Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The new year is a great time to take a
Speaker 2: look at what's not serving you. And if I had
Speaker 2: to pick one trait that's definitely not been serving me,
Speaker 2: it's my perfectionism. I tend to beat myself up a lot.
Speaker 2: I'm terrified to try things that I might not be
Speaker 2: good at, and even small mess ups make me feel
Speaker 2: like I'm sort of.
Speaker 1: A bad person.
Speaker 2: So in this next episode of our how To season,
Speaker 2: I'm bringing you a timely guide for fighting that kind
Speaker 2: of self criticism but what I like to call how
Speaker 2: to feel like You're enough. And picking an expert for
Speaker 2: this episode was easy. Doctor Ellen Hendrickson is a clinical
Speaker 2: psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders.
Speaker 2: Like me, Ellen is a recovering perfectionist. She's also the
Speaker 2: author of a fabulous book that I strongly recommend. It's
Speaker 2: called How to Be Enough Self Acceptance for self critics
Speaker 2: and perfectionists.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a saying for self help book authors,
Speaker 3: and that is write the book you need. So I
Speaker 3: partially wrote the book for me, but you know, certainly
Speaker 3: there's also an external reason I wrote the book, which
Speaker 3: is because I think there is sort of a silent
Speaker 3: epidemic of perfectionism happening. And I've noticed that perfectionism is
Speaker 3: a bit of a misnomer. It's not about striving to
Speaker 3: be perfect. No one ever comes into the anxiety specialty
Speaker 3: clinic where I work and says, Ellen, I strive for perfection.
Speaker 3: I need help, I'm a perfectionist. Instead, people come in
Speaker 3: and say, I feel like I'm always failing. I have
Speaker 3: so much on my plate and I'm not doing anything well.
Speaker 3: I'm falling behind. I should be so much further ahead
Speaker 3: than where I am now in life, or they just
Speaker 3: have sort of a sense of dissatisfaction with their lives.
Speaker 3: So it's not about striving for perfection, it's about never
Speaker 3: feeling good enough.
Speaker 2: And was that the kind of thing that manifested in
Speaker 2: your own life when you thought about perfectionism?
Speaker 3: For sure? Yeah, I think well so. Ironically, before I
Speaker 3: started writing the book, I burned out. I had been
Speaker 3: grinding for so long that for me, burntout manifested mostly physically,
Speaker 3: so I developed a gi illness. I woke up one
Speaker 3: morning and I couldn't turn my head to the right.
Speaker 3: My muscles were so tight. I blew out my forearm
Speaker 3: from typing too much. So I've been through like five
Speaker 3: rounds of physical therapy. So for me, it was mostly physical,
Speaker 3: but it can absolutely manifest in terms of relationships. So
Speaker 3: luckily my marriage was fine, was okay. But I realized
Speaker 3: that I again had been grinding for a long time
Speaker 3: and looked up and realized I hadn't talked to a
Speaker 3: lot of my friends for a long time. For other folks, again,
Speaker 3: it can manifest more cognitively, more emotionally, that sense of
Speaker 3: dissatisfaction with their lives or all those phrases I mentioned before.
Speaker 3: But it definitely ground me to a halt, which apparently
Speaker 3: is pretty common. For most folks. As they age, they mellow,
Speaker 3: but for people with perfectionism, something else happens, and that's
Speaker 3: the wheels start to come off, that we become less
Speaker 3: diligent and start to burn out. And so I think
Speaker 3: it's really common, especially at midlife or in mid career,
Speaker 3: for all of this to come to a head. I
Speaker 3: found one paper in my research writing the book. I'll
Speaker 3: paraphrase the title, but it essentially said, perfectionist at twenty,
Speaker 3: burnout at forty.
Speaker 1: It's like you're speaking my language.
Speaker 2: It's actually really I feel like I have never been
Speaker 2: as kind of called out or felt that any were on.
Speaker 3: The same journey.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm curious if you went through the same
Speaker 2: thing I feel like I've gone through where kind of
Speaker 2: the normal enjoyment I've had of things has sort of
Speaker 2: changed over time, Like because of my perfectionism.
Speaker 1: Is that something you experienced as well?
Speaker 3: It's confusing, right, Like it's everybody's favorite weakness in a
Speaker 3: job interview, Oh, what's your biggest weakness?
Speaker 2: On?
Speaker 3: Such a perfectionist? And it absolutely can be good and
Speaker 3: healthy and adaptive. There are some researchers who would disagree
Speaker 3: with me on that, but there are some who'd absolutely
Speaker 3: agree that there can be healthy perfectionism. And that is
Speaker 3: when it's grounded in striving for excellence. We do good
Speaker 3: work for the work's sake. We have high standards, we
Speaker 3: care deeply. It all comes from a good place, you know.
Speaker 3: In fact, the healthy heart of perfectionism is a personality
Speaker 3: trait called conscientiousness. That is the least sexy superpower, you know,
Speaker 3: like we fulfill our responsibilities in a single bound. But
Speaker 3: it's been found to be, in terms of personality, the
Speaker 3: biggest predictor for a good life so it predicts objective
Speaker 3: quote unquote success like income, and subjective success like life satisfaction,
Speaker 3: and appropriate to our conversation, happiness. So as far as
Speaker 3: a personality trait, it's the one to pick. But it
Speaker 3: can absolutely tip over into unhealthy perfectionism. I think of
Speaker 3: perfectionism as sort of like one of those optical illusions
Speaker 3: that if you look at it one way, you see
Speaker 3: one thing and like the bunny or the duck, or
Speaker 3: the young lady or the old lady. So if you
Speaker 3: look at it a different way, it can definitely tip
Speaker 3: over into unhealthy perfectionism. And that's when instead of striving
Speaker 3: for excellence, instead of trying to do excellent work for
Speaker 3: the work's sake, we start to fall into something called
Speaker 3: over evaluation, which is when we conflate ourselves and our performance.
Speaker 3: So we have to perform as superbly as possible to
Speaker 3: be sufficient as a person. Forgive my grammar, but it's
Speaker 3: when I did good equals I am good, And that's
Speaker 3: the heart of unhealthy perfectionism.
Speaker 2: It also seems like this unhealthy perfectionism is getting worse.
Speaker 2: Our culture is kind of making it worse. Talk about
Speaker 2: some of the things that right now in the modern
Speaker 2: day can make perfectionism in generally by overevaluation as well,
Speaker 2: kind of even more insidious.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure. Yeah. No, I was actually really surprised
Speaker 3: about this because I've always thought of perfectionism as sort
Speaker 3: of a personality profile, like I think of, you know,
Speaker 3: the Serena Williams and Steve Jobs and Hermione Grangers and
Speaker 3: Nile Cranes of the world. I thought it was something
Speaker 3: that we were, and it is. It comes from our genetics,
Speaker 3: it's charitable, it definitely comes from our families of origin.
Speaker 3: But every human reacts to the situations we're put in.
Speaker 3: So when we're put into what the researcher doctor Andrew
Speaker 3: Hill calls a perfectionistic climate, of course we're going to
Speaker 3: react expecting others to be hard on us, being hard
Speaker 3: on ourselves, maybe we're hard on others. So some of
Speaker 3: the factors that feed into that are simply capitalism, consumerism,
Speaker 3: advertising and social media definitely throws a match on that pile.
Speaker 3: And so when we are in a culture that pushes
Speaker 3: us to perform and consume to ever higher levels, of
Speaker 3: course we're going to respond with perfectionism, with thinking we
Speaker 3: have to again perform as superbly as possible to be
Speaker 3: sufficient as a person.
Speaker 2: And you've also argued that in the context of these cultures,
Speaker 2: we might want to think about perfectionism as a social problem.
Speaker 3: What do you mean there, Yeah, I think when I
Speaker 3: say social problem, we usually think of perfectionism as a
Speaker 3: personal problem, and it's actually an interpersonal problem because when
Speaker 3: I'll come back to the definition, I think thinking we
Speaker 3: have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient
Speaker 3: as a person, we also think we have to perform
Speaker 3: as superbly as possible so people like us, so that
Speaker 3: we are part of a group, so that we belong.
