How High Standards Affect College Students’ Bodies and Minds

At Centenary College, it is not uncommon to see a student juggling everything at once. While it is a place to encourage students to work hard, striving to be perfect all the time has a very serious impact on the overall health of a student. A study has shown that perfectionism impacts not only the mental health of a student but also their physical health, which makes it a topic to be grasped.

Perfectionism can be generally defined as having extremely high standards for yourself and being very critical when these high standards are not met. Perfectionism can be split into two types: adaptive and maladaptive. Adaptive perfectionism may propel students to work hard and be more organized. Maladaptive perfectionism, on the other hand, is more about being afraid of failing or being afraid of making mistakes. Researchers have shown that maladaptive perfectionism is associated with greater levels of stress, anxiety, and ill health in college students, making it more harmful than helpful.

This pressure is not one that stays confined to a student’s mind. When students are constantly worried about their grades or their performance and how they might disappoint others, their body responds by releasing hormones associated with stress. Lacking constant stress can create physical symptoms, such as those commonly found in college students but which they do not associate with perfectionism. Lacking sleep, headaches, tension, gastrointestinal disorders, and illness can all be caused by stressing all the time. Long-term stress has been shown to “impair cognitive abilities, making it harder to focus, make decisions, and regulate emotions.”

Sleep issues are another concern students face. It is a common complaint for students to stay wide awake through the night thinking of their school assignments to complete and errors they may have made during the day. Sleep quality is negatively related to perfectionism among college students: students with higher perfectionism experience poorer sleep quality with increased sleep disturbances. 

Another set of significant associations exists between perfectionism and mental health. In the domain of mental health, maladaptive perfectionism has been linked to various campus-related anxiety issues, depression, and burnout in college students. In fact, the relationship between perfectionistic concerns and suicide ideas was supported in a large-scale meta-analysis, suggesting that academic environments play a critical role in the possible effects of these concerns.

The college environment can add to the problem of perfectionism. Students may feel the burden of maintaining good grades, building their resume, and comparing their lives to those of their classmates on social media. Socially prescribed perfectionism, or the expectation that comes from other people for one to be perfect, has been on the rise among young adults over the last few decades, and this is the reason why most students are feeling overwhelmed these days.

Despite these issues, however, perfectionism does not have to be the controlling force in a student's life. Students who practice self-compassion and are able to be flexible with their ideals have found that they experience less stress. 

So what does this mean for the students at Centenary College? It means understanding the effects of perfectionism is part of achieving balance for the college student. While wanting to succeed is great, self-doubt and stress can really hinder reaching goals and balance because being very stressed and worried about yourself is not worth striving for a life free of stress and mistakes!