Operating under an illness model of care doesn’t just carry powerful implications for the way we conceptualize perfectionism, it impacts the way we conceptualize every aspect of mental health. The slightest pang of sadness, a drizzle of frustration—we register any decline in positive emotion with an assumption of pathology. It’s a cultural tic. The tic is born from the pathology-centered illness model we operate under. Before we seek to understand, we seek to diagnose. Instead of saying, “Let’s figure out what’s happening here,” we say, “Let’s figure out what’s wrong with you.”
