As I saw a thread of red slashes gashing my Kumon worksheet, I felt a sudden pinch in my gut. My breathing thickened. I peered at my parents' blank faces, anticipating their anger when we got back home. Overwhelmed, my head blanked out.

To this day, nightmares of this feeling wake me up in the middle of the night, and I find myself cringing every time I see a red slash tearing across my school papers. Since ten years old, I have taken pride in being “perfect”, but that came at a cost: an intense feeling of failure. These consequences were overlooked as I was a little kid, and I was rather praised for being such a meticulous, organized child. I aced every private academy entrance exam and obtained a very high IQ for an average elementary student– I was society’s stereotype of a young gifted child. But this perfection was just another anticipation for failure, a concept I truly despised and feared with a passion. Although my environment has changed drastically from when I was ten years old, I still retain my values as a perfectionist, as my fear of failure is mainly highlighted through the competitive education system.

Ironically, my cursed journey with the fear of failure initially began as a “gift.” I grew up as a "gifted child” since kindergarten, regularly receiving praise for being “self-driven” and “meticulous,” which indicated future success in life. This punctilious trait essentially roots in my perfectionist nature–I must do everything I can to make everything perfect. This conflict is presented in psychology as “perfectionism.” Although there is no clear definition, psychologist Susan Albers defines a perfectionist as someone who “has very high and exact expectations and standards,” and is “working and striving for things to be just right, or just so.” Perfectionism often presents itself in two distinct stages, which I juxtapose with my personal narrative. 

The first stage manifests as an insecure child who needs approval, acceptance, and affection from parents who are difficult to please assumes that “if he performs perfectly, he will receive the succorance he seeks” (Hollender, 1965). This reflects the appraisal I received starting at a very early age for my success and self-motivation. I take pride in being perfect as a response to my parents’ beaming praise and recognition. The early appraisal was essentially a drive for perfection in order to find comfort and belonging in society, initiating the pressure to maintain a “perfect” title in my ten-year-old self. 

In the second stage, perfectionism also represents an effort to combat self-belittlement (Hollender, 1965). The sweet taste of adrenaline that rushed through with my parents’ proud smiles after obtaining these perfect marks encouraged me to continuously chase after social expectations and reinforcement. This soon translated to reinforcement for self-approval of my ability to keep up with social standards. Much like my ten-year-old self, I still tend to strive for perfection as a remedy for failure, which led me toward self-belittlement. Being used to standards of perfection all my life, my first experience of failure in Kumon imploded my carefully-crafted self-image of excellence. Since then, I forced myself into a habit of double and triple checking my work to make sure that I was getting all the questions right. Thanks to this habit, I began receiving perfect scores on my worksheets, and I was back to being perfect. However, this ideal dream situation was short-lived as I blankly stared at the red digit “79” on my first-ever math test in middle school. I distinctly remember the look on my parents’ faces the afternoon that I brought that test home. “Maybe she’s hit a slump,” I heard my mother whispering to my father late at night. From being labeled a perfect child to hitting a slump– the horrible sluggish feeling I had felt back at the Kumon Center resurfaced, and I felt sick at myself. I was imperfect. I pedaled myself even harder each day and my self-worth was determined by the number of A’s on my report card and holding my name up in the Principal’s Honors Roll. I received social recognition for my high motivation and success, but perfection’s bestowal of social approval shielded me from self-belittlement and spurred an internal conflict toward failure that stood by me like a shadow. 

The intense pressure to maintain my title as a gifted child built up a perfectionist characteristic within myself, pushing me towards a fear of failure. Despite recognizing that a constant push for success is detrimental to my mental health, my desire for praise that comes along with achieving success motivates me to keep sustaining my perfectionist mindset and striving for ultimate success. Additionally, a potential reason for sustaining this perfectionist trait is my reluctance to share these problems with others, for the fear of being vulnerable with my success. I wanted to keep up that perfect, lovable image in the face of society but failed to recognize that I was isolating and hiding away my vulnerable self. From society’s perspective, having high goals for oneself seems to translate into being extremely self-motivated, which is a highly respected trait. From being a “gifted child” in early elementary school to undergoing the competitive academic system in adolescence, these traits have persisted from when I was ten years old to who I am now. It has been very difficult for me to stray away from these perfectionist traits, which is why I continue to push myself with the pressure to constantly achieve success, and the fear of failure translates as additional stress for me in academics to satisfy societal expectations. 