Speaker 3: It's fundamental to all of us as human beings to
Speaker 3: need community and belonging. But perfectionism tells us a lie
Speaker 3: and that we have to burn our way into that
Speaker 3: by doing things well.
Speaker 2: So, as you talk about it now, perfectionism seems really bad,
Speaker 2: But your book claims that there's a way that we
Speaker 2: can be conscientious about our performance without all the dark sides.
Speaker 1: What is adaptive perfectionism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Adaptive perfectionism is when we strive for excellence, we
Speaker 3: do the work for the work's sake, we keep our
Speaker 3: high standards. I think that imperfection is having a moment
Speaker 3: in the zeitgeist culture, and that's awesome, that's amazing. However,
Speaker 3: I think that some of the advice that has come
Speaker 3: out of that is a little bit misguided. So I
Speaker 3: have definitely been told Ellen, you need to stop when
Speaker 3: things are good enough, or you need to lower your standards,
Speaker 3: and that goes off with me and with anyone else
Speaker 3: who's familiar with perfectionism about as well as telling us
Speaker 3: to pull out our toenails, because if we are sort
Speaker 3: of overidentified with our work or our performance, we can
Speaker 3: over identify with anything with our reflection in the mirror,
Speaker 3: the number on the scale, you know, whether we stuck
Speaker 3: to our healthy eating plan that day, our social behavior,
Speaker 3: our parenting. But if this is something that we're sort
Speaker 3: of overidentified with, telling us to settle for mediocre or
Speaker 3: subpar performance tells us that we're mediocre or subpar. So
Speaker 3: what I like to do is to try to work
Speaker 3: with clients and certainly within myself, to not evaluate my
Speaker 3: performance so much as all or nothing, which is definitely
Speaker 3: one of the things that we do in perfectionism, but
Speaker 3: instead try to evaluate it as both. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: you a story to illustrate so I had a client
Speaker 3: that will call Julie. She was a pediatrician and was
Speaker 3: a very good one by all reports. She'd been doing
Speaker 3: this for twenty five years. One day she came into
Speaker 3: session and was just like lamp basting herself because she
Speaker 3: had misdiagnosed a patient that week. So, a little girl
Speaker 3: had come in with abdominal pain and Julie had sent
Speaker 3: the family home saying it was constipation. Turned out to
Speaker 3: be appendicitis. The little girl ended up going to the
Speaker 3: emergency room. She was fine, but Julie came into session
Speaker 3: and was saying things like I am a bad doctor.
Speaker 3: Maybe I should retire now and get out before I
Speaker 3: hurt someone. She was really really hard on herself, and
Speaker 3: what she was doing is when we evaluate ourselves as
Speaker 3: all or nothing, one mistake shunts us from all I'm
Speaker 3: a good doctor to nothing, I'm a bad doctor. And
Speaker 3: so what we tried to do was, rather than have
Speaker 3: her set the bar for adequate at flawless, no mistakes,
Speaker 3: no misdiagnoses, ever, and if you ever stumble or struggle
Speaker 3: or make a mistake, that shuns us into nothing, to
Speaker 3: think about it as I'm a good doctor who sometimes
Speaker 3: makes a misdiagnosis, and we can do this in any
Speaker 3: area of life. I'm a good student who sometimes fails
Speaker 3: a test. I am a diligent person who sometimes throws
Speaker 3: in the towel. I'm a healthy person who sometimes eats
Speaker 3: a jar of marshmallow fluff. We can do this and
Speaker 3: retain our sense of ourselves as good people and create
Speaker 3: some much needed wiggle room for the inevitable mistakes and
Speaker 3: duers of life, because we are human.
Speaker 2: If you listen to the first episode in this how
Speaker 2: Too series, you know the season is all about finding
Speaker 2: practical tips for handling life's problems.
Speaker 1: So when we get back.
Speaker 2: From the break, we'll hear Ellen's first hack for taming
Speaker 2: our perfectionist tendencies. The Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ellen Hendrickson supports a whole host of struggling perfectionists
Speaker 2: who visit her clinic, but she's also working to heal herself.
