Insights into the Mind

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Perfectionism disguises itself as dedication, high standards, and conscientiousness. For a long time I wore it almost as a badge. The signs of perfectionism that had crossed into something damaging were quiet and slow-moving — easy to miss until they weren’t. I genuinely believed I was just someone who cared. Someone who tried hard. It took years before I recognised that the constant internal pressure, the difficulty finishing anything, the creeping dread of being judged — none of that was just personality. It was a pattern. And it was costing me more than I realised.

Why Perfectionism Is So Easy to Miss

We live in a culture that rewards perfectionist tendencies. Staying late, sweating the details, never handing in work you’re not proud of — these are framed as virtues. And to be honest, some of them are. The problem isn’t having high standards. Research distinguishes between what’s sometimes called “adaptive” and “maladaptive” perfectionism — the former can actually support performance, while the latter is linked to anxiety, procrastination, burnout, and lower wellbeing overall. The difference tends to lie in what drives you. Is it genuine care and motivation? Or is it fear — of failure, of humiliation, of not being enough?

When I was going through my worst period with anxiety in my mid-twenties — the years of panic attacks I didn’t have words for yet — I didn’t connect any of it to perfectionism. I thought I was anxious because life was stressful. I didn’t see that the standards I was holding myself to were part of what was generating the stress in the first place.

The Less Obvious Signs of Perfectionism

Most people associate perfectionism with someone obsessively colour-coding spreadsheets or refusing to submit a report until it’s flawless. And yes, that can be part of it. But some of the most common signs look quite different — and are far easier to dismiss as something else entirely.

You Procrastinate — A Lot

This one surprised me when I first read about it. Procrastination and perfectionism seem like opposites — one is avoiding, one is over-doing. But therapists often describe procrastination as one of perfectionism’s most reliable sidekicks. If you can’t start something until conditions are right, or you delay because you’re terrified the outcome won’t be good enough, that’s not laziness. It’s self-protection. You can’t fail at something you haven’t started yet.

You Find It Hard to Celebrate Anything You’ve Done

Something I’ve noticed in myself and in conversations with others is this: the goalposts move the moment you reach them. You finish something, and instead of feeling satisfied, your brain immediately jumps to what wasn’t quite right, or what comes next. Studies have found that perfectionists often have difficulty experiencing positive emotions around their achievements because the internal critic gets there first. The win never quite lands.

You Apologise Constantly — Even When You’ve Done Nothing Wrong

Excessive apologising can be a sign that you’re holding yourself to an impossibly high standard of behaviour and impact on others. If you say sorry for taking up space, for asking a question, for not being able to do something — it’s worth sitting with that. Where is that coming from? For me, it was deeply tied to a fear of being seen as not good enough, not helpful enough, not easy enough to be around.

You Hate Asking for Help

Needing help can feel, to a perfectionist, like evidence of inadequacy. If you find yourself running yourself into the ground rather than delegating, or refusing to let anyone see you struggle, that’s worth paying attention to. Research suggests that perfectionists often have lower tolerance for vulnerability — and asking for help is vulnerable. It means admitting you don’t have it all figured out.

You’re Exhausted — All the Time

Living in a permanent state of “not quite good enough” is tiring. The mental load of monitoring, correcting, comparing, and criticising yourself is genuinely exhausting. If you feel like you’re always working hard but never resting well, perfectionism may be part of what’s keeping you switched on.

How Perfectionism Shows Up in Relationships

One area people don’t always connect to perfectionism is their relationships. But the standards we hold for ourselves often bleed outward. You might find yourself frustrated when others don’t meet the bar you’d set — not because you’re unkind, but because you genuinely can’t understand why they’re not as bothered as you are. Or you might hold back in relationships because you’re afraid of being truly seen and found lacking.

I remember a period where I found it almost impossible to be present with people I cared about because part of my brain was always elsewhere — reviewing something I’d said, rehearsing something I needed to do, monitoring how I was coming across. That’s not a character flaw. It’s what happens when your nervous system is trained to look for threats — including the threat of being imperfect.

If any of this is resonating, it might be worth exploring what your emotional needs and limits actually look like. Two books I genuinely rate on this are Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Tawwab, and if you want something more workbook-style, The Set Boundaries Workbook: Practical Exercises for Understanding Your Needs and Setting Healthy Limits is excellent for working through things at your own pace.

What Actually Helps (and It’s Not “Just Lower Your Standards”)

The advice to “just be easier on yourself” is well-meaning and almost completely useless on its own. I know, because I told myself that for years and precisely nothing changed. What does seem to help, both from my own experience and from what the research points to, is building a genuine self-compassion practice — which is not the same as letting yourself off the hook or abandoning ambition.

Dr Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion is some of the most compelling I’ve come across. Her research consistently shows that self-compassion is actually associated with higher motivation, greater emotional resilience, and better wellbeing — not lower achievement. If you want to start somewhere, her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself is brilliant and very readable. For something more hands-on, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook by Neff and Germer walks you through practical exercises — I’ve worked through parts of it myself and found it surprisingly moving. There’s also The Self-Compassion Workbook by Dr Kristy Arbon, which is gentler in tone and a lovely starting point if the idea of self-compassion still feels foreign or uncomfortable.

Building small, consistent habits can also quietly disrupt the all-or-nothing thinking that perfectionism thrives on. Not because a morning routine will cure anything — it won’t — but because doing something imperfectly, repeatedly, and without the world ending, is actually good evidence against the perfectionist narrative. The Morning Sidekick Journal is a gentle, science-backed way to build that kind of daily practice. Similarly, if you like having something visual, the Stay on Track Habit Tracker Wall Calendar by ThreeKin Collective is satisfying without being rigid — and the LSW London Morning Notes journal has lovely daily prompts that combine gratitude with self-care in a way that feels genuinely nourishing rather than performative.

I do want to say clearly: if perfectionism is significantly affecting your mental health, your relationships, or your ability to function — please do consider talking to a therapist or counsellor. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has a solid evidence base for perfectionism specifically, and a good therapist can help you get to the roots of it in ways that a workbook or blog post simply can’t. You deserve that kind of support, and seeking it isn’t a failure.

Recognising the Signs of Perfectionism Is the First Real Step

I’m not going to tell you that noticing perfectionism makes it disappear. It doesn’t work like that — not for me, anyway. But there is something genuinely meaningful about recognising it for what it is, rather than calling it “just being conscientious” or “having high standards.” When I started to see the pattern clearly, I could at least start questioning it. Is this thought true? Is this standard reasonable? Would I hold anyone else I love to this bar?

The signs of perfectionism aren’t always loud and obvious. Sometimes they look like exhaustion, or procrastination, or the inability to feel proud of anything. Sometimes they look like apologising too much, or holding everyone at arm’s length in case they see the mess beneath the surface. Whatever it looks like for you — it’s worth paying attention to. Not to criticise yourself for it, but because you deserve to live without that weight.

Take care of yourself. And if something in this post has resonated, I’d genuinely love to hear from you in the comments — you’re almost certainly not alone in it.

Lucy x