Illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law
When I graduated from Yale Law School, clerkship-bound and with a coveted Big Law offer in my pocket, I thought my perfectionism had earned me all of it. Instead, it cost me my health and become a major reason I left practice. The legal profession has long equated perfectionism with excellence. That perception is understandable. In a context where precision matters and mistakes carry significant consequences, perfectionism can initially feel adaptive, even protective. But the research tells a more complicated story. Lawyer-specific data from the 2024 Lawyer Perfectionism & Well-Being Survey found that attorneys with high perfectionistic tendencies……..Continue reading…
By: Jordana Confino
Source: Bloomberg Law
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Critics:
Perfectionists strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unattainable goals. They measure their self-worth by productivity and accomplishments to the point that some tendencies even lead to distraction from other areas of life. Perfectionists pressure themselves to achieve unrealistic goals that inevitably lead to disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves, their work, and their failure to meet their own expectations.
The Comprehensive Model of Perfectionism (CMPB) operationalizes perfectionism as a multilevel and multidimensional personality style that contains a trait level, a self-presentational level, and a cognitive level. The stable, dispositional, trait-like level of this model includes self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism, as well as other-oriented perfectionism.
Self-oriented perfectionism is characterized by requiring perfection from oneself, while socially prescribed perfectionism refers to the need to obtain acceptance by fulfilling actual or perceived expectations imposed by others. In contrast, other-oriented perfectionists direct their perfectionism towards external sources and are preoccupied with expecting perfection from others.
The second component of the Comprehensive Model of Perfectionism contains the interpersonal expression of perfection through impression management and self-monitoring. This relational component reflects the need to appear, rather than be, perfect via the promotion of perfection and the concealment of imperfection. Like the perfectionism traits, these components are also multifaceted.
One of its facets, perfectionist self-promotion, refers to the expression of perfectionism by actively presenting a flawless, though often false, image of oneself. Another interpersonal facet, nondisplay of imperfection, is the expression of perfectionism through concealment of attributes or behaviours that may be deemed as imperfect, such as making mistakes in front of others.
Similarly, nondisclosure of imperfection is also associated with concealment of self-aspects, but focuses on avoiding verbal disclosure of imperfections, such as not revealing personal information that may be judged negatively or admitting failures. All three facets are used as an (alleged) protection from feelings of low self-worth and possible rejection.
The self-relational/intrapersonal component of the CMPB refers to ruminative, perfectionist thinking and is characterized by cognitive processes concerning the need for perfection, as well as self-recriminations and a focus on the discrepancy between one’s actual and ideal self. This component therefore entails the information processing related to perfectionism.
These three components of the Comprehensive Model of Perfectionism are independent but interrelated, and can be present in individuals in heterogeneous, idiosyncratic patterns with different combinations.[29]The Perfectionism Social Disconnection Model (PSDM) is a dynamic-relational model describing perfectionism and its consequences in an interpersonal context.
This model asserts that perfectionism, via an interpersonal style characterized by aloofness and inauthenticity, leads to the social disconnection and rejection perfectionists aim to avoid. According to the PSDM, perfectionism develops in an early interpersonal context through asynchrony between child and caregiver, when there is a lack of attunement (“fit”) between the temperament of the child and caregiver responses, leading to unfulfilled needs for belonging, acceptance, and self-esteem.
This creates a relational schema of others as critical, and rejecting, and an internal model of oneself as defective which makes perfectionists highly sensitive to the potential for judgment and rejection in interpersonal encounters. Consequently, according to the PSDM, perfectionism serves an interpersonal purpose and the person relies on it as a means of fulfilling the needs for belonging and self-esteem.
In an attempt to gain a sense of acceptance and connection while avoiding possible judgment and rejection, these individuals aim to be or appear flawless. Paradoxically, this often rigid, aloof, and self-concealing relational style increases the potential for alienation and rejection and can lead to social disconnection .
In this way, the very behaviours that perfectionists consider as purportedly fulfilling unmet relational needs exert a detrimental influence on interpersonal encounters, so the alleged solution to social disconnection actually generates it. The PSDM also provides a link between perfectionism and its maladaptive consequences since the estrangement from oneself and others generated by perfectionism is associated with a number of adverse outcomes, such as interpersonal difficulties, depression, and suicide risk.
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