Speaker 2: As a recovering perfectionist, Ellen has found that the first
Speaker 2: step to fighting self criticism is to examine her harsh
Speaker 2: inner monologue.
Speaker 3: We focus on flaws and details, so we are the
Speaker 3: ones to see the crumbs on the otherwise clean counter
Speaker 3: that nobody else sees. We scan the audience and we
Speaker 3: find the one frowning face in the sea of smiles,
Speaker 3: then we self criticize. You know, if we look for it,
Speaker 3: we'll find it. So if we look for the mistake,
Speaker 3: or we look for the flaw, and we take that
Speaker 3: really personally because of overevaluation, then the self criticism manifests
Speaker 3: as harsh and personal. So it could be over name calling,
Speaker 3: like oh, I'm such an idiot, Oh how could I
Speaker 3: be so stupid? It could be rhetorical questions why can't
Speaker 3: I do this? Oh my gosh, why did I say
Speaker 3: it that way? Or it could not even really be
Speaker 3: conscious words at all. It could just be sort of
Speaker 3: this underlying rumbling of dissatisfaction or never feeling right about
Speaker 3: our lives. Harsh and personal.
Speaker 2: So why are we so self critical? It seems like
Speaker 2: we're not like terribly masochistic. It seems like we have
Speaker 2: this theory that it seems to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, so we can be self critical for lots
Speaker 3: and lots of reasons. It all boils down to we
Speaker 3: think it works. We think that if we criticize ourselves harshly,
Speaker 3: that we might never make that mistake again. Or we
Speaker 3: might criticize ourselves before others can remember perfectionism is interpersonal,
Speaker 3: so ironically we might criticize ourselves to be beyond reproach.
Speaker 3: And in the book, there's a runner in China who
Speaker 3: goes by the name of Uncle Chen, and he went
Speaker 3: viral a few years ago for running a series of
Speaker 3: marathons while chain smoking, and he says that having something
Speaker 3: in his mouth helps him and that it gives him energy,
Speaker 3: So that might be true. He does pretty well too,
Speaker 3: like he might run sub three thirty marathons because he's
Speaker 3: chain smoking. But I would hazard to guess that the
Speaker 3: cigarettes are stealing the credit for his good performance, his
Speaker 3: hard work, his training. And I think the same thing
Speaker 3: happens with self criticism, that it steals the credit for
Speaker 3: everything else we do so well setting those high standards,
Speaker 3: caring deeply about people being diligent, and that it brings
Speaker 3: up a lot of emotion when we think about letting
Speaker 3: it go or letting it be, because we worry what
Speaker 3: will happen without it.
Speaker 1: It's taken that credit, But what does the data really show?
Speaker 1: Do we need that self criticism to do well?
Speaker 3: Well? So ironically it shows that we do better without it.
Speaker 3: The difference between for example, like healthy exercise and perfectionistic
Speaker 3: exercise where we get a little obsessive might exercise even
Speaker 3: if we're exhausted or injured. The difference between the those
Speaker 3: two things is self criticism. So it really is the
Speaker 3: thing again that steals the credit and ironically lowers our
Speaker 3: performance as opposed to letting us reach our full potential.
Speaker 2: So that's tip number one. We need to figure out
Speaker 2: ways to quit the self criticism. But how do we
Speaker 2: do that? I have two tips for you.
Speaker 3: Okay. I learned to exercise self compassion to talk to
Speaker 3: myself like a good friend, okay, which absolutely might work
Speaker 3: for a lot of people, but I think for a
Speaker 3: perfectionistic brain that means we think we have to come
Speaker 3: up with fully formed, effective paragraphs of like self compassionate
Speaker 3: hype and talk to ourselves like a self compassion speech writer.
Speaker 3: And certainly that's a high bar. You know, I can't
Speaker 3: do that. And so for folks that resonate with perfectionism,
Speaker 3: I'd like to say that, yes, self compassion can definitely
Speaker 3: be words, but it can also be much simpler words.
