The Pursuit of Perfection

Why teens chase results — and how we can help them release some of the pressure

Perfectionism can look really good from the outside.

It can look like the child who gets good marks, works hard, checks everything twice and wants to do well. It can look like ambition and discipline and having high standards. And sometimes it is those things.

But perfectionism can also be exhausting.

I know this one personally. Perfectionism has stolen presence and passion from me more times than I would like to admit. You can be sitting somewhere with the people you love, technically part of the moment, while your brain is somewhere else entirely — replaying what you should have done differently, planning what needs to happen next, worrying about an outcome or wondering what somebody thought.

You’re there. But you’re not really there.

And I think this is an important distinction when we look at our teens, because wanting to do well is not the problem. There is nothing wrong with caring about your work, wanting a good result or putting effort into something that matters to you.

The problem starts when “I would like to do well” becomes “I have to get this right.”

Because now the result carries much more than a mark.

It carries safety. Approval. Identity. Sometimes even worth.

When a mistake feels bigger than a mistake

Have you ever watched a teen get 87% on a test and completely ignore the 87 things they apparently got right because their attention immediately goes to what they got wrong?

Or perhaps they won’t start the assignment because they don’t quite know how to do it yet. They procrastinate, avoid, scroll, reorganise their desk, suddenly need a snack… anything except actually beginning.

From the outside, that can look like laziness or a lack of discipline.

But sometimes there is something very different happening underneath it:

If I don’t know whether I can do it well, I’d rather not do it at all.

Our brains are designed to notice errors. One of the areas involved in monitoring conflict and mistakes is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This is useful — we need to notice when something isn’t working so that we can adjust.

The trouble comes when mistakes begin to carry too much emotional weight.

Then a wrong answer isn’t simply information anymore. It can feel like I failed. A correction can feel like criticism. An uncertain outcome can feel threatening. And the body’s stress response can join the party very quickly.

This is where perfectionism can become a strange kind of protection.

If I can just get everything right, perhaps I won’t disappoint anyone.

If I can stay in control, perhaps nothing will go wrong.

If I perform well enough, perhaps I’ll feel like I’m enough.

That is a very heavy load for a teenager to carry.

And then we add the world they live in

Our teens aren’t developing in a vacuum.

They live in a world of marks, rankings, teams, awards, university requirements and constant comparison. And then we hand them a little device that allows them to watch everybody else’s best moments all day long.

Nobody posts the 47 minutes they spent staring at a maths problem wondering what on earth is happening.

They post the distinction, or the medal or acceptance letter… They post the happy moments.

And if a teen is already inclined to measure themselves by outcomes, that constant comparison can very easily feed the belief that everybody else is getting life right while they somehow aren’t.

Even our encouragement as parents can accidentally add pressure. We can become so focused on helping our children reach their potential that the message they hear becomes different from the one we intended.

We mean: “I believe in you.” They hear: “Don’t disappoint me.”

That doesn’t mean we stop encouraging excellence. It means we make sure our children know that achievement is something they experience; it isn’t who they are.

The brain actually needs space

This is perhaps one of my favourite contradictions about performance:

If we want our brains to work well, we cannot demand that they perform all the time.

When we aren’t concentrating on a specific external task, a collection of brain regions commonly called the default mode network becomes more active. These periods of mental wandering and rest are involved in things like reflection, memory, imagining and making connections between ideas.

It is one of the reasons an answer sometimes arrives while you’re showering, walking or doing something completely unrelated to the problem you’ve been trying to solve.

Your brain didn’t clock out. It just changed jobs.

Rest, movement and play aren’t rewards that teenagers earn once they’ve been productive enough. They are part of what helps a brain function well in the first place.

This can be particularly difficult for a perfectionistic teen — and, if we’re being fair, for a perfectionistic parent too — because doing nothing productive can feel terribly unproductive.

But sometimes stepping away is exactly what the brain needs.

So how do we help?

I don’t think the answer is to tell a perfectionistic child, “Just stop worrying about it.”

If only our nervous systems were that obedient.

Instead, we can help them slowly experience that mistakes are survivable, rest is allowed, outcomes don’t have to be controlled and their worth doesn’t rise and fall with their performance.

That can happen in very ordinary ways.

Go for a walk without turning it into exercise or a step goal. Sing loudly in the car. Pray. Sit outside. Laugh. Move the body. Make something simply because making it is enjoyable.

And perhaps deliberately do something you are not particularly good at.

Do the uncomfortable: Paint something ugly. Dance badly. Bake the slightly wonky cake. Draw without trying to make the drawing Instagram-worthy.

For a teenager who has learnt that everything must have a measurable outcome, doing something simply for the experience of doing it can be surprisingly powerful.

We are more than what we produce

There is a spiritual layer to this for me too.

If our identity becomes anchored in achievement, approval will always have enormous power over us. There will always be another mark, another person to impress, another standard to reach and another outcome to control.

Grace gives us somewhere else to stand.

Our children need to know that their value was never waiting at the finish line for them. (And maybe we adults need reminding of that too.)

We can still pursue excellence. We can still work hard, practise, prepare, plan and care deeply about what we do.

But we can do those things from worth rather than for worth.

There is a big difference.

Maybe releasing perfectionism isn’t about caring less.

Maybe it’s learning to care deeply about what we’re doing while loosening our grip on what the outcome has to be.

And perhaps that gives us something perfectionism never really could: the freedom to actually be present for the life we’re working so hard to get right.

Inwards & Upwards