On Perfectionism and “Self-Help” Culture

It’s a story we’re all told: 

Try, try, try, and you will succeed.

It isn’t a story we are born understanding. Children, rendered powerless by factors beyond their control, are typically well aware of the limitations of willpower. But when children are told stories, they listen. 

We hear this story in our systems of reward and punishment, in the origin myths of our country, in the system of stickers and stars that upholds our education system. It is an ideology into which we are indoctrinated—one that resurges through the legends and fairytales that permeate our childhoods.

The meritocracy myth, the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, has driven so much of American history—and, by extension, world history. it’s ingrained in us from birth—before birth, even.

Take the premise of evolution: the concept of “survival of the fittest.” Those with the advantage—or cumulative advantages—are winners. Those who prove themselves against nature's brutal forces are more likely to triumph—and thus, to survive. 

Despite the cultural prevalence of the pithy term “survival of the fittest,” evolution is more nuanced than we are led to believe. It has less to do with merit and more to do with fit—the degree to which an organism fits its environment. Despite modern connotations, fitness doesn’t mean the peak of health and performance. Fitness has little to do with perfection and everything to do with adaptability. It is a term that falls apart in a vacuum since it depends entirely upon context. An organism is “fit” only to the extent that it meets the demands thrust upon it by the vagaries of life. Yet, we have built innumerable hierarchies around the ever-elusive concept of fitness. We have packaged and sold it as something to be won—a place to be reached—rather than an interminable, flexible, and iterative process of trial and error. Proponents of meritocracy are quick to quip: hierarchies are standard in nature. It’s perfectly natural for organisms to arrange themselves into systems of power and subjugation. And though hierarchies are common, they are also rarely meant to be fixed. Evolutionary hierarchies are contextual; whoever is at the top of the pyramid in one scenario may not have the same luck next time. A predator to one is prey to another. 

Fitness isn’t fixed—it’s nuanced and adaptive. 

But most of us don’t get that side of the story. 

How It Started 

From birth, we are indoctrinated into a society where privileges are purportedly granted on the illusory, manufactured concept of merit.  If you aren’t healthy, it’s because you must not want it enough. If you aren’t beautiful, it’s because you haven’t spent enough time and money cultivating beauty. If you don’t fit into the conventional model of “fitness,” then you aren’t doing something right. After all, there are innumerable industries, communities, and ideologies—not to mention billions of dollars—dedicated to “empowering” people to improve their fitness. You’ve been given plenty of options. The choice is in your hands. The ball is in your court.  

And we buy into it. As of 2020, the vast majority of people around the world believed not only that the world should run meritocratically—but that it does. We spend our time, our resources, and our energy buying into self-help rather than imagining collective solutions to our collective problems. And even as the world descends more deeply into strife, warfare, mental illness, addiction, and other plagues of compulsive individualism, we persist in the delusion that the answer must lie somewhere deep within ourselves—beyond the toxins, the “limiting beliefs,” the traumas, the labels—the evil stepmothers—that are supposedly holding us back from the top. Because that’s how meritocracy—and its twin flame, perfectionism—operate to uphold the status quo. And like everyone else, I bought into it too. 

It began with an attempt to set goals. I made checklists to visualize my goals and track my progress—as we’ve all been encouraged to do. But for me, habit quickly becomes compulsion, determination—the quality for which I have garnered the most recognition and praise—was often addiction masquerading as self-discipline. I made checklists for everything: my health, my weight, my appearance, my friendships, my relationships, my achievements, my academic success, my spirituality—the list goes on. I made checklists—much later in my recovery journey—to work on my fixation with checklists. I picked up self-help books for everything—How to Win Friends and Influence People, Improve Your Conversations, How to do the Work, How to Meet Yourself, How to Do Nothing. These were instruction manuals rather than reflective exercises, focused more on the how than the why. 

Until relatively recently, I believed—against all experiential evidence—that my drive for perfection was my superpower. I believed that I had been endowed with an exceptional ability to tackle complex problems at lightning speed and that this ability—to persevere in my pursuit of a particular goal despite the costs of doing so—set me apart from the rest. I believed, in other words, that my will to achieve made me better than other people. And so I became devastatingly lonely.

