The perfectionist is born or is it made?
One of the most significant disorders among alterations and personality disorders is the perfectionism, also known as "Perfectionist Syndrome" or Ananstastic Personality Disorder. It is a stealthy condition, strongly rooted, unknown and capable of leading to apparently enviable but really unhappy lives.
To understand if the perfectionist is born or is done ?, we must assess what to do well what you have to do, strive in it, enjoy yourself in achievement, please those around you and enjoy it, use life and works to achieve happiness, is something that people always want. But in this process are intermingled biological factors, psychological, attitudes, educational and social environments and that intimate operative core, which is personal freedom, where the perfectionist puts great limitations.
The influence of parents on perfectionism
Perfectionism is carried in the genes and has to go to thought and behavior from education and learning. It is a matter of predisposition or vulnerability and of "gene expression". A victim mother, a hyper-efficient father, that is, the contribution of models of excellence without a vital space for mistakes, are spaces conducive to perfectionism.
In this sense, we must not forget that those who contribute genes are, ordinarily, the same ones who educate. Here lies the importance of being attentive to counteract perfectionist tendencies and balance personality traits.
12 traits to recognize a perfectionist
Thus, the best sensitivity that children have throughout their evolutionary psychological development makes the age between 4 and 7 years the most propitious for the awakening of the obsessive features that characterize the Perfectionist Syndrome, which can be , among others:
1. Sort repeatedly, to acquire feelings that one does everything and that is the victim to the entire service of others.
2. Do not tolerate clutter, imbalance or asymmetry. Something out of place is taken as a slap and defensive aggression is directed towards others who "do not understand anything".
3. Exaggerated foresight, hyper-control until exhausted in the effort.
4. Need for backup in terms of the good will with which it acts, requiring expressions that never quite satisfy.
5. Intolerance of one's mistakes. Radicality when judging one's task due to the quality achieved or the time spent, tending to exclude intermediate qualifications.
6. Hypersensitivity to injustices own and others, even the smallest.
7. Interior insecurity, but with the determination to appear as a person of sure performance and generating a growing uneasiness.
8. High estimate of the regulations. High evaluation of order, cleanliness, punctuality.
9. Tendency to rigidity. Difficulty to live the unpredictability or the indeterminacy of the plans.
10. Subjectivism marked.Tendency to the adhesion to one's point of view, in such a way that I tend to think that if others disagree it is because they lack data, experience, or understanding of the problem.
11. Difficulty to enjoy. Exaggerated assessment of efficiency and work to the detriment of enjoyment for what is done and for what has been done.
12. Eager to keep. Tendency to keep things in case they are ever useful.
How to diagnose the "Perfectionist Syndrome"
In addition to observing some warning signals that can help identify a perfectionist, there is a diagnostic test known as the Seville questionnaire from which it is possible to diagnose a perfectionist. It is a measuring instrument that consists of 24 points. In a reduced version with 12 items, the positive response in more than 6 would indicate a clear predisposition to perfectionism. And in more than 9 the convenience of an orientation or therapeutic attention.
How to treat perfectionism
The correction of erfeccionismo requires a friendly and confident psychotherapeutic approach, given the resistance of the patient to accept the diagnosis and its treatment. In adults and more entrenched cases, medication with anti-obstetric drugs is usually necessary. Being perfectionism a personality disorder has to be considered as a genetically rooted pattern of behavior. It will be, then, a permanent tendency in the disposition, attitude and behavior of the person presenting it.
Its therapeutic approach it does not try to eradicate it but to compensate it, reducing it in such a way that it no longer appears as disturbing, correcting the negative of its temperamental condition, but preserving the positive.
The values of the perfectionist
By saying "perfection" is alluded to an excellent task. In this sense, we must consider perfectionism from a new approach, that of efficiency, doing something well considering the cost involved.Thus, perfection is rather the path than the goal. It is knowing where we are going and approaching it from happiness. There is happiness, on the road when we follow the dictates of the natural moral law that each of us carries with us and on themselves. Thus, the path to perfection involves:
- Responsibility
- Hope.
- Illusion and positive thinking.
- The joy of rectifying.
- Magnanimity.
- Perseverance
- Know how to prioritize.
- Match love and detachment.
- Give meaning to the work itself.
Dr. Manuel Álvarez
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