Women are tirelessly running behind a flawed and premature concept of perfection today. Perfectionism is celebrated, and people who cannot meet the societal standards of perfection are looked down upon.
When we talk about our weaknesses in job interviews, we give a fairly general and standard answer without doing much self-reflection. Pursuing perfection is confused with the intent of happiness, and humans mindlessly keep running after the model they seek without thinking whether it is what they want from life.
Once you start running after perfection, you start fearing what happens when you don’t achieve that perfection. The fear causes distress and forces you to think even more about who you are and what you are becoming. Like is the case with most fears, the fear of imperfections eventually takes over your ability to make rational decisions and choose what is best for you.
What starts as a means to become perfect eventually becomes a risk. While most people cannot admit to or realize their flaws, someone suffering from the fear of imperfections would have no harm in doing so. They would find spots in themselves and be terrified or even paralyzed by thinking of doing something wrong. Panic attacks become the norm, and they cannot escape them.
Some people consider themselves to be perfectionists of the highest order. They set their desks straight, reduce the clutter in their bedroom, and want things to be perfect. These people consider their pursuit of perfection to be an asset of sorts. They are not terrified by what the idea of perfection brings along with itself.
In this article, we look at the fear of imperfections, known as Atelophobia, and study its underlying causes. Stay with us for more details on what this condition brings and its signs and symptoms.
What Does Atelophobia Feel Like?
As is the case with every other phobia experienced by people, individuals who have atelophobia cannot focus on achieving things. They start avoiding experiences and things around them because they would rather stay home and do nothing than go outside and make a mistake.
People with atelophobia also spend a lot of time obsessing about their mistakes and the possible mistakes they can make. These thoughts cause them to experience overwhelming anxiety, which eventually leads to nausea, panic, dizziness, and an increased heart rate. The more you focus on past mistakes or the possible mistakes you can make, the more pressure you put on yourself, leading your body into a potential panic attack.
The fear of imperfection eventually develops when their pursuit of perfection enters a frustrating spectrum where they avoid things and start putting themselves in undue emotional distress. Examples of avoiding things would be not going to a game bowling with your friends because you know you aren’t better than your friends at it or skipping a party at your friend’s home because your clothes aren’t fit for the event. These are just a few of the numerous scenarios you will encounter as part of atelophobia.
Atelophobia can also lead you to evaluate yourself in a negative light constantly. Due to this negative light, you start to believe that you aren’t correctly doing things. As part of atelophobia, you might feel that things are going in a direction you cannot control.
Symptoms of Atelophobia
There are also specific symptoms connected with the medical condition of atelophobia. Most people start feeling various feelings and symptoms when they go through the defined medical condition of the fear of imperfections.
The number one feeling experienced by someone suffering from the fear of imperfections is that they let their emotions get the better of them. They go into a state of emotional distress, which manifests in increased panic, anxiety, hyperalertness, fear, poor concentration, and vigilance.
Psychologists agree that you might experience the following symptoms during your period suffering from the disease:
- Hyperventilation
- Muscle Tension
- Headache
- Stomach Pain
- Reassurance Seeking
- Avoiding activities
- Indecisiveness
What Causes Atelophobia?
You could be born with the fear of imperfections wired inside your body. The experience of atelophobia can be natural and in your genes. Some people get phobias from their parents. Insecurity, sensitivity, and perfectionism are some traits that can be transferred down from parents, leading to the need to be perfect at almost everything you do.
However, many scientists and psychologists working on the disease also believe that atelophobia is primarily formed due to all the traumatic experiences you go through in your life. All traumatic experiences you go through eventually come together to make you question every future choice and decision in life.
Signs of Atelophobia
We all go through days when nothing feels right and in order. We doubt our abilities and examine the constructs we set for ourselves. These days, we start questioning our capabilities and what we believe ourselves capable of.
However, what we experience during a day can eventually transform into a feeling for a lifetime. For most people, the sense of not being enough and not being perfect in things they do can impact and hinder their daily style of living.
Atelophobia can manifest itself in many ways within an individual. We now find out the many signs of atelophobia and how you can diagnose them before extensive and irreversible damage is inflicted on your mind and body.
