好英语网完美主义者要面对的风险与危机
In one of my earliest memories, I’m drawing. I don’t remember what the picture is supposed to be, but I remember the mistake. My marker slips, an unintentional line appears and my lip trembles. The picture has long since disappeared. But that feeling of deep frustration, even shame, stays with me.
在我最早的记忆中，有一天我正在画画，我已不记得画的是什么，但记得我犯的那个错误。我的画笔滑了一下，纸上多出一根线条，我的嘴唇颤抖起来。这幅画早已不知所踪，但那种沮丧，甚至耻辱的感觉，至今依然如新。
More often than I’d like to admit, something seemingly inconsequential will cause the same feeling to rear its head again. Something as small as accidentally squashing the panettone I was bringing my boyfriend’s family for Christmas can tumble around in my mind for several days, accompanied by occasional voices like “How stupid!” and “You should have known better”. Falling short of a bigger goal, even when I know achieving it would be near-impossible, can temporarily flatten me. When an agent told me that she knew I was going to write a book someday but that the particular idea I’d pitched her didn’t suit the market, I felt deflated in a gut-punching way that went beyond disappointment. The negative drowned out the positive. “You’re never going to write a book,” my internal voice said. “You’re not good enough.” That voice didn’t care that this directly contradicted what the agent actually said.
即便我不愿意承认，但一些似乎无关紧要之事却常常让那种感觉重新浮现。一些芝麻绿豆的小事，比如意外地碰烂了带去男朋友家的圣诞糕点，再如他人一些无心之言，好比“真是愚蠢”、“你本该知道”， 诸如此类，都可能在我脑海里挥之不去好几天。面对更大的一些挫败，即或我心知肚明这几乎是无法实现的，也会使我沮丧一阵。当一位经纪人告诉我，她知道我想写一本书，但是我提出的题材并不适合市场，我当时如受重击，灰心丧气，比失望还难过。消极的情绪淹没了积极的一面。 “你永远写不成一本书，”我对自己说， “你不够好。”经纪人的意思实际上并非如此，但我内心的判断却视而不见。
That’s the thing about perfectionism. It takes no prisoners.
这就是完美主义，追求完美，不计代价。
If I’ve struggled with perfectionism, I’m far from alone. The tendency starts young – and it’s becoming more common. Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill’s recent meta-analysis of rates of perfectionism from 1989 to 2016, the first study to compare perfectionism across generations, found significant increases among more recent undergraduates in the US, UK and Canada. In other words, the average college student last year was much more likely to have perfectionistic tendencies than a student in the 1990s or early 2000s.
因追求完美而苦苦挣扎的远非我一人。完美主义综合症呈年轻化趋势，并越来越常见。 柯朗（Thomas Curran）和希尔（Andrew Hill）的最近一项研究，对1989年至2016年完美主义的发生率进行综合分析，这是学术界首次对不同年代人群的完美主义作比较研究。研究发现，美国、英国和加拿大的大学本科生中有完美主义倾向者大幅增加。换句话说，相较于1990年代或2000年代的大学生，现今大学生具有完美主义倾向的机率要高很多。
“As many as two in five kids and adolescents are perfectionists,” says Katie Rasmussen, who researches child development and perfectionism at West Virginia University. “We’re starting to talk about how it’s heading toward an epidemic and public health issue.”
西弗吉尼亚大学研究儿童发育和完美主义的学者凯迪拉斯穆森（Katie Rasmussen）说：“在儿童和青少年中，五人中竟有两人是完美主义者。”她说，“我们开始将其视为流行病和公共卫生问题进行讨论。”
The rise in perfectionism doesn’t mean each generation is becoming more accomplished. It means we’re getting sicker, sadder and even undermining our own potential.
完美主义在这代人中比例增高并不意味着这代人会更加成功。相反这意味着我们正在变得更加脆弱、焦虑，甚至破坏我们的潜能。
Perfectionism, after all, is an ultimately self-defeating way to move through the world. It is built on an excruciating irony: making, and admitting, mistakes is a necessary part of growing and learning and being human. It also makes you better at your career and relationships and life in general. By avoiding mistakes at any cost, a perfectionist can make it harder to reach their own lofty goals.
