The What Keeps Perfectionism Going? handout presents key factors that maintain perfectionism.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
An editable Microsoft PowerPoint version of the resource.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Perfectionism Going? is designed to help clients experiencing perfectionism understand more about their difficulties.
Understanding what keeps perfectionism going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by perfectionism.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
Research studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a helpful psychological therapy for perfectionism. CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they’re not so interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what they can do to put it out. This is because if they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by ‘removing the fuel’ and interrupting this maintaining cycle.
In 2002, three leading mental health professionals - Roz Shafran, Zafra Cooper, and Chris Fairburn - published an influential model of perfectionism, which was updated in 2010. The model describes some of the ‘parts’ that keep perfectionism going. The What Keeps Perfectionism Going? information handout describes some of the key factors which act to maintain perfectionism. It illustrates them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to understand more about these processes is an essential part of cognitive therapy for perfectionism. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