Perfectionism's lingering influence in my life may derive from its formation from nature and nurture. A La Fe Hospital study of the contributions of genetics and environment to perfectionism found that the genetic correlation between both perfectionists was 0.981 in boys and 0.704 in girls (Iranzo-Tatey, 2015). The non-shared environmental correlation was 0.254 in boys and 0.259 in girls. In conclusion, genetic influences on perfectionism are moderate during adolescence. Results pointed toward a shared genetic component underlying both kinds of perfectionism. The high genetic correlation seems to indicate that self-motivated and socially prescribed perfectionists, those whose tendencies arise from perceived social pressures and expectations, originate from the same dimension of perfectionism. Inbred traits form the mind’s default mode of relating to the world. Even though these can be mitigated with practice and support, breaking the brain’s natural programming is very difficult. In addition, a Michigan State University study on identical twins further justified the study that genetics play a vital role in determining one’s perfectionist traits (Moser, et al., 2012). Although researchers have not identified the specific gene that carries the trait, the studies indicate “that there is a significant biological component that we need to understand more.” The twin study further emphasizes the biological nature of the perfectionist trait that stems from one’s nature, as well as its potential for persistence. This stubborn nature of perfectionism has rooted itself inside of my mindset, hindering my ability to control it as I start to navigate through the world. 

Despite the influence of natural factors, nurture played a role in brain development as I started to grow older. The American Psychological Association found that perfectionism is attributable to various environmental factors, including a fear of judgment or disapproval from others, early childhood experiences, such as having parents with unrealistically high expectations or having a mental health condition associated with perfectionist tendencies, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (Curran et al., 2019). These traits continued to be upheld as seen specifically through the neuroplasticity of the brain. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections. Since the brain is most flexible at young ages and begins to harden at adolescence, plasticity in the young brain is very strong as we learn to map our surroundings using the senses. As we grow older, plasticity decreases to stabilize what we have already learned. Neuroplasticity’s reinforcement of my perfectionism manifested through classical conditioning, the process in which an automatic, conditioned response is paired with specific stimuli (Rehman et al., 2022). In this situation, the unconditioned stimulus of parental disapproval paired with mistakes led to a conditioned response of fear and self-loathing following even the smallest error. This process taught me to conflate social and parental approval with approval towards myself, making perfectionism more persistent as my social value was essentially determined by my ability to sustain perfect marks.

However, environmental factors can also discourage perfectionism. As I learned to identify my perfectionistic tendencies and their downsides, I began training myself to refocus my attention on trying to learn from the mistake, rather than focusing on the numerical grade. Slowly, I was able to retain peace when facing failure, reminding myself numerous times that it is just a natural part of life. Overcoming perfectionism as a person has been a step outside of my comfort zone, and has opened me up to truly connect with my inner feelings and get to know myself better. Since my first attempts at recovering, I have discovered a genuine passion for writing and history, giving me a genuine connection to my coursework. Now, I draw my motivation for academic excellence from my interest rather than outside pressures. 

Despite undergoing several developmental stages since I was ten years old, I still retain my core beliefs as a perfectionist, which are illustrated by my educational experiences. My efforts to sustain my identity as a “perfect” student have been sustained by biological and environmental reinforcers, which ingrained a competitive mindset at the expense of overcoming my fear of failure. As a result, I have sought social identity in perfectionism, pressuring myself to do everything right and retain a flawless disguise over the years. That being said, I am starting to diverge from my ten-year-old self by learning to embrace failure and take a healthier psychological approach to my workload. I am now conscious that society promotes perfectionist traits to place the burden on young people like myself to keep up with its breakneck pace, rather than interrogating whether its standards are realistic for human growth and development. I know that while perfectionism is a part of my own development, it does not define my destiny. Although I still see myself as the ten-year-old girl who strove to be perfect, I also see the journey of facing my fears and ultimately unraveling the myth of perfectionism.