总之，完美主义是通过最终的自我挫败方式来应对世界。但对于完美主义者来说，极具讽刺的是，在现实世界中，犯错误承认错误正是人们成长、学习和学会为人处世不可或缺的部分。犯错误和承认错误也能使你的职业生涯、人际关系和个人生活得到提高。完美主义者不惜任何代价避免错误，却因此更难实现自己崇高的目标。
But the drawback of perfectionism isn’t just that it holds you back from being your most successful, productive self. Perfectionistic tendencies have been linked to a laundry list of clinical issues: depression and anxiety (even in children), self-harm, social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, binge eating, anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, insomnia, hoarding, dyspepsia, chronic headaches, and, most damning of all, even early mortality and suicide.
完美主义的缺点不仅在于它阻碍你实现最成功，最有成效的自我。完美主义倾向还与一大堆临床心里问题有关：抑郁症和焦虑症（甚至包括儿童）、自我伤害、社交焦虑症、广场恐怖症、强迫症、暴食症、厌食症、贪食症和其它饮食失调症、创伤后抗压障碍、慢性疲劳综合征、失眠、强迫性囤积症、消化不良、慢性头痛、以及最可怕的英年早逝和自杀。
“It’s something that cuts across everything, in terms of psychological problems,” says Sarah Egan, a senior research fellow at the Curtin University in Perth who specialises in perfectionism, eating disorders and anxiety. "There aren’t that many other things that do that.
位于澳洲珀斯的科廷大学专门研究完美主义、饮食失调和焦虑症的高级研究员莎拉伊甘（Sarah Egan）说：“这是一种能引发各类问题的心理疾病。没有其它状况可与之相提并论。”
"There are studies that suggest that the higher the perfectionism is, the more psychological disorders you’re going to suffer.”
“有研究表明，完美主义程度越高，遭受的心理障碍就会越多。”
*
Culturally, we often see perfectionism as a positive. Even saying you have perfectionistic tendencies can come off as a coy compliment to yourself; it’s practically a stock answer to the “What’s your worst trait?” question in job interviews. (Past employers, now you know! I wasn’t just being cute).
在文化方面，我们经常把完美主义看作是正面的美德。说你有完美主义的倾向，实际上是对你自己的含蓄恭维。求职面试中被问到“你性格中最糟糕的特质是什么？”完美主义是个不错的备选答案。 （过去的雇主，现在你知道了！我不只是可爱而已）。
This is where perfectionism gets complicated – and controversial. Some researchers say there is adaptive, or ‘healthy’ perfectionism (characterised by having high standards, motivation and discipline) versus a maladaptive, or ‘unhealthy’ version (when your best never seems good enough and not meeting goals frustrates you). In one study of more than 1,000 Chinese students, researchers found that gifted students were more perfectionistic in the adaptive ways. (Maladaptive perfectionists, on the other hand, were more likely to be non-gifted). And while research shows that maladaptive attributes like beating yourself up for mistakes or feeling like you can’t live up to parental expectations make you more vulnerable to depression, some other studies have shown that ‘adaptive’ aspects like striving for achievement have no effect at all or may even protect you.
有关完美主义的问题复杂且具争议。一些研究人员说，完美主义可分为适应性良好或健康的完美主义与不适应或不健康的完美主义两种。前者以人生标准高，活力十足以及善于自律为特征，后者当竭尽全力也无法做到最好，或达不到目标时会倍感挫折。一项针对1000多名中国学生的调查研究显示，资优学生多是适应性良好的完美主义者。 另一方面，适应性不良的完美主义者可能缺乏天赋。虽然一些研究表明，适应不良完美主义的一些行为，如因犯错而重罚自己，或念念不忘切勿辜负父母的期望等，都会使人更容易患上抑郁症，但另外一些研究表明，高适应性完美主义的一些表现，如努力争取成就，完全没有负面效果，甚至还可能起到保护作用。
But that isn’t always the case. Simply having high personal standards has been linked to suicide ideation, for example. And even if there sometimes may be upsides to perfectionist thinking, they are minor – and, researchers argue, misunderstood.