Perfectionism nearly destroyed me. It took my relationships, my friends, my joy, and my grief. It took my sanity and my mental health. It took my ability to recognize my own achievements, to practice self-love. It took my faith in recovery, my hope for healing. And worst of all, it took my compassion—for myself and others. 

Shame—so often the precursor to perfectionism—has a way of convincing us that we aren’t worthy of companionship and acceptance. Irrationally high expectations don’t just affect us; they affect our loved ones—and our ability to love them in the first place. Because the relationship we have with ourselves is but a mirror of the relationships we have with others. We project onto others what we cannot accept about ourselves. And my inability to conceive of myself as anything other than an aggregate of my achievements had me believing the same about others. 

Perfectionism is ultimately a grasp for control—an attempt to regain supremacy over the wild and untamed laws of nature. And yet, as famed artist and architect Antoni Gaudi noted: “there are no straight lines in nature.” But I didn’t care about the order of the universe as much as I cared about my own plans and designs. I wasn’t interested in embracing my human nature but in transcending it. 

And though my way rarely worked—expecting perfection has a way of breeding disappointment—I persisted. Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. The pithy maxim has been appropriated by 12-step programs as a metaphor for addiction. And I was addicted. 

The Pathology of Perfectionism 

We live in an age of epidemics—the opioid epidemic, the Covid-19 epidemic, the mental illness epidemic. But what these epidemics all have in common is one thing: isolation. The drug addict shoots up behind closed doors, his entire existence shrouded in secrecy. The chronically ill senior cannot leave her house for over two years, so she suffers alone and in exile. The millions of depressed people—their pain compounded by the rhetoric of bootstraps culture and restricted access to medical resources—wither in their beds, the blinds drawn to make the world disappear. Researchers are now referring to a “loneliness epidemic,” as the rate of people suffering from isolation has nearly doubled over the last five years. 

And isolation, as we have seen, goes hand in hand with perfectionism.

Indeed, social scientist Thomas Curran suggests that perfectionism has evolved into the next epidemic—a toxic trend that has bled into youth culture to such an extent as to remain undetected. In his seminal article for the progressive publication The Conversation, Curran argues that perfectionism is behind many of the social ills that plague people today—unprecedented rates of mental illness and suicidality and high incidents of aggression, abuse, violence, and self-harm. His formal, peer-reviewed research concludes that perfectionism has increased dramatically among young people over the last several decades, prompted by a renewed interest in self-help, neoliberalism, and other individualist ideologies. He writes:“Over the last 50 years, communal interest and civic responsibility have been progressively eroded, replaced by a focus on self-interest and competition in a supposedly free and open marketplace. in this new, market-based society, young people are evaluated in many ways. Social media, school, and university testing, and job performance assessments mean young people can be sifted, sorted, and ranked by peers, teachers, and employers.”

What is important to note about Curran’s research is that it contradicts the claim—espoused by neoliberals—that free market capitalism is the “natural order” of our economic system. Curran is a lone dissenter in a sea of voices claiming this is just “the way things are.” In fact, he traces the progression of perfectionism right back to the mid-20th century, when the world’s leaders—namely, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, and Margaret Thatcher—exercised tremendous effort (and expended significant funds) to promote and profligate their unequivocal faith in the “free and open marketplace.” Neoliberalism writes Curran, has created a “marketized form of competition [that] has pushed young people to focus on their achievements” rather than their growth. 

Perfectionism (like addiction) is a coping mechanism run riot—a comforting behavior we turn to in moments of anxiety and uncertainty. Researchers have long understood the intimate connection between self-discipline and anxiety—and yet we continue to collectively subscribe to its unforgiving tenets. Determined to set every seeming imperfection straight—from the wrinkles on our aging faces to the grass outside—we have erected entire industries in the name of self-optimization. Our institutions—from school to work and everything in between—hinge around a reductive concept of growth as a linear progression of will and achievement, cause and effect. But if we know better, why can’t we seem to do better?

