What You Lose When You're a Perfectionist

When people think about perfectionism, they usually do so in relation to psychology; they look at it as a personality trait and see it as a reflection of someone’s character. In contrast, “The Agony of Perfectionism,” an article recently posted on TheAtlantic.com, explores perfectionism through the lens of economics. But despite the different approach, the economic takeaways arrive at the same conclusions as the psychological ones.

Economists once believed in the existence of the rational consumer. In theory, when a person had to make a purchasing decision, he or she would collect all available information about that potential purchase, weigh all the options, and in the end make a reasoned, well-informed choice about what to buy.

Anyone who has tried to buy a camera on Amazon or book a hotel on TripAdvisor, however, knows this is not possible. You face a vast number of choices and a wide range of passionate opinions. At a certain point you have to cut off your research and make a decision.

So some economists have divided consumers into two groups. One comprises people who strive to make their decisions in a rational way, seeking out as much information as they can get before they make their pick. These folks, called “maximizers,” want to examine all possible choices and to feel that they have made the best choice. Maximizers, in other words, are economic perfectionists. In contrast, the other group of consumers, called “satisficers,” aren’t perfectionists; they tend to settle for something they consider “good enough.”

So who’s happier with their purchase? The people who exhaustively research their purchases to find the best possible choice? Or the ones who put much less thought before they pull the trigger and buy? The satisficers, oddly enough. Despite all their research, maximizers are more likely to be filled with regret. Because the amount of information they can collect is limitless, they are always left wondering whether they made a mistake by not looking for more information, or by paying attention to the wrong information. There is always room for them to wonder whether they could have made a better choice.

Maximizers are also more susceptible to looking at others’ Facebook and Instagram posts and feeling badly about themselves and their choices. In the past, you were limited by your imagination in thinking that others were doing all sorts of cool stuff that you weren’t doing. Now, however, you can see actual photos of what they’re up to. You can Google them, easily learn about their achievements, and fuel your dissatisfaction and feeling of not measuring up.

In summarizing the research, the author makes the sad point that the maximizers/perfectionists work harder and perform better, but are also more likely to feel depressed and regretful. Whether you look at them from the psychological or economic point of view, the article encapsulates the challenge of striving to achieve and make good choices without pushing yourself to the point of dissatisfaction with all your choices.

Therapy and the Internet

Here’s one more arena in which Google has changed our lives: the process of psychotherapy.

How the internet can complicate the patient-therapist relationship is the subject of an interesting story by Dana Scarton that ran in The Washington Post this week. Scarton writes about the growing amount of information that patients can find about their therapist online -- and that therapists can find about their patients.

Googling your patient or therapist, or checking out the other’s Facebook page, if he/she has one, raises all sorts of issues relevant to the therapeutic relationship. The most significant, I think, is that the internet enables both the patient and therapist to learn all sorts of things about each other’s lives that they haven’t learned directly from the other.

I think it’s a bad idea for therapists to google their clients, and I don’t do it myself. I think it’s essential that my understanding of my clients be based on what they disclose during a therapy session. What patients tell me -- or don’t tell me -- about their lives, when they tell me, and how they tell me are all, in and of themselves, important things for us to talk about while helping them work out their problems. Researching a patient’s life online would put me in some awkward situations: If I don’t tell the patient what I’ve done, I end up with information about him or her that I know but can’t talk about. And if I do tell the patient what I’ve done, the patient may interpret my outside research as a sign that I don’t believe what he or she is telling me in person. Either way, my research would destroy the trust and honesty that are necessary for a productive therapist-client relationship.

I know that many people seeking therapy start by researching therapists online (I have my own website, after all). I also know that searching online for one’s friends and acquaintances is an inevitable part of modern-day life, and it’s a hard habit to break. If you’re a person googling your therapist while in treatment, I would suggest that you bring this up with your therapist. Searching online in this context is usually a reflection of a patient’s curiosity about the therapist and the therapist’s life. These questions and feelings can be extremely helpful when discussed in the course of therapy. What does a patient want to know about the therapist that he isn’t learning in therapy? Why does he want to know this? How does he think this knowledge will help him? Discussing these questions in therapy, and trying to answer them, can often give patients insight into their own problems and their relationships with people in their lives other than the therapist.

As a psychologist with a private practice, I think it’s important that I have a presence online; the challenge for me is to not be too online. But aside from my website and initial emails with potential clients, I try to keep my professional communications with clients on the phone or in person.