但情况并非总是如此。例如，简单化地将个人高标准与自杀念头联系起来。研究人员争论说，即使有时可能会出现完美主义的念头，但影响不大，而且也是种误解。
In a 2016 meta-analysis of 43 studies on perfectionism and burnout, for example, Hill and Curran found that athletes, employees and students experienced either a tiny or no benefit from aspects like having very high personal standards, compared to people who didn’t have them. People who expressed more ‘maladaptive’ perfectionism, on the other hand, experienced significantly more burnout.
例如，在2016年一项对完美主义和职业倦怠的43项研究结果的综合分析中，希尔和柯朗发现，运动员、职员和学生这些群体，相较没有远大人生目标的人，虽然他们人生标准很高但受益却很微薄，甚至还毫无好处，而另一方面他们却容易对职业生涯萌生倦意。
“There has been some suggestion that, in some cases, perfectionism might be healthy and desirable. Based upon the 60-odd studies that we’ve done, we think that’s a misunderstanding,” says York St John University’s Hill. “Working hard, being committed, diligent, and so on – these are all desirable features. But for a perfectionist, those are really a symptom, or a side product, of what perfectionism is. Perfectionism isn’t about high standards. It’s about unrealistic standards.
约克圣约翰大学的希尔说，“有人提出一些看法，认为在某些情况下，完美主义可能是健康和可取的。根据我们已经完成的60多项研究，我们认为这是一个误解。”“努力工作、忠于职守、勤奋等等，这些都是优点。但对于一个完美主义者来说，那些确实是完美主义的症状或副产品。但完美主义与高标准无关。完美主义是关于不切实际的标准。”
“Perfectionism isn’t a behaviour. It’s a way of thinking about yourself.”
“完美主义不是一种行为，而是一种思考自己的方式。”
In fact, many researchers say that factors often dubbed ‘healthy’ perfectionism, like striving for excellence, aren’t actually perfectionism at all. They’re just conscientiousness – which explains why people with those tendencies often have different outcomes in studies. Perfectionism, they argue, isn’t defined by working hard or setting high goals. It’s that critical inner voice.
事实上，许多研究人员认为，常常被称为“健康”完美主义的那些表现，如追求卓越，实际上并不是完美主义。他们只是态度认真而已。 这就解释了为什么那些有这类倾向的人往往在学习中会有不同的学习成果。他们认为，完美主义并不是通过努力工作或设定高目标来定义的。完美主义的关键定义是如何自我判断。
Take the student who works hard and gets a poor mark. If she tells herself: “I’m disappointed, but it’s okay; I’m still a good person overall,” that’s healthy. If the message is: “I’m a failure. I’m not good enough,” that’s perfectionism.
以一位刻苦学习却成绩糟糕的学生为例。如果她告诉自己：“我很失望，但没关系，我总体仍是不错的。”这就很健康。但如果她这样想：“我是一个失败者。我不够好。”这就是完美主义。
That inner voice criticises different things for different people – work, relationships, tidiness, fitness. My own tendencies may differ greatly from somebody else’s. It can take someone who knows me well to pick up on them. (When I messaged my partner I was writing this story, he immediately sent back a long line of laughing emojis).
我们内心的判断是对不同的人不同的事作出评判：如对工作成效、人际关系、整洁程度、健康状态等。我自己的倾向可能与其他人有很大不同，但认识我的人可以接受我的这些方面。 （当我给我的伴侣发消息说，我正在写这个故事，他立即发回一长串笑脸表情符号）。
As a result, perfectionists and non-perfectionists “might look the same for a short period of time from a distance. But when you get up close and observe them over time, conscientious people have more adaptive ways of coping with things when things go wrong,” Hill says. “Perfectionists feel every bump in the road. They’re quite stress-sensitive.”
因此，希尔说，完美主义者和非完美主义者“短期内远距离观察可能是一样的。但是，当你长时间接近观察他们时就会发现，认真谨慎的人会在出错时采取更加灵活的方式来应对事情。 完美主义者的情绪却大起大落。他们对压力很敏感。”
Perfectionists can make smooth sailing into a storm, a brief ill wind into a category-five hurricane. At the very least, they perceive it that way. And, because the ironies never end, the behaviours perfectionists adapt ultimately, actually, do make them more likely to fail.
