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To be clear, I literally experience the clinical definition of perfectionism, at a level that is arguably disordered [0]: > the tendency to demand of others or

To be clear, I literally experience the clinical definition of perfectionism, at a level that is arguably disordered [0]: > the tendency to demand of others or of oneself an extremely high or even flawless level of performance, in excess of what is required by the situation. It is associated with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health problems. At my worst, every single mistake I made would give me hours to days of stress and anxiety. I've gotten it much better under control in general, but it still does cause a lot of stress from time to time. This is why I object to people equating "perfectionism" with "being bad at prioritizing truly important work". I'm pretty darn good at prioritizing what's important. I actually perceive wasting time on unimportant work as a mistake, the opposite of perfection, and if I do it and realize my mistake I get stressed about it. Perfectionism is holding yourself (and/or others) to excessively high standards, often met by anxiety or depression when those standards aren't met. The amount of perfectionism someone has is completely orthogonal to the question of how you measure perfection—a perfectionist with a definition of perfection that is well aligned with reality may accomplish a lot while a perfectionist with a definition that's less well aligned ends up wasting a lot of time. And while you're right that perfect doesn't exist, that doesn't stop a perfectionist from pursuing it. [0] https://dictionary.apa.org/perfectionism https://dictionary.apa.org/perfectionism

godelski 2y ago
> To be clear, I literally experience the clinical definition of perfectionism To be clear, I was trying to make the point that this is ill-defined due to what is a reasonable level of acceptance is difficult to define and how the common usage of the terminology can be ill suited due to this being dependent on understanding what one is conditioning on. I'm not saying you don't place too strong conditions, I don't know you. Despite running into you here often, I don't know that side of you and it isn't something I can reasonably conclude in either way. But I do know it is common that too lax of conditions are placed. It's a spectrum after all and either end is bad. > every single mistake I made would give me hours to days of stress and anxiety. I can definitely empathize with this and have been there. I think you and I are decently aligned in our belief. Maybe we're bad at explaining and/or bad at interpreting. But there are enough similarities that I think we should not discount. But I do think we were using the word perfectionism in different ways. I was trying to use the version we'd see in normal language and how it is used in the article to agree with you in that this actually isn't perfectionism (certainly not the clinical definition). Though you're right to also point out that the clinical definition of perfectionism is not about actual perfection. But I don't think this invalidates my point that the true difficulty is in determining what is appropriate levels of standards, that this is a difficult balance to strike, and that many conflate comments of details/nuance with excessive standards when they may or may not be, including that the recognition of details is important in determining this. And I do think there is a natural bias in that it is easier to identify excessive standards than it is to identify insufficient ones.

godelski 2y ago

> To be clear, I literally experience the clinical definition of perfectionism To be clear, I was trying to make the point that this is ill-defined due to what is a reasonable level of acceptance is difficult to define and how the common usage of the terminology can be ill suited due to this being dependent on understanding what one is conditioning on. I'm not saying you don't place too strong conditions, I don't know you. Despite running into you here often, I don't know that side of you and it isn't something I can reasonably conclude in either way. But I do know it is common that too lax of conditions are placed. It's a spectrum after all and either end is bad. > every single mistake I made would give me hours to days of stress and anxiety. I can definitely empathize with this and have been there. I think you and I are decently aligned in our belief. Maybe we're bad at explaining and/or bad at interpreting. But there are enough similarities that I think we should not discount. But I do think we were using the word perfectionism in different ways. I was trying to use the version we'd see in normal language and how it is used in the article to agree with you in that this actually isn't perfectionism (certainly not the clinical definition). Though you're right to also point out that the clinical definition of perfectionism is not about actual perfection. But I don't think this invalidates my point that the true difficulty is in determining what is appropriate levels of standards, that this is a difficult balance to strike, and that many conflate comments of details/nuance with excessive standards when they may or may not be, including that the recognition of details is important in determining this. And I do think there is a natural bias in that it is easier to identify excessive standards than it is to identify insufficient ones.