Is perfectionism the same as having high standards?

No. High standards paired with flexibility rarely cause difficulty on their own. Perfectionism becomes a problem when standards turn rigid, when self-worth depends entirely on the result, or when fear of falling short limits what someone is willing to attempt.

What is compassion-focused therapy?

It’s an approach developed by the psychologist Paul Gilbert that focuses on shame and self-criticism. It looks at how the mind’s threat, drive and soothing systems interact, and works to build a stronger soothing response alongside existing drive and ambition.

Does being self-critical actually improve performance?

Not reliably. Self-criticism can feel like quality control, but it tends to produce anxiety and avoidance rather than better outcomes, and it often continues long after a mistake has already been corrected.

Is compassion-focused therapy only for people who dislike themselves?

No. It’s used for a wide range of difficulties involving shame, self-criticism and perfectionism, including in people who function well outwardly but carry a harsh internal commentary underneath.

How does online therapy work for this kind of difficulty?

Sessions take place by secure video call with a qualified clinical psychologist and can fit around work and family commitments across Brighton and East Sussex.

Can self-criticism be reduced without lowering my standards?

Yes. The aim is to separate self-worth from outcome, not to lower ambition, so a mistake can be noticed and corrected without triggering a punishing internal response.

Sep 9, 2026

Perfectionism and self-criticism: a compassion-focused view

Perfectionism and self-criticism usually travel together: perfectionism sets an impossibly high bar, and self-criticism punishes you for missing it. A compassion-focused view treats that harsh inner voice as a threat response to be understood, not argued with.

What perfectionism and self-criticism have in common

Perfectionism can look productive from the outside. Work gets finished, deadlines get met, standards stay high. What it hides is the running commentary underneath: the sense that a good result was only ever the minimum, that mistakes are proof of some deeper flaw, and that rest has to be earned. Self-criticism is the mechanism that keeps this going. It’s the voice that reviews a piece of work, a conversation or a decision and finds fault before anyone else has the chance to.

Common triggers

Self-criticism doesn’t appear evenly across every area of life. It tends to cluster around specific triggers: performance reviews, exam results, public speaking, parenting decisions, or comparing your own progress with other people’s, often on social media. Two people can face an identical situation and come away with very different internal commentary, which is one of the clues that the response is learned rather than simply accurate feedback.

Why the inner critic feels so convincing

Self-criticism often feels like honesty. It can seem like the only thing standing between you and complacency, or the only way to catch errors before they matter. Compassion-focused therapy, developed by the psychologist Paul Gilbert, offers a different explanation. It suggests that self-criticism is a learned way of managing threat, built up over years, often from early experiences of being judged, compared or made to feel that love and approval were conditional on performance.

Once that pattern is established, the brain treats your own mistakes the way it might treat an external danger. Something goes wrong, and an alarm goes off. The difference is that the alarm doesn’t switch off once the threat has passed. It keeps running as rumination, replaying the moment, drafting the apology you didn’t need to send, rehearsing what you should have said instead.

Three systems: threat, drive and soothing

Compassion-focused therapy describes three systems that regulate emotion. The threat system detects danger and produces anxiety, anger or shame. The drive system pushes you towards achievement and reward, producing the buzz of hitting a target or ticking something off a list. The soothing system supports rest, safety and connection, and it’s the one most people with strong perfectionism have the least practice using.

Perfectionism tends to run almost entirely on the drive and threat systems. Achievement brings brief relief rather than settled satisfaction, because the threat system is already scanning for the next thing that could go wrong. Compassion-focused work aims to build up the soothing system alongside the other two, not remove ambition or standards altogether, but so that self-worth stops depending entirely on the next result.

What a compassion-focused approach involves

Compassion-focused therapy is specific rather than generic reassurance. It works with the exact content of the self-critical voice: what it says, when it appears, and what it seems to be trying to protect you from. Often it turns out to be trying, clumsily, to prevent failure, rejection or shame, using the only strategy it has ever learned.

Techniques might include noticing the physical sensations that come with self-criticism, practising a different tone of voice towards yourself in the moment a mistake happens, or working out what a genuinely supportive response would sound like if it came from someone who wanted you to do well and also wanted you to be alright. For some people, imagery and structured practice help build this capacity; for others, it develops more through examining specific situations in detail during sessions and noticing what changes.

Evidence for compassion-focused approaches is strongest for difficulties involving high shame and self-criticism, and it’s often used alongside cognitive behavioural approaches rather than as a replacement for them, depending on what’s driving the difficulty.

When perfectionism becomes a bigger problem

Perfectionism sits on a spectrum. High standards paired with flexibility, the ability to adjust a plan or accept a good-enough outcome, rarely cause much difficulty on their own. Problems tend to build when standards become rigid, when self-worth is tied entirely to achievement, or when the fear of falling short starts limiting what someone is willing to attempt at all. Procrastination, avoidance and burnout are common outcomes, not signs that the standards weren’t high enough.

Support in Brighton and East Sussex

We’re clinical psychologists working online with adults across Brighton and East Sussex, including Hove, Kemptown, Preston Park and the surrounding BN postcodes. Perfectionism and self-criticism bring people to therapy for many reasons: work pressure, exam or study stress, difficulty resting, or a pattern of relationships shaped by fear of getting things wrong. Assessment looks at how the pattern developed and what’s maintaining it now, and any plan is built around that rather than applied as a template. We will update this site as the practice develops.

A different relationship with the inner critic

Compassion-focused work aims for a more workable relationship with the self-critical voice, not silence and not empty reassurance. A mistake can be noticed, taken seriously and corrected without triggering a punishing internal response that outlasts the situation that caused it. For many people, that shift, however gradual, changes how sustainable ambition feels day to day.