Perfectionism and stress?

Question

What causes one person to react to stress more than another? Is it genetic?

And does it often accompany high achievement? Most people who achieve much in life tend to have very high standards for themselves and get stressed out when they are not meeting those standards, for whatever reason.

Is stress therefore a healthy byproduct? Are we ruining our high achievers by telling them they have disorders and medicating them?

Answer 1

I think that how a person handles stress (or creates it) is directly related to their self-image.

Now me, I'm what you could call "successful;" I have a lot of abilities and talents that fetch very good wages, but I've made a habit of NOT "setting the bar" so high for myself that every day, every waking moment was a matter of push, push, push, achieve, achieve!!

I've always believed in hard work and strived for quality.

Interesting that I've had some people say that I'm a perfectionist, but I know that it was COMPLETELY RELATIVE to their own level of quality. I guarantee you, I'm not a perfectionist; my level of ability was just likely higher than theirs.

One of my superiors was a guy with very high skills, but he also pushed himself to the max. He was never happy with his level of earnings. Poor guy.

I don't know what you mean by "medicating" high achievers. I've never seen evidence of that.

I just think that each individual "sets their own bar" and thereby creates their own level of stress.

Let me tell you a little personal story about stress ~

At one point in my life, my wife had gone ahead to stay at the construction site of our new home in the northwoods, and oversee the contractors progress, write checks, etc.

I stayed behind, a couple hundred miles away, waiting for our home to sell. We knew that it might take a while.

We were separated and weren't happy with it, but we did what we had to do.

I told myself that "everything was cool," but soon, I began to wake up about 2-3 AM most every night and my stomach was just churning away.

I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a spastic colon.

Cause: stress.

It was sublimated stress, but stress nonetheless. Not diet.

As soon as the house was sold, my body returned to normal.

We can have stress and not even realize it. We can even deny it, but it's there, and it can literally eat us alive if we let it.

Answer 2

Personalities are mostly the result of how a person grew up, but probably with a tiny bit of genetics thrown in. This isn't the kind of thing we can figure out for sure (tough to do an experiment to solve this problem in a controlled fashion).

Does being a stress-ball make you achieve? Most of the time, being a perfectionist is a good thing. It means you do your job well, etc. On the other hand, you can take it too far--dwelling on unimportant details when you need to look at the big picture. Oftentimes, this sort of behavior can also interfere with interpersonal relationships (if you've ever met someone who truly had obsessive-compulsive disorder you'd understand what I mean). So there is a point at which it becomes counterproductive. Stress makes some people perform better. It hurts others.

Now about the medication part.... Generally speaking, we don't medicate people who are functioning well. If a person is under so much stress that he can't sleep, then he isn't going to achieve and we'll give him a sleeping pill. If someone has so much anxiety that he can't do his work, then he's going to get fired from his job, so we'll give him something to help him relax. If someone is manic, they might appear to get a lot of stuff done, but we know that people who are manic also tend to make a lot of poor decisions, like driving 85 miles per hour in a residential zone, crashing, and dying--so we give those people mood stabilizers.

So your question "Are we ruining our high achievers by telling them they have disorders and medicating them?" is moot because we don't do that. Think about it this way: people don't go to the doctor unless there is something wrong in their lives. If they are handling their stress and succeeding, they don't see the doctor, and thus don't get medicated.

Answer 3

Interesting question. I think my daughter obsesses over perfectionism, however, she is NOT a high achiever. Quite the opposite, because she stresses over it to the point that she can't accomplish what she really has the potential for. Then she gets angry and accuses teachers and parents of expecting her to be perfect.

I think stress - - at least in teens - - - is a byproduct of society expecting them to set higher and higher standards for themselves. For instance, by the time a teen is a freshman in high school, they must already have a career pathway and take classes toward that goal. So much pressure, and they're only 14! Plus if you don't go to college, then you are treated as a second-class citizen. So unfair, when the majority of the U.S. backbone is the blue collar workers.

I agree that doctors have teamed up with the pharmaceutical companies to medicate people as much as possible because it is a multi-billion dollar business. They are not just ruining the high-achievers. They are ruining everybody.

Answer 4

What an interesting pile of questions. lets see if I can answer at least some of them.
1.We all have our own stress tolerances. Immaturity, anger issues, high blood pressure and a myriad of other problems hinder our ability to deal with stress.
2.I am a perfectionist, this is not something I like to talk about, because it is often not a good thing. As such I like things done just so and I get stressed out when I am unable to do so. My usual reaction to something that is not just right, is to do it over or to fix it, obviously if you are getting a whole pile of $ per hour to do this, they don't want to pay you to do it over, so you have to SOMETIMES let things go that are not up to your standard. This is extremely stressful, but I've come to realize its MY problem and I deal with it.
3.I don't believe that stress is healthy at all, some people are extremely successful in dealing with stress and seem to even thrive in those conditions.
4. The only medication I could see a "high achiever" getting is blood pressure medication and eventually heart medication.

Answer 5

usually the people that are like you have described are just people with type A personalities. there is no particular genetic reason for it. they just are. i think that being a high achiever is a very good thing but not at the cost of your own health. even stress can be considered a good thing because sometimes being under stress helps a person work better but again not if it leads you to a heart attack. so yes it could be considered a disorder but medicating them seems a little too extreme for me. working ones self to death isn't so far fetched anymore....

Answer 6

I'm not sure. No. Perhaps, but I highly doubt it. It's unhealthy, both physically and mentally. The "high achievers" are ruining themselves by being stressed to high, unhealthy levels.

Answer 7

I have never been a stressful person yet I'm a high achiever?

Answer 8

Some people work far more effectively under stress.

The rest of us merely follow along.

Medication for natural reactions is unhelpful.

Answer 9

wife isa Stress and maritalafairs are Perfectionism