We tend to privilege ideas not for their validity but for their efficacy. Why should it matter if meritocracy is a myth when it upholds the status quo? Why should we cease to promote perfectionism when it encourages people to live up to the ideals we cherish? The problem with such a short-sighted view is that we fail to consider the implications of such an ideology. As in many other areas of social life, we plow ahead with the first good idea without examining its intersectional repercussions. In her manifesto against perfectionism American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal, author Kerri Kelly explores the relationship between personal wellness and social control. “The real function of perfectionism,” she explains, “is to maintain control and power. It dictates what we get to avoid, how we get to feel, what we get to believe. It allows us to comply and uphold the limiting stories and lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And it operates like an addiction.”

The metaphor of addiction has been widely overused, deployed to describe everything from sugar cravings to social media trends. But addiction isn’t a metaphor for perfectionism—it’s a synonym. Perfectionism is simply an addiction to achievement—which produces maladaptive neural circuits in the brain much like those seen in substance abusers. And scientists have established direct causal links between perfectionism and co-morbid addictions and compulsions—including eating disorders, substance abuse, and workaholism. 

This should come as no surprise; addiction is fundamentally a pathological grasp for control. We often hear eating disorders described as an attempt to control the body and in so doing, the mind. It’s easy to see how obsessive behaviors around food are oriented around self-discipline. My first addiction was dieting (and later, starvation). My body was the most accessible landscape on which to act out my anxieties and trauma responses. In the absence of holistic agency, we grasp for scraps. 

Every addiction—every attempt to squash or quell an unpleasant thought or feeling—is a manifestation of our insatiable hunger for control. Addiction is what happens when we attempt to manipulate our experience of reality. We use mind and mood-altering drugs to straighten the squiggly lines in our hearts and minds. It constitutes a fundamental inability to accept the world as it so often is: painful and imperfect. 

It’s a vicious cycle; the more we aim to control, the more apparent it becomes that most things are far beyond our realm of influence. Additionally, pathological control—as seen in addiction—tends to breed only more chaos, exacerbating the itch to exercise control. And so on.

The Politicization of Perfectionism

With the publication of the preamble to the United States Constitution, Americans were introduced to the notion of a “more perfect union.” It’s unclear what the preamble’s alleged author, the often-overlooked Founding Father Gouverneur Morris, intended when he penned those words, but context suggests that the fundamental idea was to establish a nation that, in the spirit of democracy and progressivism, was perpetually striving towards perfection. 

Unlike most other countries in the world, ours is quite young—and so, from the beginning, it had something to prove. Meritocracy was a cornerstone of Calvinist culture—the Puritans famously ascribed to ideals of asceticism, hard work, and relentless self-discipline—in other words, perfectionism. 

It is enshrined in our foundational documents, our cultural norms, and our economic system. 

Perfectionism is the handmaiden of capitalism—an economic model that prioritizes growth at any cost, promotes the exploitation of natural resources, and equates value with productivity. Both depend upon our perpetual dissatisfaction to thrive. Both capitalize on our weaknesses, our insecurities, our lack—or perceived lack. Both operate in false dichotomies rather than organic dualities. Both uphold social hierarchies—the most damaging human invention of all. And even if we do not perceive ourselves to be insufficient, shrewd sellers will convince us that we are. They will create a problem to provide a solution. They will set a fire to put it out. 

But capitalism is a model of growth—not of sustainability. And while it purports to prompt progress and innovation, it fails to consider the direction in which that growth is headed, charging ahead without regard for ethical questions or purposeful design. The unrelenting emphasis on progressivism leaves us with little time to determine if the path we’re taking is one we even want to be on. In our world, productivity is akin to business—there is no distinction between the two. But understanding the difference between movement and progress, between business and productivity, is of paramount importance if we hope to create a better world.