Speaker 3: It could be one word like easy, or it's okay
Speaker 3: or kindness. But more than that, I think because those
Speaker 3: fundamentally talking to ourselves is thoughts, right, and we can't
Speaker 3: control our thoughts, So for example, like don't think about
Speaker 3: a cheeseburger floating above my head. You know, we can't
Speaker 3: control our thoughts, but what we can control is our actions.
Speaker 3: So even if we're talking to ourselves in a self
Speaker 3: critical way, we can treat ourselves in a self compassionate way.
Speaker 3: That might mean giving ourselves time to drink our coffee
Speaker 3: in the morning. It could be taking a few extra
Speaker 3: minutes to stand under the warm spray of the shower
Speaker 3: on a cold morning. It could be going to the
Speaker 3: gym because we know from experience that that makes us
Speaker 3: feel better. Or and I think this is really important,
Speaker 3: it might mean skipping the gym because that's not what
Speaker 3: we need right now, and that would make us either
Speaker 3: more exhausted or crunch our schedule even more. For folks
Speaker 3: with some perfectionism, I think the biggest self compassionate act
Speaker 3: can be giving ourselves permission not to do all that
Speaker 3: we expect of ourselves. And there we don't have to
Speaker 3: change anything, right.
Speaker 2: Beautiful man, you can just kind of takes some stuff
Speaker 2: off our mental plate. Yeah, actually exact jimate plate. Right.
Speaker 2: You also recommend that other strategies that can kind of
Speaker 2: help us move these kind of nasty thoughts around. And
Speaker 2: one of the ones you suggest in the book that
Speaker 2: I love is this idea of cognitive diffusion. What is
Speaker 2: that and what are some strategies we can use to Yeah? No,
Speaker 2: I love cognitive diffusion.
Speaker 3: So this comes from an orientation of therapy called acceptance
Speaker 3: and Commitment therapy or ACT, and this was developed by
Speaker 3: Steve hay doctor Steve Hayes back in the eighties and
Speaker 3: colleagues and in a Nutshelle. Traditional cognitive behavioral therapy tells
Speaker 3: us to change our thoughts and our actions in order
Speaker 3: to affect how we feel. ACT tells us to change
Speaker 3: our relationship to our thoughts and emotions that allows us
Speaker 3: to move forward into values based action. Okay, So an
Speaker 3: example of cognitive diffusions is simply putting some space between
Speaker 3: us and our thought and realizing, oh, this is a thought,
Speaker 3: this is something that is coming from you know, my
Speaker 3: own mind. It is not truth, it is not what's
Speaker 3: going to happen. And so, you know, as conscientious people,
Speaker 3: we take things quite seriously, and that includes our own
Speaker 3: thoughts and emotions. So you know, if we think like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, that was so stupid, we often take
Speaker 3: that thought really seriously. And so cognitive diffusion defuses that power,
Speaker 3: and it gives us some space and some perspective to
Speaker 3: look at our thoughts with some distance, okay, And to
Speaker 3: do that, we can play with the thoughts. So often
Speaker 3: our self critical thoughts kind of just like come at
Speaker 3: us and you know, smack us out of nowhere, and
Speaker 3: that puts us in a very low power position. So
Speaker 3: what we can do is without making the thoughts go away,
Speaker 3: we can to them and play with them. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: I had a client whose thought was I'm gonna let
Speaker 3: everyone down, and she decided to play with this thought
Speaker 3: by picturing it on a coffee mug, and she would
Speaker 3: metaphorically take a little sip from this mug whenever she
Speaker 3: thought that thought. She would also sing it to herself,
Speaker 3: like while she was washing dishes or otherwise alone. We
Speaker 3: can picture our thoughts skywritten behind a plane. We can
Speaker 3: picture it as the Star Wars font, you know, like
Speaker 3: doing the crawl. Yes, exaggerate exactly, And so our thoughts
Speaker 3: could be words, so we can you know, we could
Speaker 3: picture it embroidered on a pillow, et cetera. But our
Speaker 3: thoughts also might be like a movie in our mind
Speaker 3: or an image. It could be an image of our
Speaker 3: boss bargaining into our office and firing us. And what
Speaker 3: we can do there is we can We can also
Speaker 3: play with that thought. We could put a clown nose
Speaker 3: on our boss. We could add a seventies soundtrack. We
Speaker 3: could have balloons come down from the ceiling. The thought
Speaker 3: itself doesn't go away, it's still there, but we are
Speaker 3: now exerting some power over it to emphasize that this
Speaker 3: is a thought, it's not actually what's happening to us
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: I love the strategy so much because sometimes in you
Speaker 2: know these CBT circles where it's like, well, just control
Speaker 2: your thoughts.