完美主义者可以让一场平静之旅转眼间风暴骤起，再将一场短暂的疾风变成五级飓风。至少他们是这样感知的。但是讽刺永无止尽，完美主义者习以为常的行为最终让他们更有可能遭到失败。
In one lab experiment, for example, Hill gave both perfectionists and non-perfectionists specific goals. What he didn’t tell them was that the test was rigged: none of them would succeed. Interestingly, both groups kept putting in the same amount of effort. But one group felt much unhappier about the whole thing – and gave up earlier. Guess which.
又例如，在一场实验中，希尔给了完美主义者团队和非完美主义团队者具体的任务，但没有告诉他们这个测试是设计好的，结局是他们都不会成功。有趣的是，这两个团队都一直在付出相同的努力，但是有一个团队对整个进程感到很不高兴，并且提前放弃。猜猜是哪一个？
Faced with failure, “perfectionists tend to respond more harshly in terms of emotions. They experience more guilt, more shame,” says Hill. They also experience more anger.
希尔说，面对失败，“完美主义者通常情绪上反应更强烈。他们感受到更多的内疚，耻辱。”他们也感受到更多的愤怒。
“They give up more easily. They have quite avoidant coping tendencies when things can't be perfect.”
“他们更容易放弃。当事情不可能完美的时候，他们倾向于以逃避来应对。”
That, of course, hinders them from the very success that they want to achieve. In his 60-plus studies focusing on athletes, for example, Hill has found that the single biggest predictor of success in sports is simply practice. But if practice isn’t going well, perfectionists might stop.
当然，这会阻碍他们获得渴望的成功。例如，在希尔针对运动员的60多项研究中，他发现运动成绩大小的最大预测指标就是练习。但如果练习不顺利，完美主义者可能会停止。
It makes me think of my own childhood peppered with avoiding (or starting and quitting) almost every sport there was. If I wasn’t adept at something almost from the get-go, I didn’t want to continue – especially if there was an audience watching. In fact, multiple studies have found a correlation between perfectionism and performance anxiety even in children as young as 10.
这让我想起了自己的童年时代，几乎各项体育活动都是逃避了结（或者说是开始后就放弃）。如果几乎从一开始我就不熟练，我就不想再继续练下去 ， 特别是如果有人在一旁观看的时候。实际上，多项研究发现完美主义与对成绩的焦虑之间存在相关性，即使在10岁的儿童中也是如此。
The trouble is that, for perfectionists, performance is intertwined with their sense of self. When they don’t succeed, they don’t just feel disappointment about how they did. They feel shame about who they are. Ironically, perfectionism then becomes a defence tactic to keep shame at bay: if you’re perfect, you never fail, and if you never fail, there’s no shame.
麻烦在于，对于完美主义者来说，成绩与他们的自我意识是交织在一起的。 当他们不成功时，他们不仅会对自己的成绩感到失望，也会对自己本身感到羞愧。 具有讽刺意味的是，完美主义随后会成为一种对付耻辱的防御策略：如果你是完美的，你永远不会失败，如果你永远不会失败，那就不会有耻辱。
As a result, the pursuit of perfection becomes a vicious cycle – and, because it’s impossible to be perfect, a fruitless one.
结果，对完美的追求变成了一个恶性循环 。 而且，因为完美是不可求的，所以追求完美也就不会有成果。
*
Perfectionism is also dangerous. Record numbers of young people are experiencing mental illness, according to the World Health Organisation. Depression, anxiety and suicide ideation are more common in the US, Canada and the UK now than a decade ago. Research shows that perfectionistic tendencies predict issues like depression, anxiety and stress – even when researchers controlled for traits like neuroticism. Worsening matters, being self-critical might lead to depressive symptoms but those symptoms then can make self-criticism worse, closing a distressing loop.
