Self-Compassion and Perfectionism

Suffering, failure and imperfection are inevitable parts of human nature that all individuals will experience during their lifetime. However, how individuals relate to themselves when they are struggling may play an important role on their psychological wellbeing. Whilst self-compassion is defined as treating oneself with kindness in moments of suffering or perceived failure, perfectionism consists of high standards, fear of evaluation and exaggerated self-criticism when these expectations are not met. Perfectionism as recently gained increasing attention because levels of perfectionism in society are increasing, parallel to mental health problems and increased demand on mental health facilities. In addition, a growing body of evidence indicates that perfectionism may play an important role in the development of mental illness: it is reportedly a barrier to treatment and has recently been termed an important transdiagnostic phenomenon in mental illness due to its correlation to depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders. Self-compassion, on the other hand, is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety and rumination. In addition, self-compassion intervention studies indicate that self-compassion can increase through training and that this has positive effects on psychological wellbeing. Little research to date has investigated if perfectionism can be reduced with similar targeted interventions and a number of important questions regarding the phenomenon remain unanswered. It is unclear how perfectionism develops and if it is entirely maladaptive, as a subfactor called strivings (high standards) correlates inconsistently to wellbeing/symptoms of distress. The purpose of this thesis was thus to examine perfectionism through both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to increase our understanding of how perfectionism relates to mental health, how individuals experience the phenomenon and whether perfectionism can be reduced. Paper 1 investigated the psychometric properties of a brief perfectionism scale in a Norwegian student sample (N=383), in order to examine how to measure perfectionism, whether perfectionism has multiple subfactors and how these uniquely relate to symptoms of mental health. Due to previous inconsistent findings in the literature, two different statistical methods were employed: pure bifactor modeling and confirmatory factor analysis. Findings from this study indicate that the Frost Multidimensional Scale-Brief is best represented by a two-factor model, and that these factors are evaluative concerns and strivings. Whilst evaluative concerns had a significant correlation to both anxiety and depression, strivings only had a weaker yet significant correlation to anxiety. Paper 2 employed in-depth lifestory interviews of nine individuals with high perfectionistic tendencies in order to examine how they described that painful life events shaped their relationship to others. Thematic analysis of similarities and differences in the participants’ lived experiences resulted in two overarching themes: «You can’t always trust people,» and «A distancing from others.» These themes highlighted the importance of personal responsibility and independence as well as emotional and physical distancing in order to protect oneself from getting hurt again after dramatic life events. These findings provided important nuance and depth to both the function and difficulty in perfectionistic strategies. Paper 3 investigated whether students’ levels of maladaptive perfectionism, anxiety, depression and problems with body image can be reduced through a targeted self-compassion course. We employed a randomized controlled trial (N=89) in order to investigate the effects of a brief 3-week self-compassion intervention on students’ mental health. Findings indicated that training in self-compassion increases self-compassion and reduces symptoms of anxiety, depression and maladaptive perfectionism subfactor. Whilst results for improving body image and decreasing strivings were inconsistent. Together, the findings of the doctoral project indicate that the FMPS-B can be used to measure the two factors of perfectionism: strivings and evaluative concerns separately, that these correlate differently to mental health, and that brief interventions in self-compassion can significantly reduce maladaptive perfectionism and symptoms of anxiety and depression. In addition, individuals with perfectionistic tendencies nuance these findings and shed light on the function perfectionism may serve after experiencing difficult life events