Speaker 3: Like, my thoughts are really strong.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the people's thoughts but mine.
Speaker 2: So the idea of like you allow the thought, but
Speaker 2: you just make it a little kooky, looking a little stupid,
Speaker 2: It could be a really powerful strategy for recognizing like, oh,
Speaker 2: these things don't have as much hold over me as
Speaker 2: I thought.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely, Okay, here I'll tell you another story. So,
Speaker 3: when I was promoting my first book. I was lucky
Speaker 3: enough to be on another national podcast, took the train
Speaker 3: down to New York, recorded in a studio, and made
Speaker 3: a reasonable number of mistakes, like said a few things.
Speaker 3: I was like, ah, that didn't come off the way
Speaker 3: I wanted it to. But my brain, because it's my brain. Afterwards,
Speaker 3: you know, it started going like my you know, are
Speaker 3: are hard, are designed to beat our sweat glands are
Speaker 3: designed to perspire. A self critical brain is going to
Speaker 3: make self critical thoughts, and so it just started up
Speaker 3: and it said, ah, why did you say it that way?
Speaker 3: You missed that opportunity. This was not good.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: At the time, I really believed it, to the point
Speaker 3: where my poor editor who came with me had to
Speaker 3: steer me into the nearest bar and buy me a
Speaker 3: Gin and tonic. But since then I have learned that
Speaker 3: that's just what happens after my brain does anything with
Speaker 3: a microphone. And so honestly, after I leave here recording
Speaker 3: us together, probably my brain will do the same thing.
Speaker 3: It'll say, oh, I totally forgot that point. That was
Speaker 3: so dumb, or oh my goodness, why did I phrase
Speaker 3: it that way? This was not good. But thankfully I've
Speaker 3: learned that I can attend to my thoughts sort of
Speaker 3: like I would attend to the music at a coffee shop,
Speaker 3: or like the musaic at a grocery store. It's still there.
Speaker 3: I can hear it in the background. I don't have
Speaker 3: to listen to it, like I'm not dancing along. So again,
Speaker 3: it's there, but it's not the truth. It's just what happens.
Speaker 3: It's just how my brain is wired, and of course
Speaker 3: that's what's going to happen. But I don't have to
Speaker 3: let it yank me around.
Speaker 2: Maybe safer and cheaper than the Gin and Tonics after
Speaker 2: its right.
Speaker 1: So that's tip number one.
Speaker 2: We need to fight our self critical voices or allow
Speaker 2: them in kookiar ways. Tip number two is one that's harder,
Speaker 2: especially for me. We need to find ways to overcome
Speaker 2: over evaluation, which we talked about a little bit before,
Speaker 2: this idea that I am what I do, And this
Speaker 2: is something that you've struggled with as well. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about some examples of your own over evaluation.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I mean I wrote a whole book about
Speaker 3: my own social anxiety, and so that is over evaluating
Speaker 3: my social performance that if I didn't do things correctly,
Speaker 3: or if I said something wrong, I would take that personally.
Speaker 3: So the heart of social anxiety is perfectionism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like for me, my over evaluation is honestly,
Speaker 2: whatever situation I find myself in, I overevaluate based on
Speaker 2: my podcast performance, based on what my finances look like,
Speaker 2: based on being a good wife, based on being a
Speaker 2: good teacher. It just like comes up in all these domains.
Speaker 2: And so my big question is how do we fight this?
Speaker 3: That is the sixty four thousand dollars question. Those of
Speaker 3: us with perfectionism often orient towards rules, and uncertainty drives anxiety.
