I don’t mean “loser” in the socially comparative context, in relation to others, but in the sense of losing touch with one’s full self. Perfectionists “confess” in therapy that when they try to stop excelling, they feel muted. They feel like they’ve lost something; they feel like losers. The trick is not to figure out how to stop wanting to excel so much—for true perfectionists, that always backfires. The trick is to figure out how to excel based on your values, not someone else’s values.