Many people shy away from diagnosis and studying the signs of their fear of imperfection because they aren’t prepared to handle what will come after. Fortunately, medical professionals, therapists, and researchers have developed many interactive ways of handling phobias efficiently with the help of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy allows therapists to prepare their patients to face their fear quickly. So, diagnosing the problem is an integral part of your recovery process.
Study the signs of atelophobia below and determine how many of these signs you go through regularly.
Terrified of Flaws
Many people are terrified of making mistakes. We all make mistakes in our daily lives, but some of us shy away from the mistakes that we make in our daily lives. However, everyday fear of imperfections can become a phobia through your reaction towards the mistakes you commit.
People with atelophobia have a lot of regret and remorse immediately after committing a mistake. The mistake can be of any kind and is not limited to a specific stage or activity. You can make a mistake while speaking at a public conference, playing your favorite sport, or talking to your better half’s dad.
We can define atelophobia as the difference between feeling butterflies in your stomach before a speech and just skipping that speech altogether. People who suffer from extreme forms of atelophobia allow their fear of mistakes and imperfections to dictate the way they approach events and different stages. Someone who goes through or suffers from the anxiety of flaws will miss activities they believe they aren’t good at and would like only to keep themselves limited to activities and friends they may not make mistakes in.
The entire feeling might sound irrational to a few, but that is what an average person going through the trauma of atelophobia experiences daily.
Avoiding Situations
Phobias of all kinds are always best categorized through avoidant behavior. Someone going through a phobia would like to avoid situations that put them in a tricky position.
People who fear imperfections would only believe in themselves after approaching a challenging task or situation. They would walk away from that situation without giving themselves a chance at whatever the activity is.
Atelophobia might be confused with social phobia, but they aren’t the same. For those who aren’t aware of the difference, social phobia means being afraid or facing a crippling fear when it comes to being scrutinized by others.
People with social phobia fear judgment from the social community they are presenting in. Someone with a social phobia would worry about what happens to them when the community faces them with a sales pitch. They would want to skip the scrutiny altogether by not appearing at the sales presentation or pitch. On the flip side, atelophobia goes through a different struggle. People with atelophobia are scared of being judged themselves. They don’t fear the judgment that comes from others but is afraid of evaluating their manner of speaking and their mistakes.
So, someone with atelophobia would run away from all kinds of events or activities where they believe they might make a mistake.
Setting Impossible Standards
They say the standards and the objectives you set for yourself define you. You are determined by the goals you set and follow, which is why you must stay high and be generous by setting objectives and standards that are impossible for you to live up to.
Imagine you see someone playing ball on the school ground. You are impressed by their bat lift and how they carry themselves around the park. You set them as a standard for your style of play. But, since you don’t have the kind of background expertise they have, you will only make a fool of yourself. Hence, you will never meet the expectations you set for yourself, leading to further disappointments.
Rather Do Nothing
As we have discussed in greater detail above as well, someone with atelophobia would instead do nothing than do something incorrectly. That eventually means you are closing all doors to new experiences and stopping yourself from opening up to the people around you.
Step out to learn new experiences, and always remember that mistakes help you learn; you shouldn’t consider them roadblocks on your way to success. Someone willing to learn new things should know that they will make mistakes in the learning process, and there will be times when someone else will correct them. Remembering this, you mustn’t let your fear get the better of you.
Fear Interferes with Your Life
Finally, you can tell that you have atelophobia when your fear of imperfections eventually interferes with how you live. Your worries make it difficult for you to function in society as you want, so you keep yourself to your restricted social circle.
Atelophobia can also mess with your daily professional life. Progression in professional and private lives is linked with how willing you are to learn and study the different new concepts related to innovation. The moment you stop learning new things and living new experiences, you will enter a sphere where you will never progress in your professional life.
A successful professional would always be willing to learn new things and make mistakes. However, someone who has atelophobia would need more time to be ready to make such mistakes. They would shy away from experience and would scar their abilities for life.
Atelophobia, or the fear of imperfections, is real. It haunts many women each year and leads to a traumatic experience. We hope this article helped give you the knowledge and base you need to tackle the fear.
