Social Anxiety from perfectionism?

[fj6236]

I'm new to the forum so I'm not sure if this has been touched upon before but I was thinking recently that SA might be at least partly caused by perfectionism for some people, and I wanted to see what other people thought.

I've suffered from SA as far back as I can remember, and I've also been a pretty hardcore perfectionist my entire life which has caused me a large amount of problems aside from SA. I realized that the reason I have SA might be at least partly because I'm holding myself to the standard of the impossible ideal of being perfect, and even though I'm completely aware that flaws are a part of being human, I still have the mindset that my flaws somehow make me worse than other people, and I cant get over it.

I'm curious to see if anyone else is a perfectionist here, and/or what you think about this.

 

[mikebird]

I decided to be a pure perfectionist during my school:

Science labs - learning rapidly from anything imperfect

same for English & Latin. Sharp accuracy

My worst failures are to blow off in frustration at the dimwitted who can't get their spelling, grammar or punctuation, prepositions or tense right.
There is a threshold of tolerance but I get sick with so many people who can't get their basic language right, or be on time, or say anything meaningful.

It doesn't work when I shout pointing out mistakes and criticising. I wonder if I'd make a good teacher

 

[LoyalXenite]

I decided to be a pure perfectionist during my school:

Science labs - learning rapidly from anything imperfect

same for English & Latin. Sharp accuracy

My worst failures are to blow off in frustration at the dimwitted who can't get their spelling, grammar or punctuation, prepositions or tense right.
There is a threshold of tolerance but I get sick with so many people who can't get their basic language right, or be on time, or say anything meaningful.

It doesn't work when I shout pointing out mistakes and criticising. I wonder if I'd make a good teacher

You would hate reading any of my essays or such then, i have dreadful grammar, but in my defense my primary language is Auslan

 

[EscapeArtist]

Yes this sounds accurate and I think for some people social anxiety is a perfectionism issue. As is the case with me as well so it's a very good thing to bump up on this forum and remind everybody. Perfectionism I see as a very negative trait. You either are unhappy and working too hard, or can beat yourself up about the smallest thing and decide all is lost so might as well give up, in the end, for a reason that is all in your head! It's evil I say evil!

Is there a cause to perfectionism? I'd love to hear it. So far it feels like the only cure to perfectionism is the hard truths of reality's lows when you're in that zone of "I can't be perfect so why even try" (If you ever reach that zone, some perfectionists never fall off of their working-streak). Then you realize you have to be average, for the sake of your survival, because you just have to start or finishing SOMETHING...

Conversation and social interaction just can't be perfect. There's a really good book out there called "Too Perfect", helped me out a bit. Says that you should aim for average to rid your perfectionism, and has concrete tips as well.

 

[mixedupgirl]

This is definitely the case with me, such a bad trait. It's like I say to myself if I can't say the right things and come across to someone (when socialising) as having no imperfections then I'm best not saying anything at all, or going any where....

I can also get so embarrassed or annoyed if people point out that I've made a mistake when I try so hard not to make any.

Ugh so far I've missed out on havin a decent life cos of this warped way of thinking... It's funny though because I steer away from people so "they don't find out" I'm not perfect and then I've got a background of self destructive moments/mistakes and emptiness to dwell on....totally nuts man....but this has all been a learning curve....I'm better then I was so I'm improving.

I need to get over my false beliefs that everyone else is better then me and hasn't made as many mistakes as I have etc etc etc....

 

[fj6236]

Yes this sounds accurate and I think for some people social anxiety is a perfectionism issue. As is the case with me as well so it's a very good thing to bump up on this forum and remind everybody. Perfectionism I see as a very negative trait. You either are unhappy and working too hard, or can beat yourself up about the smallest thing and decide all is lost so might as well give up, in the end, for a reason that is all in your head! It's evil I say evil!

Is there a cause to perfectionism? I'd love to hear it. So far it feels like the only cure to perfectionism is the hard truths of reality's lows when you're in that zone of "I can't be perfect so why even try" (If you ever reach that zone, some perfectionists never fall off of their working-streak). Then you realize you have to be average, for the sake of your survival, because you just have to start or finishing SOMETHING...

Conversation and social interaction just can't be perfect. There's a really good book out there called "Too Perfect", helped me out a bit. Says that you should aim for average to rid your perfectionism, and has concrete tips as well.

For me it comes from a mixture of very high natural competitiveness and having lived with a verbally abusive father for the first 13 years of my life. I'm either extremely good at things I do, or I'm terrible at them due to not spending any time working on things that I didn't think I'm perfect at. And the sad part is that no matter how many achivements or awards I get doing something, it never gives me the slightest bit of satisfaction because I had wish I'd done better

I'll try to find that book, I've actually read a good amount articles about this, but reading about something and actually implementing it are 2 very different things. I've been working on forcing myself to realize social interaction can't be perfect for a while and it's helped a bit with talking to people, but no matter how much I force myself to do this, I still won't let myself create meaningful relationships with people due to how deeply in my brain this idea is rooted. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to get past this, but thats going to take a lot of work.

 

[theslowesthand]

Social anxiety = anxiety = dysfunctional feeling = due to neurotic thinking.
Perfectionism = neurotic thinking.

It's always been with me, that the slightest imperfection in my dealing with them (people) not only frustrated my perfectionism, but also i tended to catastrophize/fret/etc over such minutae of details, which caused me to get MAJORLY stressed/anxious/moody/etc later on in the day, or for days later. So it seems like the perfectionism concerning people is mainly due to fear, not love. However my rampant perfectionism (& the consequential workaholism required to continuously attain it) with regard to work/studies always seemed to be based on my love of order, perfection, simplicity. But thinking about it now, perhaps that love was simply a cover-up of the real issue - my extreme fear of imperfection, disorder, randomness, incompletion, and so on ... which is very neurotic. I thought it was pure, but no, it was very very dirty anxiety/worry/stress masquerading as "pure love" (of perfection) :question: