Overcoming Perfectionism

A big topic is perfectionism and how do we overcome perfectionism? A lot of us can relate to, even if maybe we don't say, Oh, I am a perfectionist, we can say we have perfectionist tendencies or perfectionism is something that creeps in every once in a while. And maybe you can't, you're one of the lucky ones and that's great.

But it usually plagues most of us at some point in our life. And for some of us, it's just a day to day challenge. So let's define perfectionism and the impact it has on mental health. So it's the relentless pursuit of flawlessness. It's often accompanied by critical self evaluation and concern over other people's judgments.

It usually, or almost always, means you have unrealistic high standards for yourself. You put a lot of pressure on yourself to meet these standards. And understandably, that's going to lead to a lot of stress, anxiety, depression, burnout exhaustion. Yeah, it can be a lot if it's really intense for you.

And the last piece of it is as you're, striving for this perfectionistic way for this excellence, right? It will, in turn, it can hinder your personal growth and being, because you have such a fear of failure that you're not able to complete tasks that you need to do or be creative or get things done.

It can really make somebody stuck and almost paralyzed to do things. I'll talk about that a little bit later.

Signs of Perfectionism

So there's signs of perfectionism and a little bit of what I talked about, but I'll go into a little bit more of what the characteristics and what it works looks like.

So you're setting these unrealistic high standards. The obvious one is it shows itself at work. That's where you can really usually see it. But, people do this as a parent setting really high expectations, like what are other parents doing?

And then in turn, you put that on your kids. Or even how you are in relationships, you need to be the perfect daughter or the perfect friend. The perfect coworker, all of those things. So it's not just at work, in terms of the tasks or the projects you're doing, it can also be in the relationships that you're building.

Another sign is a fear of failure and making mistakes. So you worry and maybe even ruminate about mistakes and what those negative consequences will be. And that in turn leads to our next sign, which is you then procrastinate. And that's because the concern and the fear is that you're not going to meet those standards.

And so instead of just saying to yourself I'm going to do the best I can, or I don't need to be perfect or whatever. You end up not being able and you just get stuck and paralyzed to even do the tasks. And so you delay them and then you worry more and worry more.

And then that's when anxiety develops.

Psychological Roots of Perfectionism

When we're talking about perfectionism, it's helpful to know what the psychological roots of perfectionism are. So they often come from early experiences and upbringing. So that might have been a harsh critical parent or teacher or coach.

Maybe even later on it can happen, right, from a boss or manager. And then it also some other roots of that is a desire for control and approval. And that can also be from as a child if love was conditional based on if you did things or how well you did things.

So that's the approval piece. And then the control piece is often sometimes if you struggle with some anxiety is also another way that we try to control things. And so perfectionism also plays into that as well.

Negative Effects of Perfectionism

So the negative effects of perfectionism, and I mentioned it very briefly a little bit ago, but I think let's talk about a little bit more. Negative effects of perfectionism are chronic stress and anxiety, extreme fatigue, exhaustion.

And this isn't your run of the mill stress. It can be just persistent and really can be really debilitating for a lot of people. Another negative effect is burnout and decreased productivity. This obviously is, we can relate that the most to work, but it definitely happens in the day to day and as who you are, again, as maybe a parent or in your relationship with your partner or even as being a friend.

And this is the strained relationships piece. So it if you're always trying to be perfect in everything you do. do, it's going to make you also avoid some friendships or avoid interactions with family members. Because it's just like this idea of if I can't do it just right, I'm just not going to do it at all.

And so then that can be really isolating as well.

Strategies to Overcome Perfectionism

So now the most important piece is what are the ways, the strategies to overcome perfectionism. So it's setting realistic goals and breaking these tasks into manageable steps. Often people with perfectionism have goals that are just not attainable whether that means they need to get some project done within an hour and then they're frustrated they couldn't do that. Or this PowerPoint needs to be absolutely perfect.

And so they spend hours upon hours when really it shouldn't have should have taken half or a quarter of that amount of time. So it's setting realistic goals, knowing when to stop, even if something isn't exactly perfect. And then breaking it into manageable steps. It's practicing self compassion. Treating yourself with understanding and kindness, just with care and how you would treat another person is how you then can treat yourself. When those perfectionistic thoughts come up, you want to challenge them. So when these irrational beliefs are happening, you want to replace them with more balanced thinking. And so that, of course, takes being mindful, noticing when they're even irrational. Because if you've been operating in one way and being perfectionistic for a very long time, sometimes you don't even notice you're doing it, right?

It's just automatic. So it's being able to notice when they come up. Being able to have a more balanced way of thinking. And lastly, this might be the most challenging, which is embracing those mistakes. Which does sound really difficult. Looking at mistakes as opportunities for growth and being able to tolerate a mistake.

So maybe you had a project at work and your manager gives you constructive feedback. Instead of spiraling into a place of self criticism and horrible things that maybe you say to yourself, it's like, all right, I made some mistakes. How can I now not do this next time? Or what can it look like next time that would be different? Or everybody makes mistakes and I'm human like everybody else.

And so how can I move on from this instead of beating myself up. We see a lot of people at therapy now SF who have perfectionistic ways of being and levels of how it disrupts their life and all, again, with work or relationships and procrastination, I think is one of the biggest things that it does.

Being able to recognize this is such a challenging pattern for me, that I'm not able to do this on my own. I need a professional. I need some outside support to help manage that. I don't even know how to replace my irrational beliefs and make my thinking more balanced. And so that's when it can be helpful to reach out to a therapist and together work on bringing the awareness. And then learning how to replace that way of thinking and behavior.

And so that way it looks different and you're not struggling as much and decreasing anxiety and decreasing depression and just overall decreasing your stress. It's not a bad thing to reach out. It doesn't mean you're making a mistake or that you're a mistake because something's wrong with you because you have perfectionistic ways. Being self compassionate about that and recognizing when maybe it's time I get a little bit of help.