完美主义会带来危险。世界卫生组织统计，年轻人患精神疾病的数量已经破纪录。在美国、加拿大和英国，患抑郁症、焦虑症和有自杀念头的人比十年前更常见。研究表明，即便科研人员已控制住像神经过敏症这类精神疾病，完美主义倾向仍会引发抑郁、焦虑和压力爆棚等问题。病情恶化后果相当严重，完美主义者的自我谴责会令人产生抑郁的症状，而这些症状又会加重自我谴责，令人陷进痛苦的循环。
Mental health problems aren’t just caused by perfectionism; some of these problems can lead to perfectionism, too. One recent study, for example, found that over a one-year period, college students who had social anxiety were more likely to become perfectionists – but not vice versa.
精神健康问题不仅仅是由完美主义所引起；不过一些精神健康问题会导致完美主义。最近一项研究发现，在一年的时间里，有社交焦虑症的大学生更有可能变成完美主义者——但反过来并不是这样。
It’s also been shown that one of the most robust protections against anxiety and depression is self-compassion – the very thing that perfectionists lack. And self-criticism, which perfectionists are so good at, predicts depression.
也有人表示，抵制焦虑和抑郁最强的方式是自我同情——这正是完美主义者缺少的东西。完美主义者擅长自我批评，而自我批评也会导致抑郁症。
When it comes to the most dramatic example, suicide, numerous studies also have found that perfectionism is a lethal contributor all on its own. One found that perfectionism made depressed patients more likely to think about suicide even above and beyond feelings of hopelessness. A recent meta-analysis, the most complete on the suicide-perfectionism link to date, found that nearly every perfectionistic tendency – including being concerned over mistakes, feeling like you are never good enough, having critical parents, or simply having high personal standards – was correlated with thinking about suicide more frequently. (The two exceptions: being organised or demanding of others).
当谈到最惊心动魄的事情——自杀时，许多研究发现，完美主义是导致自杀的一个致命因素。有人发现，完美主义更有可能令抑郁症患者想到自杀，这种感觉甚至超越无望感。一项迄今为止最完整地分析自杀与完美主义关联的研究发现，几乎每一种完美主义倾向——包括害怕犯错，永远感觉自己不够好，父母极度苛刻，或者仅仅是拥有很高的个人标准——都会令人更频繁地想到自杀。（有两种情况例外：有条理的完美主义或要求他人的完美主义）。
Some of those criteria, particularly pressure from parents and perfectionistic concerns, also were correlated with more suicide attempts.
其中一些倾向，尤其是来自父母的压力，和出于达到完美的考虑，也会产生自杀企图。
“Black-and-white thinking can lead perfectionists to interpret failures as catastrophes that, in extreme circumstances, are seen as warranting death,” the researchers wrote. “Our findings also join a wider literature suggesting that when people experience their social world as pressure-filled, judgmental, and hypercritical, they think about and/or engage in various potential means of escape (eg, alcohol misuse and binge eating), including suicide.”
“非黑即白的思维会导致完美主义者把失败看成大灾难，在极端情况下甚至将失败视为死亡令，”研究人员说。“我们的研究结果参考了广泛的文献，这些文献表明，当人们在自己的社交世界中感到压力爆棚、被人指手画脚或过分挑剔时，他们会考虑各种形式的逃离行为（比如酗酒和暴饮暴食），甚至付诸行动，包括自杀。”
And while conscientious people tend to live longer, perfectionists die earlier.
勤奋认真工作的人能活得久一些，但完美主义者却死的较早。
In many ways, poorer health outcomes for perfectionists aren’t that surprising. “Perfectionists are pretty much awash with stress. Even when it’s not stressful, they’ll typically find a way to make it stressful,” says Gordon Flett, who has studied perfectionism for more than 30 years and whose assessment scale developed with Paul Hewitt is considered a gold standard.
完美主义者的健康状况在很多方面较差，这并不奇怪。“完美主义者总是压力爆棚。即使没有压力，他们也会想办法制造压力，”有30多年研究经验的弗莱特（Gordon Flett）说。他与休伊特（Paul Hewitt）一起制定的评估量表被认为是评价完美主义的黄金标准。
Plus, he says, if your perfectionism finds an outlet in, say, workaholism, it’s unlikely you’ll take many breaks to relax – which we now know both our bodies and brains require for healthy functioning.
