The Tyranny of Almost: How Perfectionism Becomes Self-Persecution in Athletic Life

There's a particular kind of suffering that perfectionism inflicts, one that's hard to see from the outside because it masquerades as virtue. The athlete who stays late reviewing footage, who can't let go of a single mistake from weeks ago, who transforms every minor error into evidence of fundamental inadequacy—we tend to read this as dedication, maybe even admirable intensity. What we're often missing is the internal violence of it, the way certain forms of perfectionism operate less as motivation and more as psychological self-immolation.

The research distinguishes between two fundamentally different types of perfectionism, and understanding that distinction matters for making sense of why some athletes thrive under high standards while others collapse beneath them. There's what gets called perfectionistic strivings—setting high personal standards, pursuing excellence, maintaining ambitious goals. And then there's perfectionistic concerns—fear of mistakes, harsh self-criticism, sensitivity to external pressure, the sense that nothing you do is ever quite good enough (Stoeber, 2011; Hamidi & Besharat, 2010). The first can be neutral or even protective. The second is consistently, measurably destructive.

Perfectionistic concerns show strong and consistent associations with both depression and anxiety in athletes across multiple studies and contexts (Jensen et al., 2018; Matijašević & Matijašević, 2023; Yakushina et al., 2023; Freire et al., 2020; Minichiello et al., 2024; Callaghan et al., 2023). Meta-analyses pin the correlations at medium to strong—around .38 to .43—which in psychological research represents a substantial relationship (Callaghan et al., 2023). This isn't subtle or ambiguous. Athletes high in perfectionistic concerns experience significantly elevated rates of depressive and anxious symptoms, and the effect holds across different sports, age groups, and competitive levels.

What makes perfectionistic concerns so toxic isn't the pursuit of excellence itself but the psychological framework that accompanies it. Athletes caught in this pattern don't just want to perform well—they need to be flawless to avoid catastrophic self-evaluation. Every mistake becomes evidence of fundamental inadequacy rather than normal feedback for improvement. The standards aren't just high; they're impossible, and falling short triggers cascading internal criticism that bears little relationship to actual performance quality. It's less "I could have done better on that routine" and more "I'm fundamentally broken and everyone can see it."

The mechanisms through which perfectionistic concerns translate into mental health problems are distressingly efficient. Competitive anxiety serves as one pathway—athletes with high perfectionistic concerns experience more intense pre-competition anxiety, which then predicts depressive symptoms (Jensen et al., 2018; Minichiello et al., 2024). The anxiety isn't just about performance; it's about the anticipated internal consequences of imperfection. If your self-worth requires flawless execution, every competition becomes existentially threatening regardless of its actual stakes.

Maladaptive emotion regulation provides another route. Athletes high in perfectionistic concerns tend toward catastrophizing and self-blame when things go wrong, which directly increases depressive symptoms (Jensen et al., 2018; Minichiello et al., 2024; Donachie et al., 2019). A minor error during training doesn't get processed as "something to work on" but as "proof I'll never succeed" or "evidence that I'm letting everyone down." The emotional response is wildly disproportionate to the actual event, but from inside the perfectionistic framework, it feels entirely justified. The standards aren't just for behavior—they extend to emotional experience, creating a secondary layer of self-criticism about having imperfect emotional reactions to imperfect performances.

What's particularly cruel about this pattern is how it feeds on itself. Perfectionistic concerns lead to anxiety, which impairs performance, which generates more self-criticism, which intensifies the perfectionistic concerns. Athletes get trapped in a cycle where the very mechanism they're using to try to achieve excellence—ruthless self-monitoring and criticism—actively undermines their capacity to perform well. But recognizing this dynamic doesn't make it easier to escape, because the perfectionistic framework interprets any relaxation of standards as dangerous complacency.

Social factors amplify the damage. Athletes experiencing social phobia alongside perfectionistic concerns show even worse mental health outcomes (Jensen et al., 2018; Matijašević & Matijašević, 2023). The fear that others are judging you as harshly as you judge yourself creates a kind of social-psychological pressure cooker where every interaction feels evaluative and threatening. Coach or parental criticism intensifies the effects, particularly when that criticism mirrors the athlete's internal dialogue (Freire et al., 2020; Minichiello et al., 2024; Ruffault et al., 2024). External voices saying "you're not good enough" confirm and validate the perfectionistic concerns rather than challenging them, making the whole system more rigid and less open to contradiction.

