“Now that you don’t have to be perfect,
you can be good”.
(John Steinbeck, East of Eden)
Adolescents struggle often with perfectionism, shaped by pressures coming from many directions all at once: Society. Family. And worse: pressures coming from the self, which in the teen years is still fragile. The perfectionist has standards with a quality of ‘not ever quite there’. The whole point of these self-inflicted standards is that they’re ‘difficult, if not impossible, to meet’.
Maria, thank you for taking the time to write this. I really enjoy reading your thoughtful blogs. I was interested in the absence in this paper of the effect of the school system on the rise of perfectionism. I think the way the UK’s education system has evolved contributes greatly to young people’s perception of what they could achieve and how the fall short.
Such a helpful article that resonates with trying to understand the immerse pressure felt by patients, parents and clinicians. Thank you