As an eating disorder therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area, I know firsthand that many people with eating disorders also struggle with perfectionism. While there is no one cause for eating disorders, perfectionism is a contributing factor. But what is perfection, exactly?
In essence, it is what it sounds like: the desire to be perfect in everything you do. It can seem like a positive characteristic because it drives you to accomplish your goals, but it becomes damaging when it is weaponized by an eating disorder or simply causes you to place too much pressure on yourself.
Perfectionism can look like:
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Holding yourself to extremely high standards that you wouldn’t necessarily hold others to
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Thinking in black and white (when the right answer or way is either this or that, no in between or gray area)
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Identifying with your mistakes (“I was wrong” equates to “I am wrong.”)
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Believing that there is only one right way to do things
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Not cutting yourself any slack
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Having no self-compassion or unconditional love for yourself when you make mistakes
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Doing everything you can to avoid failure
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Not giving yourself the room or time to learn from your mistakes in order to improve
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Having a strict set of rules that you must follow
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Only recognizing and valuing your accomplishments if you can quantify them (pounds lost, grades earned, etc.)
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Blaming yourself for a mistake when the fault belongs to all members of a group
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Seeking external approval
Perfectionism often creates a toxic environment not only in your own mind, but all around you.
Perfectionism in school, the workplace or in any environment where you work with a team can contribute to numerous issues. If you focus only on your individual successes and failures and your own judgement of your performance, you won’t work very well in a team, and there will be little room for growth. If you are failure-oriented (avoiding failure at all costs), you are more likely to point out mistakes rather than the things you and others do well, which then creates a negative culture.
Perfectionism can also enable white supremacy culture in the workplace because it allows people to devalue outside input and assert that there is only one right way (often the white way) of doing things. For an example, think of how the European colonizers disregarded the religions of the indigenous peoples they found in the Americas and decided that Christianity was the only “correct” religion.
Perfectionism is becoming increasingly common. In fact, the number of perfectionists in modernized countries has increased from 1989 to 2016.
Perfectionism often shows up in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well. People with autism commonly exhibit black and white thinking, struggle with changing the way they do things, and follow strict rules they have imposed on themselves. For this reason, eating disorders commonly co-occur with autism in people who are assigned female at birth. Sometimes, the eating disorder is diagnosed before the individual even knows they are on the spectrum, because ASD is often overlooked in female-bodied people.
Perfectionism causes you to judge yourself harshly and doesn’t allow you to celebrate your everyday successes or grow as a person. Giving yourself grace when you mess up and being kind to yourself when you are still learning something will only help you progress in all areas of life. Self-compassion is key to recovering from an eating disorder, but your perfectionism will tell you that cutting yourself slack means you are lazy or weak. So in order to address your eating disorder, you must first understand your perfectionistic tendencies enough to work on them.
If you are ready to get a grasp on the behaviors and beliefs that are holding you back, including perfectionism, reach out to us for a free 15-minute consultation. We provide online eating disorder therapy to California residents.
