A Trait That Will Bring You Undone

When things go wrong, you have your own way of dealing with it.

The best, and most healthy way is through your own thinking. The problem is, we are seldom taught how to do this.

If you do not have the ability to help yourself through your own thinking, you may resort to drugs (prescribed and recreation), alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, exercise and perhaps self mutilation.

When all else fails and the emotional (or physical) pain gets too hard to handle, many take their own life.

Mark Priestly, a 32 year old actor who starred in an Australian production called "All Saints" recently took his life because of depression.

This shows no-one is immune to depression. Regardless of your age, colour and income, you are prone to this debilitating problem.

While I have covered this topic many times before, I want to cover a lesser known cause - one that is rarely associated with depression but one that has major consequences on how a person feels and processes their thinking.

This is one of the hardest emotions to recognise and deal with. Most who have it are in complete denial and are difficult to work with as clients.

This trait is: Perfectionism

While most clients who have the problem say they are not perfectionists, a quick test soon reveals they are. Here are some of the traits of a perfectionist:

• A need to be right/hate being wrong
  
• A need to win/hate losing
  
• Massive fear of failing
  
• All or nothing
  
• Can't handle constructive criticism (or any criticism)
  
• Very critical - of themselves and others
  
• Have a very high expectation on themselves to achieve. When these are not met, beat themselves up and wallow in their negative thinking.
  
• When a problem or fault is pointed out, they are in denial it exists.
  

This problem generally begins in childhood where the child goes through some sort of experience where they feel unloved, not good enough, a failure. They soon work out by doing well they receive lots of praise and "love". The better they perform, the more they receive. They then become obsessed with doing "perfect" as you can't get better than perfect.

I have had adolescent and teenage clients who won't play a game of sport unless they know they are going to win.

The bottom line is they are looking for acceptance and are totally geared to doing whatever it takes to achieve this.

When you place a high expectation on yourself to perform, you also place a huge amount of pressure on yourself. When under pressure, you are more prone to failure. This then leads to much stress. Not wanting to feel stressed (and seeing it as a weakness), you then have higher expectations and more pressure ... and so the wheel turns!

When there are no solutions to their "poor performance" and they beat themselves up, these people often suffer from severe depression and often want to end it all.

Do you place pressure on yourself to perform?

Do you hate losing/getting things wrong?

Are you a perfectionist?

If you are not sure, ask your partner or a family member to gain their insight.

If what you are currently doing is not working in your best interest, it's time to make a change.

As this is a long article, I have decided to cover how to overcome this problem of perfectionism in the next blog. Stay tuned!