When Good Is Never Good Enough: Understanding Perfectionism
“I should have done better.”
“What if I get it wrong?”
“It went well, but I could have done more.”
Do any of these sound like the voice in your head?
Wanting to do well is a good thing. It helps us learn and work toward what matters to us. But when nothing ever feels like enough, even a win can start to feel like pressure.
If that rings a bell, it might be perfectionism, especially if how you feel about yourself depends a lot on achieving, not making mistakes, or living up to what other people expect.
High standards, or perfectionism?
You can be organized, responsible, and ambitious without being a perfectionist. The difference is usually in how you treat yourself when things don’t go as planned.
Some people have high standards and stay flexible. They can still notice what they’ve accomplished. Others are hard on themselves all the time, afraid of failing, or left feeling that their effort never really counts.
Researchers actually look at these as two different things: aiming high, and worrying about mistakes, failure, and what others think. One meta-analysis pulled together 416 studies with 113,118 adults. It found that the worrying side was more strongly tied to anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms than the striving side (Callaghan et al., 2024).
So wanting to do well isn’t the problem. It becomes one when your sense of worth rides on meeting very demanding standards, and you keep pushing even when it’s costing you (Shafran et al., 2002).
Where does it come from?
Usually not just one thing. Your temperament, your experiences, what you were taught to expect of yourself, and the culture you grew up in can all play a part.
Maybe you learned early that doing well got you approval or made you feel safe. Or maybe criticism and other people’s disappointment felt so hard that you got good at avoiding mistakes.
In Adlerian therapy, we sometimes look at family roles. Say you’re the oldest. You might have been expected to be responsible, set a good example, or help with your younger siblings. If you heard things like “You should know better” or “You need to be the responsible one” often enough, you may have come to believe that mistakes aren’t okay and that your own needs come last.
That said, birth order doesn’t decide who you become, and it doesn’t cause perfectionism. Plenty of oldest kids never felt that pressure, and perfectionism shows up in people of every birth order. What matters is how you experienced your place in your family.
A trauma-informed, person-centred way of looking at it
I don’t think of perfectionism as just a bad habit to fix. I’d rather ask what it’s trying to do for you.
Maybe it keeps criticism away. Maybe it helps you hold on to your relationships, feel a bit more in control, or avoid letting people down.
This doesn’t always come from trauma. But when we understand the story behind it, it’s easier to meet it with curiosity instead of judgment.
In counselling, we might talk about questions like:
What does making a mistake mean to you?
What do you worry would happen if you weren’t perfect?
Whose expectations are you trying to meet?
Can you still feel your worth when things don’t go the way you wanted?
The goal isn’t to give up on ambition or lower every standard. It’s to loosen the tie between achievement, mistakes, and how you see yourself.
When it starts to get in the way
Perfectionism can wear you down. You might notice constant stress, procrastinating, trouble making decisions, strain in your relationships, or never feeling satisfied with what you’ve done.
Some people put things off because they’re scared of doing them wrong. Others overwork, check everything again and again, or can’t rest because they feel they should always be doing more.
If this is causing you a lot of distress or making daily life harder, it can help to talk with someone. Evidence-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help you look at rigid beliefs, ease the harsh self-criticism, and respond to mistakes and uncertainty with more flexibility.
You can care about doing well without needing to be perfect.
So maybe the question isn’t “How can I do everything better?” but this one:
“Can I let myself be human, even when I don’t meet every expectation?”
Support at SOEL Counselling & Wellness
At SOEL Counselling & Wellness, counselling gives you a space to explore these patterns, understand where they came from, and build a kinder relationship with yourself.
If you’re wondering whether counselling might be a good fit, you’re welcome to book a free 20-minute consultation. Individual counselling is available to residents of Canada, in both English and Japanese.
This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact your local emergency services or a crisis line.
References
Callaghan, T., Greene, D., Shafran, R., Lunn, J., & Egan, S. J. (2024). The relationships between perfectionism and symptoms of depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 53(2), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2023.2277121
Shafran, R., Cooper, Z., & Fairburn, C. G. (2002). Clinical perfectionism: A cognitive-behavioural analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(7), 773–791. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00059-6