Although neoliberal meritocracy purports to promote the ends over the means—regardless of the implicit cost to human life and environmental integrity—it’s actually far more about the process than it is about the goal. Meritocracy, rather than representing the noble pursuit of worthy causes, has become instead an addiction to the fleeting dopamine surge of checking yet anotiher item off the list. Progress is no longer undertaken in the name of improving outcomes but in the name of progress itself. And when we don’t distinguish between the two, we end up, more often than not, exploiting, alienating, and disenfranchising those we purport to help.

Perfectionism—and its Trojan horse, the self-help industry—is essentially a marketing scheme—and marketing is less about the product itself than about the reductive story we tell to sell it. Those who would persuade us to fall for it don’t actually care if we lose ten pounds or erase our fine lines or benefit from the next course or coaching program. They care that we invest in the story. And they want us to stick around for more. 

Perfectionism is thus a tool—a cattle prod prompting us to consume. It does not promote holistic change or integration but consumption. It works with capitalism to convince us that we need to buy more, spend more, and do more in the name of approximating an elusive ideal. When I think of my relationship with perfectionism, I think primarily of excess. I think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve spent on wellness retreats, athleisure clothing, yoga classes, meditation apps, pre-packaged juice cleanses, overpriced supplements, countless doctor’s appointments, exotic homeopathic solutions (IVs, micro needling, cool-sculpting, red light therapy, cold plunges, etc.), cosmetic procedures, makeup, and innumerable courses, workshops, and coaching sessions. I think of the investments I’ve made towards accruing credentials and accolades—over one million dollars spent on pricey private schools, expensive coastal colleges, master’s degrees, and countless certifications—from yoga teaching to life coaching (and yet, where is the legitimacy in a “meritocracy” that awards privileges on the basis of money? Where is the hope in a spirituality that hinges on sacrifice?)  I think of my tendency to hoard and “save,” the faith I’ve placed in a blouse I might need one day at an office job I’ll never have, the items I fearfully protect and pack away to avoid ever having to confront lack and dispossession. I think of my selfishness and greed, the nervous drive towards acquisition and accumulation—always needing more—at the expense of other people, both near and far.

Because the fast fashion I wore came from sweatshops. And the makeup I cycled through was tested on helpless animals. Underpaid day laborers harvested my organic kale. Human trafficking funded my avocados. More often than not, the effects of my perfectionism were so indirect that I could conveniently absolve myself of all responsibility over them. For example, my insistence upon attending a private institution throughout high school indirectly contributed to funneling funding away from local New York City public schools—but of course, I wasn’t worried about that. The yoga studios I frequented in Harlem and the Lower Ninth Ward often exacerbated the harmful effects of gentrification—but heal yourself to heal the world, right? Unfortunately, my doctrine—the worship of checklists in the name of personal growth and self-improvement—rendered me oblivious to the world around me. We all worship something. I worshiped myself. Or rather, the version I bullied into being. 

Perfectionism finds a comfortable home in our contemporary culture of wellness, since both necessarily limit the scope of our attention to ourselves and our immediate environs. In this way, perfectionism breeds egotism and self-absorption. It fits neatly within the quintessentially American cult of individualism and rugged machismo, a culture in which it is every man for himself. But this prerogative does not meet the needs of our diverse population. It does not meet the needs of women, who thrive in interdependence. It does not meet the needs of immigrants, many of whom hark from collectivist cultures. And it does not meet the needs of the billions of people who live in poverty and rely upon mutual aid to survive in the absence of coherent socio-economic structures of support. 

Impossibly high standards for oneself and others—in other words, perfectionism—is one of the primary markers of clinical narcissism. 

Unsurprisingly, there is a thoroughly researched association between perfectionism and narcissism. And because the narcissist cannot fulfill her own expectations—and cannot cope with the disappointment—she veers into the realm of delusion, inflating the fragile effigy of the ego instead of strengthening the capital-S Self. 

Because self-help—an industry that has accrued over ten billion dollars in book sales alone—is inextricable from the cult of individualism. It dangles before us the tantalizing proposition that our problems are our own, and so we can easily solve them with a change of mind or positive thinking or a significant investment in yet another groundbreaking course from a billionaire life coach or Western spiritual “guru.” Research has found that rather than helping us overcome our personal obstacles, self-help, by encouraging the willful ignorance of socio-economic constraints, leaves us feeling more guilty and ashamed than ever for failing to do so. 