Lack of effective coping skills leaves athletes particularly vulnerable when perfectionistic concerns are high. Without adaptive strategies for managing mistakes, processing criticism, or maintaining perspective during setbacks, the perfectionistic self-criticism operates unchecked (Jensen et al., 2018; Matijašević & Matijašević, 2023; Minichiello et al., 2024). Some athletes develop sophisticated coping mechanisms that help buffer the worst effects, but many don't, and the gap between perfectionistic demands and psychological resources to meet them becomes a space where mental health deteriorates.

The context matters in ways that are still being mapped out. Team environment, age, and sport type can influence how strongly perfectionistic concerns predict mental health problems, though the basic relationship holds across contexts (Jensen et al., 2018; Nixdorf et al., 2016; Ruffault et al., 2024). Individual sports might see stronger effects—when you're alone with your performance and your thoughts, there's less opportunity for the buffering that team dynamics sometimes provide. Younger athletes may be more vulnerable because they have less developed emotion regulation capacity and more fragile self-concepts. But these are moderating factors, not fundamental contradictions to the core finding: perfectionistic concerns are bad for athlete mental health, consistently and substantially.

The distinction between perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings becomes crucial here because it resists the simplistic narrative that all perfectionism is harmful or that athletes should somehow abandon high standards. Perfectionistic strivings—the pursuit of excellence without the self-flagellating criticism—show neutral or even protective associations with mental health (Freire et al., 2020; Stoeber, 2011; Hamidi & Besharat, 2010). Athletes can maintain ambitious goals and high personal standards without triggering the depressive and anxious symptoms that perfectionistic concerns generate. In some studies, perfectionistic strivings link to lower anxiety and higher self-confidence, suggesting that excellence-seeking in the absence of harsh self-evaluation might actually support psychological wellbeing.

This dual nature of perfectionism means the relevant question isn't whether athletes should be perfectionistic but which dimension of perfectionism they're embodying (Stoeber, 2011; Hamidi & Besharat, 2010). An athlete who sets extremely high goals, works diligently toward them, and processes setbacks as information rather than indictment can thrive. An athlete with identical goals but who interprets every imperfection as personal failure and lives in constant fear of mistakes will likely struggle with significant mental health problems. The difference isn't in the standards themselves but in the psychological relationship to falling short of them.

There's something the research captures with the phrase "superego overload"—this sense that the internal critic has become tyrannical, that the part of self responsible for monitoring standards has gained disproportionate power and uses it destructively. For athletes experiencing this, the perfectionism stops being a tool for improvement and becomes an instrument of psychological torture. Every training session, every competition, every moment of rest becomes an opportunity for the internal voice to catalogue inadequacies and predict failures. The athlete can't escape because the critic is internal, operating constantly, immune to external reassurance or evidence of actual competence.

What makes this particularly difficult to address is that perfectionism often gets externally rewarded, at least initially. Coaches praise the athlete who stays late, who seems never satisfied, who pushes through pain and exhaustion in pursuit of improvement. The early stages of perfectionistic concerns can look like exceptional dedication, and the mental health costs might not become apparent until significant damage has accumulated. By the time the athlete recognizes something is wrong—or by the time others notice the depression and anxiety—the perfectionistic patterns are deeply entrenched and harder to modify.

The research makes clear that monitoring and addressing perfectionistic concerns is crucial for athlete mental health (Jensen et al., 2018; Matijašević & Matijašević, 2023; Callaghan et al., 2023). This isn't optional or tangential to athletic development—it's central. Athletes high in perfectionistic concerns need interventions that target the cognitive patterns driving the self-criticism, that help develop more adaptive emotion regulation strategies, that challenge the equation between self-worth and flawless performance. Without such interventions, the perfectionistic concerns will likely continue generating significant psychological distress regardless of actual athletic achievement.

