Eating Disorders And Perfectionism

The Relationship Between Perfectionism and Eating Disorders This paper will examine the correlation between perfectionism and eating disorders. Perfectionism can be found in a person as a trait or as a pathological personality disorder. Pathological level of perfectionism can cause maladaptive patterns of behaviors including parental disappointments, social isolation resulted by high standards from society, obsession, and body dissatisfaction. These patterns of behaviors make them more vulnerable to psychological disorders, particularly eating disorders. People tend to develop eating disorders when they feel dissatisfied about their bodies and this risk is higher when they are perfectionist.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is characterized

Multidimensional structure makes it possible to explain perfectionism interpersonally and intrapersonally. In this way, perfectionism can be described as having high standards that are almost impossible to reach for self, and for others (Franco-Paredes et al., 2005). Multidimensional construct of perfectionism have six dimensions: Personal Standards (PS), Concern over Mistakes (CM), Doubts about Actions (DA), Parental Expectations (PE), Parental Criticism (PC), and Organization (O) (Egan et al., 2013). In can be narrowed down to three dimensions as self-oriented perfectionism (SOP), other-oriented perfectionism (OOP), and socially-prescribed perfectionism (SPP) (Egan et al., 2013). SOP refers to the set of behaviors as setting extremely high standards for self, tight and unflexible evaluation of one 's own behavior, exaggerating own mistakes and underestimating accomplishments and avoidance of failure. OOP stands for the beliefs about others ' capabilities, having unreasonably high expectations from others, critical evaluation of others ' behaviors, and having unattainable standards for others. OOP put people at risk to have disappointments about other people 's behaviors and can lead social isolation

It was reported that she starved herself to death. After this event, many celebrities admitted that they deal with the same disease. This incident revealed the fact that eating disorders are serious and can be deadly. When they gained an interest through the media, various researches have been conducted to examine eating disorders (Robles, 2011). Eating disorders are considered as both psychological and physical problems that can be resulted in death. People with eating disorders are recurrently preoccupied with the concepts of weight, ideal body image, thinness and food (Robles, 2011). The main eating disorders are Anorexia Nervoza (AN) and Bulumia Nervoza (BN). AN refers to the constant striving to lose weight and extreme fear of gaining weight. People with AN have an unhealthy pattern of diet in which they minimize their calorie intake, and in some cases, they refuse to eat at all (Franco-Paredes et al., 2005). BN is having recurrent episodes of binging and purging. People with BN lose their control over food intake and overeat. They sometimes eat in one meal that is more than a person could eat in a whole day. After the sense of loss of control, they regret and purge in a way. The important thing about binging episodes is people do not usually eat in front of others. They feel guilty about what they are doing and they prefer doing it alone. This feel of guilt