The self-help industry has successfully accomplished its vital mission: to convince all of us that our suffering comes from our own inadequacy, our fundamental inability to conform to the demands of the world around us. And yet,  in a world that faces more collective problems than ever isn’t helping us at all. When suicide rates and drug overdoses rise at an unprecedented rate when socio-political schisms are increasingly exacerbated by the inflammatory algorithms of money-hungry social media apps, when an estimated 50% of Americans are diagnosed with a mental illness within their lifetime, can we really say that the problem is with us? And can we really claim to solve it alone?

A Vision for the Future

Perfectionism is an insidious form of suffering. It convinces us that we are happiest when enslaved to a program of relentless self-optimization. It persuades us that we are either worse or better than others—but never equal. It keeps us imprisoned in a hall of mirrors, gazing at the warped image of our own distorted reflections, trudging down a path that only seems to lead somewhere, and is instead a series of concentric circles, leading nowhere, delivering nothing. 

Perfectionism isn’t working for us any longer. 

And it’s high time we co-create a better alternative for collective healing. 

~

It was three long years after I got sober before I finally found recovery.

It took more than just putting down the bottle. Once I left rehab, I fell into my old ways, choosing instead to focus on “optimizing” my health and fitness. I traded anorexia for orthorexia. I switched my emphasis from academic achievements to performative altruism. I acted my rage and disappointment upon my body, subjected it to ever more painful and invasive workouts, procedures, treatments, and diets. And I worked recovery like I had worked everything else: in checklists. 

My sponsor used to say “you know how to work the steps, but you don’t know how to live them.” That stuck with me. It exemplified my approach to life in general—how, for as long as I can remember, I have preferred to produce deliverables than to do the real inner work of reflection and change.

And though it took a long time for me to comprehend how deeply I remained entrenched in the mentality that had made me sick to begin with, once I did, I couldn’t look back. The change happened gradually, as Hemingway wrote, then all at once. Suddenly, I found myself agreeing to spontaneous outings and frivolous activities. I gave myself time to make decisions. I allowed myself to sit in discomfort. I questioned my goals instead of blindly pursuing them. I took days off from working out. I stopped wearing makeup all the time. I let the hair grow on my body when I didn’t feel like shaving. I accepted that I might not be the best teacher or cat mom after all. I invited criticism. I ate ice cream and pizza for the first time in nearly a decade. And I convinced myself, little by little, that I didn’t need to be perfect to begin living my life—rather than working it. This was the greatest gift of all.

Because healing from perfectionism requires that we change everything—the way we assess ourselves and judge others, how we communicate with one another (and with ourselves), the things we do for work and play, how we are hurt and how we heal. Detoxing from perfectionism is embracing nuance. It is releasing ourselves and others from the psychological oppression of false hierarchies. It is questioning everything we (and others) have come to believe. It is accepting that there are few moral failures—mostly incidences of desperation. It is evaluating ourselves and others with compassion and integrity rather than arrogance and “tough love.” It is putting a definitive end to a long-debunked system of rewards and punishments. It is exchanging our carrots and sticks for tools and loving touch. It is considering our interconnectedness to all beings and to the earth when we make decisions—rather than fixating on ourselves. It is speaking out against prominent myths and legends, biases and stereotypes, fake news and political falsehoods. It is co-creating a world that speaks to our nuance and diversity rather than to the homogeneity of our ruling class. And it is loving—ourselves, others, and the world—with the willingness to make mistakes and to be hurt in the process.

Because the greatest promise of a world free from the oppressive influence of perfectionism is a world without the fear of failure. And without fearing failure, we are free to embrace change. And what is healing but change in its greatest, most divine form? Wellness is not isolation—it is embrace. To love and nurture ourselves, we must love and nurture others—not despite but because of all their imperfections. Only then will we be truly free to make mistakes. Only then will we be free to be imperfect.