Special School Students' Lived Experience of Perfectionism:A Qualitative Study of Phenomenology

Familiarity with perfectionist personality and related problems are especially important among students.Therefore,the purpose of this study was to develop an educational program based on the lived experiences of perfectionist students studying in special schools.The statistical population of perfectionist students studying in special schools (a combination of students from gifted schools, public magnet schools and private schools) in Yazd province were selected through a simple purposeful method.The sampling process and interviews continued until the saturation of theoretical data (15 students) and the main themes of the experiments were discovered through the Colaizzi method.Then, based on the main themes discovered, a review study of educational and therapeutic methods related to perfectionism was conducted to design special training sessions on perfectionism.Finally, the educational program designed using the focus group method consisting of specialized counselors in schools in Yazd province was reviewed.9 main themes   (superiority, negative thoughts and feelings, social isolation, goal setting, experience of blame, positive achievements, lack of self-confidence, behavioral problems, procrastination) and 19 sub-themes were obtained.The curriculum based on the lived experiences of perfectionist students was developed in 9 sessions and this educational content was designed based on a combination of components of cognitive-behavioral therapy and self-compassion. Since the design of this program uses the experiences of perfectionist students as the main audience as well as the review of scientific resources to meet their needs and all training sessions have been approved by the relevant experts, then we conclude that the designed program has acceptable content/face validity and it can be effective in solving the problems of student perfectionism.