High Standards or Self-Sabotage? How to Tell the Difference

I don’t think most of us walk around announcing that we’re perfectionists.

We’re much more likely to say something like:

I just have high standards.

And honestly, sometimes we do.

There are things I want to do well. I care about the quality of my work. I don’t think the answer to perfectionism is suddenly deciding that nothing matters and everything is good enough.

But while Jessica and I were talking about perfectionism for this week’s Chasing Brighter episode, I kept coming back to a harder question:

How do I know when my standards are making something better—and when they’re keeping me from finishing it at all?

Because from the inside, those can feel remarkably similar.

High Standards Aren’t Necessarily the Problem

I wanted to dig into the research here because perfectionism gets talked about so broadly that it can start to sound as though caring deeply about doing something well is itself unhealthy.

The research is more nuanced than that.

Researchers often describe perfectionism as multidimensional. There are perfectionistic strivings—setting ambitious goals and holding high personal standards—and perfectionistic concerns, which involve things like fear of mistakes, harsh self-evaluation, doubts about your performance, and concern about how others will judge you.

Those aren’t quite the same thing.

A large meta-analysis found that perfectionistic striving and high personal standards were associated with conscientiousness. Other research distinguishes between more adaptive forms of striving and maladaptive perfectionism, where the gap between what we expect and what we believe we’ve achieved becomes a source of ongoing distress.

That distinction feels important to me.

Because I don’t want to lower every standard simply because perfectionism exists.

I want to understand what the standard is doing.

Is the Standard Moving Me Forward or Keeping Me Safe?

Jessica put it simply during our conversation:

High standards move you toward something.

Self-sabotage keeps you from it.

I’ve been thinking about that as a direction-of-travel question.

Does editing this again genuinely make it better?

Does learning more help me do the work more responsibly?

Does slowing down improve the result?

Or does every improvement create another reason I’m still not finished?

That last one is where things get interesting.

You finish the draft, but suddenly it needs another round.

You reach the goal you set for yourself, but now that goal doesn’t seem particularly impressive.

You were going to share something once it reached a certain point. It reaches that point, and somehow the standard changes.

The finish line keeps moving.

At some point, the question may no longer be Is this good enough?

It may be:

What happens if I decide it is?

Because then I have to let it leave my hands.

Perfectionism Can Be About Protection, Not Excellence

This is the part of Brené Brown’s work on perfectionism that fits so closely with our conversation.

Brown makes a distinction between healthy striving and perfectionism. She describes perfectionism as a defense mechanism—her well-known “20-ton shield”—that we hope will protect us from judgment, criticism, blame, or shame.

That changes the way I think about it.

If perfectionism were only about producing excellent work, then eventually excellent work should satisfy it.

But if perfectionism is also protecting us from being judged?

There may never be a version good enough to feel completely safe.

Because putting something into the world means surrendering control over what happens next.

Someone might misunderstand it.

Someone might dislike it.

Someone might criticize it.

Someone might do it better.

Or maybe the response will simply be…nothing particularly dramatic.

We can’t edit our way out of those possibilities.

Which means sometimes another revision isn’t solving the actual problem.

The Moving Goalpost Might Be the Clue

Clinical research gives us another useful way of looking at this.

Psychologists Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper, and Christopher Fairburn have described clinically significant perfectionism in terms of self-evaluation becoming overly dependent on pursuing and achieving demanding standards—even when continuing to pursue those standards has negative consequences.

I’m not interested in diagnosing myself or anyone reading this.

But the idea of self-evaluation being tied to achievement caught my attention.

Because there’s a huge difference between:

I want this work to be excellent.

and:

I need this work to be excellent because of what its success or failure will say about me.

The first is a standard for the work.

The second turns the work into evidence about our worth.

And suddenly the stakes are much higher.

We’ve been circling this idea throughout Season 6 already.

First, we talked about waiting to feel ready.

Then we talked about collecting credentials because we hoped one more qualification might finally make us feel legitimate.

Now we’re looking at the work itself and wondering whether we can make it so good that nobody can question us.

Different patterns.

Very similar promise:

If I can just get this right enough, maybe I can stop feeling vulnerable.

I’m becoming less convinced that’s a promise perfection can actually keep.

The Pressure Isn’t Always Coming From Inside Us

There’s another piece of the research I don’t want to skip.

Thomas Curran studies what researchers call socially prescribed perfectionism—the feeling that other people expect us to be perfect.

His research has found that this form of perfectionism has risen substantially among younger generations. In a recent APA discussion of his work, Curran explained that socially prescribed perfectionism is particularly concerning because of its relationship with anxiety, depression, worry, and rumination.

That complicates the whole “just lower your standards” conversation.

Because sometimes the pressure isn’t entirely imaginary.

We live in environments full of comparison, measurement, performance, reviews, metrics, curated images, parenting expectations, career expectations, and very visible examples of what everyone else appears to be doing exceptionally well.

Sometimes the standard really does feel like it’s coming from everywhere.

I don’t think the answer is pretending we don’t care what anyone thinks.

Maybe it’s getting clearer about which standards we actually want to keep.

Three Questions I’m Taking From This Conversation

I’m not trying to eliminate high standards from my life.

I’m trying to notice when they’ve quietly changed jobs.

Instead of helping me make something better, are they now helping me avoid being evaluated?

A few questions from our podcast conversation feel useful here:

Does this standard have a finish line?

Can I define what “done” looks like? Or will the criteria change as soon as I meet them?

Is this next round actually improving something?

Can I identify what will be better afterward? Or am I making changes because finishing feels uncomfortable?

What am I afraid will happen when this is seen?

Not what needs fixing.

What am I afraid of?

Those answers may tell us more than another round of edits ever could.

A question to sit with

Is there something in your life you’ve been refining past the point of readiness—and what might happen if you decided it was good enough to be seen?

Not perfect.

Not immune to criticism.

Just ready enough to leave your hands.

Where I’m Landing—for Now

I don’t want to become someone who doesn’t care about quality.

I like caring.

I like learning. Refining. Improving. Trying to make something better than the version I started with.

Maybe the difference isn’t how high the standard is.

Maybe it’s whether the standard leaves room for completion, mistakes, learning, and being seen before everything feels completely safe.

High standards can help us create something we’re proud of.

But when the finish line keeps moving, I think it’s worth getting curious about what we’re really protecting.

Because there comes a point when making something better requires continuing to work on it.

And there comes a point when moving forward requires letting it go.

This week’s Chasing Brighter podcast conversation gets much more personal about that distinction—the things we’ve almost kept to ourselves, what can sit underneath “it’s just not ready yet,” and the uncomfortable experience of letting other people see something that still feels imperfect to us.

And next week, we’re ending September differently.

No research framework. No neat lesson.

Jessica and I are going to sit down and name some of the things we’ve been waiting to begin ourselves.

Which feels appropriate.

After a month of talking about beginning, eventually we probably have to actually do it.

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