另外，他说，如果你的完美主义找到了释放出路，比如变成工作狂，那你不可能有很多时间休息放松——现在我们知道，身体和大脑都需要休息才能健康运转。
*
No matter how self-defeating perfectionism may seem, it’s a tendency being shared by more and more people. The meta-analysis by Hill and Curran is the first to comprehensively look at rates of perfectionism over a long period of time. (There are so many ways of measuring perfectionism out there, researchers had to wait until a solid one – in this case, Flett’s and Hewitt’s – had been around long enough and been used across enough studies). In all, the studies added up to a pool of more than 40,000 US, UK and Canadian undergraduate students.
无论完美主义看起来有多自欺欺人，但有完美主义倾向的人却越来越多。希尔（Hill）和柯伦（Curran）的综合分析是第一个全面、长期观察完美主义机率的研究。（测量完美主义的方法很多，但研究人员必须找到一个靠得住的方法——这个方法需经历了足够长的时间，并在广泛的研究中所采用，弗莱特和休伊特的评估表即是这样的可靠测量标准）。总体来说，这些研究共检验了四万多名美国、英国和加拿大的本科学生。
There were increases across the board from 1989 to 2016. But the largest rise was in ‘socially prescribed perfectionism’, characterised by the feeling that others have high demands: 32%. “The reason that’s so problematic is that’s the dimension most strongly correlated with serious mental illness,” says Curran.
从1989年到2016年，有完美主义倾向的人一直不断增加。而具有“社交范畴性的完美主义”倾向的人增加最快：32%的增长率。这类完美主义者的特点是，对他人的高标准要求很敏感。柯伦说：“这个问题很严重，因为与严重的精神疾病密切相关。”
The findings align with what’s been reported previously. One 2015 study of gifted suburban adolescents, for example, found “significantly higher scores of perfectionism (especially unhealthy dimensions) than previous studies”. A decade-long look at adolescent Czech math whizzes found the same.
调查结果与之前报告的内容一致。比如，2015年的一项针对天才郊区青少年的研究发现，“完美主义（尤其是在不健康的方面）的评分明显高于之前的研究”。一项长达十年之久，针对捷克青少年数学奇才的研究结果与此相同。
In her clinical practice, where she often works with patients with eating disorders, Egan has seen it too. “I’m constantly shocked by the age ranges. We’re seeing younger and younger presentations of girls: seven years old, eight years old,” she says. “That’s often driven by perfectionism. So, I think, yes: each generation probably is getting more perfectionistic.”
伊根（Egan）在她的临床治疗中，经常接触到饮食失调患者，她也注意到了这一点。她说，“我一直对病人的年龄感到震惊。女孩子看上去越来越年轻，甚至七岁、八岁。这往往是由完美主义驱动的。确实，一代人比一代人可能更追求完美。”
Where is this increase coming from? When you keep in mind the idea that perfectionism stems from marrying your identity with your achievements, the question might become: where isn’t it coming from?
为何完美主义者会不断增加？当一个人把自我与成就合二为一时，就会出现完美主义。如果你明白这一点，这个问题就会变成：为何会出现这样的自我定位？
After all, many of us live in societies where the first question when you meet someone is what you do for a living. Where we are so literally valued for the quality and extent of our accomplishments that those achievements often correlate, directly, to our ability to pay rent or put food on the table. Where complete strangers weigh these on-paper values to determine everything from whether we can rent that flat or buy that car or receive that loan. Where we then signal our access to those resources with our appearance – these shoes, that physique – and other people weigh that, in turn, to see if we’re the right person for a job interview or dinner invitation.
