Yuxin Sun, a psychologist in Seattle, sees a lot of clients at her group practice who insist they aren’t perfectionists. “‘Oh, I’m not perfect. I’m far from perfect,’” they tell her.
But perfectionism isn’t about being the best at any given pursuit, Dr. Sun said, “it’s the feeling of never arriving to that place, never feeling good enough, never feeling adequate.” And that can make for a harsh internal voice that belittles and chastises us.
Perfectionism is so pervasive that there’s a test to measure it: the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. When researchers looked at how college students have responded to the scale’s questions over time, they found that rates of perfectionism surged in recent decades, skyrocketing between 2006 and 2022.
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Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and the author of “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It,” said a process called distancing is his “first line of defense” against negative thoughts.
Distancing is a way of zooming out on our inner chatter to engage with it differently. If you’re agonizing over something in the middle of the night, for example, that’s a cue to “jump into the mental time-travel machine,” he said.
Begin by imagining: “How are you going to feel about this tomorrow morning?” Anxieties often seem less severe in the light of day.
