How does perfectionism affect self-esteem?

Perfectionistic thinking can erode self-esteem because perfectionists tend to engage in all-or-nothing thinking when they evaluate their performance. If a perfectionist fails at a task -- say, she gets a low grade on a test -- she tends to enlarge that feeling of failure to include not just the test, but herself, too. Perfectionists quickly jump from the idea of “I failed at this task” to “I am a failure.” When there are a few things out of place on the kitchen counter, they move very quickly from “my counter is a mess” to “my entire kitchen is a mess” to “my entire house is a mess” to “I am a mess.”