在当今我们许多人生活的社会中，每当遇到一个人，问的第一个问题就是，你靠什么为生。在这个社会中，我们的个人价值太过于由我们个人成就的高低大小来衡量，而所谓的个人成就往往又直接与我们衣食住行的实力相挂钩。完全陌生的人通过衡量记录在文书上的价值来决定我们能否租得起房子、买得起汽车，以及能否接受贷款等等的所有一切。然后，我们通过我们的外在表现——我们穿的鞋子，或我们的健美体魄——来获取这些资源，反过来，其他人也以同一方式来衡量我们是否值得一个职位面试，或是一顿晚餐的邀请。
Curran and Hill have a similar hunch. “Failure is so severe in a market-based society,” points out Curran, adding that that has been intensified as governments have chipped away at social safety nets. Competition even has been embedded in schools: take standardised testing and high-pressure university entrances. As a result, Curran says, it’s no wonder that parents are putting more pressure on themselves – and on their children – to achieve more and more.
柯伦（Curran）和希尔（Hill）也有类似的直觉。“在一个市场主导的社会中，失败是一件非常严重的事，”柯伦说，由于政府已经削减了社会安全网络，令失败的严重性更为加剧。竞争甚至已经渗入到学校：比如采用标准化的考试和高压式的大学入学规定。因此，柯伦说，为了获得更大的成就难怪父母对自己和孩子施加的压力也越来越大。
“If the focus is on achievement, then kids become very averse to mistakes,” Curran says. “If children come to internalise that – the idea that we only can define ourselves in strict, narrow terms of achievement – then you see perfectionistic tendencies start to come in.” One longitudinal study, for example, found that a focus on academic achievement predicts a later increase in perfectionism.
“如果重点在取得成就上，那么孩子会非常讨厌犯错，”柯伦说。“如果孩子将这种以严格而狭隘的成就来定义自己的方式内在化，那你就会发现完美主义倾向开始出现。”一项深入研究发现，专注于学业成就可能导致后期完美主义膨胀。
Similarly, the gold-star method of parenting and schooling may have had an effect. If you get praised whenever you do something well and not praised when you don’t, you can learn that you’re only really worth something when you’ve had others’ approval.
同样，金牌奖励式的育儿法和教学方式也有类似效果。如果你只要做得好就会得到赞扬，做得不好就得不到赞扬，你就会以为，只有做好一件事获得他人的认可，你才会有价值。
If other strategies, like making children feel guilty for making a mistake, come in, it can get even more problematic. Research has found that these types of parental tactics make children more likely to be perfectionists – and, later, to develop depression.
如果使用其他策略，比如令孩子因犯错而感到内疚，事情可能会变得更加棘手。研究发现，这些类型的育儿方式，使孩子更有可能成为完美主义者，进而发展成抑郁症。
Fear of failure is getting magnified in other ways, too. Take social media: make a mistake today and your fear that it might be broadcast, even globally, is hardly irrational. At the same time, all of those glossy feeds reinforce unrealistic standards.
恐惧失败也会以其他方式放大。以社交媒体为例：今天犯了一个错误，你担心它会到处传播，甚至全世界都会知道。这并非是不可理喻的。同时，社交媒体的电子信息也强化了人们不切实际的标准。
Some perfectionism is inheritable. But it also arises because of environment (after all, if it were just genetic, it seems unlikely it would be increasing so much). So how can parents counteract it? Model good behaviour by watching their own perfectionistic tendencies, researchers say. And exhibit unconditional love and affection.
有些完美主义可以遗传。但也会因环境影响而产生（毕竟，如果只是通过遗传，症状就不太可能扩大开来）。那么为人父母的该如何抗拒这个势头？研究人员说，父母要通过观察和防范自身的完美主义倾向，塑造良好的行为。并给予孩子无条件的爱与温情。
“It’s saying things like ‘You really tried hard at that. I’m proud of the effort you put in.’ It’s about creating an environment where imperfection isn’t just accepted but is celebrated – because it means we’re human,” says Rasmussen, who co-authored an analysis on how family systems can breed perfectionism. “Or communicating to the child that love and care aren’t conditional on performance.
