One of the things that all those conditions has in common is perfectionism, perfectionistic thinking.

And one of the kind of academic, technical definitions of perfectionism is that somebody

that has unusually high expectations for success and kind of repeatedly fails to hit those

markers for success. So they continue and you feel that they're a loser and they're a failure.

And that's what our culture does these days. It sets an unusually high marker for success.

It presents us with this perfect self on TV, on radio, on the internet and social media.

And it says, if you're not this person, you have failed. So if you're not beyond say,

it's the message. If you're not Steve Jobs, then you're doing something wrong. And that is

incredibly toxic. It really, really is incredibly toxic because it's not true.

And what happens is that people blame themselves. They think, well, I'm a failure.

And then that's when you get this whole raft of terrible psychological disorders.

And actually, between the first edition of Selfie, my book and the second one, between the UK

edition and the US edition, there was published a study of 40,000 young people across the US,

Canada and the UK since 1990. And it confirmed my kind of hunch that levels of perfectionism,

our rise, it have been rising significantly since the late 80s, early 90s. That is, people

are thinking more and more that they have to be perfect in order to kind of be an acceptable human being.

I'm Sreeni Rao and this is the unmistakable creative podcast where you get a window into the

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