success and then there's what we can do as caregivers Perfections for fictions develops in our formative years and so young people are more vulnerable

parents can help their children by supporting them unconditionally when they've tried but failed and Mom and Dad can resist that understandable urgent today's highly competitive Society to helicopter parent there's a lot of community there's a lot of anxiety that's communicated when parents take on their kids successes and failures as their own

But ultimately our research raises important questions about how we are structuring society and whether our society is heavy emphasis on competition evaluation testing is benefiting young people it's become common place for public figures to say that in people just need a little bit more resilience in the face of these new and unprecedented pressures but I believe that is as washing our hands of the core issue because we have a shared responsibility to create

society and a culture in which young people need letters into less perfection in the first place that's my kid uh sighs crying that kind of world is an enormous Challenge and for a generation of young people that live their lives in the 24/7 Spotlight of metrics League tables social media perfectionism is inevitable so long as they lack any purpose in life greater than how they were appearing or how they're performing to other people what can they do about it every time they are knocked down from that mountain top they see no of

Russian butt to try scaling that Peak again the ancient Greeks knew that this endless struggle up and down the same mountain is not the road to happiness their image of hell was a man called Sisyphus doing fraternity to keep rolling the same boulder up a hill only to see it roll back down and have to start again so long as we teach young people that there is nothing more real or meaningful in their lives than this hopeless quest for Perfection then we are going to condemn future generations to

same futility and despair and so were left with a question

when you're going to appreciate that there is something fundamentally inhuman about Limitless Perfection no one is Flawless if you want to help our young people escape the Trap of perfection then we would teach them the in a chaotic world life will often defeat us but that's okay so here is not weakness

if you want to help our young people outgrow the self-defeating snare of impossible Perfection then we will raise them in a society that has outgrown that very same delusion but most of all if you want our young people to enjoy mental emotional and psychological health and we will invite them to celebrate the joys and the beauties of imperfection as a normal and natural part of everyday living

and learning thank you very much

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