The intolerable rise of perfectionism
This paragraph, which seems to summarize much of this article’s position, seems quite dangerous:<p><i>&gt; Perfectionism is a personality trait rather than a mental health condition. There is no World Health Organization diagnosis code for perfectionism and it is not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It can fly under the radar and masquerade as the pursuit of high standards, yet it overlaps with a plethora of disorders from eating to obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, body dysmorphia, depression and suicide.</i><p>Note how it simultaneously says “perfectionism is not a mental health condition”, then proceeds to immediately insuinate it is effectively a mental disorder. This continues throughout the rest of the article.<p>The domain of neurodiversity as a whole is far more complex than reducing the whole of a phenomenon to such simplistic and IMO damagingly derogatory terms as <i>“interolerable rise of perfectionism”</i>.<p>Despite the author’s attempt to interleave a few studies with personal stories, it conveniently neglects to tell the stories of “happy perfectionism”: There are many like myself, for whom pursuing this internal motivation for perfectionism turns out to be <i>immensely intrinsically rewarding</i>. In fact, I believe this intrinsic pleasure some (small percentage of the population) take from striving for perfection to have played (and continues to play) a <i>pivotal</i> role in humanity’s rise in technological advancement.<p><i>It is not the destination, but the journey</i> (to asymptotically approach a vision of perfection), that healthy perfectionists find so rewarding. Certainly, pathological corruptions of perfectionism exist (for example, any such case where you experience <i>distress or suffering</i> for not <i>achieving</i> infinite perfection, despite it being obviously unattainable) — but this is true for all personality traits.