Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 week agoAm I a Bad Person for Having Bad Thoughts?
Moral perfectionism demands inner harmony and purity, prompting excessive self-shame and fear of ambivalence that undermines trust and communal purposes.
Being good only matters when it positively affects others, at least in the long-term if not the short. Sometimes, however, people become so preoccupied with being good that they aren't, or at least not as often as they believe themselves to be. There is such a thing as being too good, when one's so-called goodness is harmful. This discrepancy between what one believes is good and what actually is is prevalent in moral perfectionism, or the obsessive pursuit of moral purity.