“比如这样对孩子说‘你确实努力过了。我为你所付出的努力感到自豪。’这就是在创造如此一种环境，在这里，不完美并非不可以接受，而且还值得庆幸——因为这意味着我们是人，而非神，”拉斯穆森（Rasmussen）说。拉斯穆森与其他研究人员共同撰写了关于家庭体系如何孕育完美主义的报告。他说，“或者对孩子这样说，爱和关怀他们并不以他们的表现为条件。要给孩子们这样的观念，孩子不必表现完美也是可爱和能得到关爱的。”
“It’s the idea that you don’t have to be perfect to be lovable or to be loved.”
*
Perfectionism can be a particular challenge to treat. You can train someone to be more self-compassionate in a therapeutic setting. But if they go back to the office, say, with the same demanding boss and same deep-seated behaviours, a lot of that can go out the door.
治疗完美主义是一项特殊的挑战。在治疗病人时，你可以训练一些人更富有自我同情心。但是，当他们回到办公室，那里坐着苛责的老板和完美主义根深蒂固的同事，很多症状又会出现。
社交媒体不仅强化了不切实际的标准，还给我们更多担心犯错的理由。
Then, of course, there is that widespread (if erroneous) belief that being a perfectionist makes us better workers (or parents, or athletes, or whatever the task is at hand).
普遍认为（但不一定正确），身为完美主义者能让我们成为更好的工作者，或更好的父母、运动员，或无论什么样的工作人员。
“The difficult part of it, and what makes it different than depression or anxiety, is that the person often values it,” says Egan. “If we have anxiety or depression, we don’t value those symptoms. We want to get rid of them. When we see a person with perfectionism, they can often be ambivalent towards change. People say it brings them benefits.”
“难度在于，病人通常很肯定自己的完美主义，这一点与抑郁和焦虑不同，”伊根说。“当我们感觉焦虑、抑郁时，我们并不认为这是好事，我们想去之而后快。但当我们治疗有完美主义倾向的人时，他们往往会对改变习惯心情矛盾。他们说追求完美对他们有好处。”
She’s helped her patients by helping them prove to themselves that’s not the case. If someone says, for example, they need to do three extra hours of work at home each night to be good at their job, they might experiment with not doing that for a week. Usually the patient not only finds that it makes no difference – but that the extra rest might even improve their performance.
伊根帮助病人自己证实了完美主义并非好事。比如，如果有人说，为了令他们的工作出色，需要每晚在家加班三个小时的工作，但实际上，他们或许一周内连一天超时工作都不需要。通常患者会发现这样做效果也没什么不同——而且多花时间休息更有可能改善工作表现。
I’ve experimented with some of that letting go myself. It’s gone hand-in-hand with becoming aware when I’m taking on too much and exhausting myself in my attempt to do ‘enough’ (an amount, I’ve realised, that for me doesn’t actually exist).
作为本文笔者的我已经尝试让自己从追求完美中解脱出来。当我发现自己负担太重，并且在尽力做到“足够”（我已经意识到，足够的工作量对我而言其实并不存在）时候已开始筋疲力尽，也就是该让自己抽身的时候了。
The bigger piece, though, is replacing that critical ticker-tape with kinder messages – toward both myself and others. I’ve started (with varying success) consciously stopping myself from overreacting to other people’s mistakes. More difficult, but also important, has been stopping myself from overreacting to my own. Ironically, that includes trying not to criticise myself when I fall short of that goal in itself.
而我做得更多的是，对我自己及其他人，用善意的赞扬代替批评责难。我已经开始有意识地阻止自己对他人的过错反应过度，并且取得了一定的成功。更困难的是，我要阻止对自己的犯错过度反应，这点很重要。可笑的是，这还包括在我自己没有达到这个去完美化的目标时也不要责难自己。
It’s a work in progress. But what I’ve noticed is that, each time I’m able to replace criticising and perfecting with compassion, I feel not only less stressed, but freer. Apparently, that’s not unusual.
我还在进行这种训练。但我注意到，每次当我用同情代替批评苛责时，我觉得不那么紧张了，而且心情更放松。这是显而易见的。
“It can be liberating, allowing imperfection to happen and accepting it and celebrating it,” Rasmussen says. “Because it’s exhausting, maintaining all of that.”
“允许不完美发生，接受并赞美不完美，可以令人得到自由，”拉斯穆森说。“因为要保持完美真的是很累。”