But knowing perfectionistic concerns are harmful doesn't automatically make them easier to relinquish. For many athletes, the harsh self-criticism feels necessary, like the only thing preventing complete collapse into mediocrity. The perfectionism promises control—if you're hard enough on yourself, maybe you can force yourself to be good enough. That promise is false, as the mental health data demonstrates, but it's psychologically compelling nonetheless. Letting go of perfectionistic concerns can feel like abandoning the very thing that makes you an athlete, even when maintaining them is actively destroying your wellbeing.

Perhaps what the research ultimately reveals is that perfectionism in athletes isn't a simple trait to be measured but a relationship with oneself that can take adaptive or maladaptive forms. The adaptive version—high standards, persistent effort, genuine love of excellence—can coexist with psychological health and even enhance it. The maladaptive version—fear-driven, criticism-laden, impossible to satisfy—consistently predicts depression and anxiety across contexts and populations. The work isn't eliminating perfectionism but transforming its nature, shifting from self-persecution to self-development, from fear of failure to pursuit of growth.

That transformation requires more than individual effort. It needs coaches who distinguish between healthy striving and destructive self-criticism, who model how to maintain high standards without harsh judgment. It needs athletic cultures that value process over outcome enough to make that more than empty rhetoric. It needs early intervention when perfectionistic concerns emerge, before they calcify into rigid patterns that resist change. And it needs recognition that some of what we celebrate as dedication in athletes is actually psychological suffering we should be working to prevent.

References

Callaghan, T. S., Greene, D., Shafran, R., Lunn, J., & Egan, S. J. (2023). The relationships between perfectionism and symptoms of depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 53(2), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2023.2277121

Donachie, T. C., Hill, A. P., & Madigan, D. J. (2019). Perfectionism and precompetition emotions in youth footballers: A three-wave longitudinal test of the mediating role of perfectionistic cognitions. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 42(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2018-0317

Freire, G. L. M., da Cruz Sousa, V. C., Alves, J. F. N., Moraes, J. F. V. N., Oliveira, D. V., & Júnior, J. R. A. N. (2020). Are the traits of perfectionism associated with pre-competitive anxiety in young athletes? Cuadernos de Psicología del Deporte, 20(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.6018/cpd.406031

Hamidi, S., & Besharat, M. A. (2010). Perfectionism and competitive anxiety in athletes. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5, 813–817. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.190

Jensen, S. N., Ivarsson, A., Fallby, J., Dankers, S., & Elbe, A.-M. (2018). Depression in Danish and Swedish elite football players and its relation to perfectionism and anxiety. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 36, 147–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.02.008

Matijašević, B., & Matijašević, P. (2023). The relationship between perfectionism and symptoms of depression in young athletes. In L. Daniela & M. Lūsēna-Ezera (Eds.), Human, technologies and quality of education, 2023 (pp. 495–504). University of Latvia Press. https://doi.org/10.22364/htqe.2023.43

Minichiello, H., Reasonover, M., & Fuglestad, P. T. (2024). The indirect effects of perfectionism on athletes' self-views through maladaptive emotion regulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1373461. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1373461

Nixdorf, I., Frank, R., & Beckmann, J. (2016). Comparison of athletes' proneness to depressive symptoms in individual and team sports: Research on psychological mediators in junior elite athletes. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 893. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00893

Ruffault, A., Valverde, S., Regnauld, C., Podlog, L., & Hamonnière, T. (2024). An examination of relationships between transdiagnostic psychological processes and mental health disorders in athletes. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 74, Article 102727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102727

Stoeber, J. (2011). The dual nature of perfectionism in sports: Relationships with emotion, motivation, and performance. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 4(2), 128–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984x.2011.604789

Veraksa, A. N., Yakushina, A. A., & Semenov, Y. I. (2021). The role of perfectionism in athletes: Diagnosis and relationship with anxiety, mental images and sports motivation. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology, 11(3), 223–238. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu16.2021.301

Yakushina, A. A., Pashchenko, A. Y., & Zentsova, N. I. (2023). Depressive symptoms in athletes: The role of perfectionism, emotional burnout, and stress. PERSONALITY IN A CHANGING WORLD: HEALTH, ADAPTATION, DEVELOPMENT, 11(3), 253–264. https://doi.org/10.23888/humj2023113253-264