Speaker 3: Rules reduce uncertainty. Therefore rules reduce anxiety, and with over evaluation,
Speaker 3: if we are doing things correctly, therefore we are correct.
Speaker 3: So those of us with some perfectionism orient towards rules.
Speaker 3: We kind of get the lay of the land and
Speaker 3: try to for what are the rules so I can
Speaker 3: follow them? Or if there are no rules, we make
Speaker 3: up our own rules and then we follow those. So,
Speaker 3: you know, if you've ever kind of created an exercise
Speaker 3: program for yourself, or you've had to tackle a big
Speaker 3: project and you've written out some kind of schedule, and
Speaker 3: that's not bad. Please keep doing that. That absolutely is
Speaker 3: very useful. But I think the problem arises when we
Speaker 3: stick to those rules very rigidly, or when we follow
Speaker 3: a rule sort of mindlessly that we are following sort
Speaker 3: of someone else's generic idea of the right.
Speaker 2: Thing or some other thing that we've invented that may
Speaker 2: or may not be the right thing. I feel like
Speaker 2: I do this all the time, right. I was just
Speaker 2: I just get invited to a friend's dinner party, and
Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking, like I should bring something, But
Speaker 2: in my head it turns not just into I should
Speaker 2: bring a bottle blind.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I.
Speaker 2: Should make a pie, and I should make a pie
Speaker 2: with fresh blueberries, and oh my gosh, I can't just
Speaker 2: like get a store pie cross.
Speaker 1: I need to make it. And it's like, wait, where
Speaker 1: did this rule?
Speaker 2: There's no like dinner party rule that says I have
Speaker 2: to put all this work in to do it in
Speaker 2: this incredibly onerous way. But somehow my brain latches onto
Speaker 2: this that like my status as a friend and a
Speaker 2: dinner party guest kind of won't be evaluated positively unless
Speaker 2: I like go really out of my way to do
Speaker 2: this incredibly over the top dessert for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, as you were talking, I was nodding and nodding
Speaker 3: and nodding. And I think that's because we set personally
Speaker 3: demanding rules and standards for ourselves, because it's a way
Speaker 3: to measure ourselves. So if we are doing hard things correctly,
Speaker 3: especially like that's a referendum on us, that means that
Speaker 3: we know are good enough. Essentially, So what we can
Speaker 3: do there is try to turn from simply following the
Speaker 3: rules to following our values. And I think values is
Speaker 3: another one of those words that sort of means everything
Speaker 3: and nothing at the same time these days, So I'll
Speaker 3: just define that. So a value is anything that we
Speaker 3: find important, meaningful, purposeful. It can really be anything. It
Speaker 3: can be a concept like equality or hard work. It
Speaker 3: can be things like books or the theater. It can
Speaker 3: be activities like running, being outdoors, relationships like connecting with
Speaker 3: your kids, being a loving partner, practices like your faith.
Speaker 3: So literally anything can be a value, okay, And there
Speaker 3: are four qualities that are particularly important. This is the
Speaker 3: work of doctor Michael Touhigg and doctor Clarisong. And so
Speaker 3: they say that values are continuous, so you're never done
Speaker 3: living a value. So They're different than goals because a
Speaker 3: goal can be checked off on a list. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: like coming to Boston is a goal, whereas going east
Speaker 3: is a value. You can always go more east. You
Speaker 3: can always live your values, So that's one.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 3: Values are intrinsically meaningful, so you'd care about it even
Speaker 3: if nobody else knew. So like getting famous isn't a value.
Speaker 3: Your values are under your control, so they're not contingent
Speaker 3: upon anyone else, Like being respected or being loved. You
Speaker 3: can value being respectful, you can control that or being loving,
Speaker 3: but not contingent upon other people. And then finally, for
Speaker 3: your values, and this is the most important, I think
Speaker 3: are freely chosen. So values are never coercive or obligatory,
Speaker 3: so you freely choose to follow them, you know, and
Speaker 3: you're likely willing to tolerate some discomfort in order to
Speaker 3: do so. You're willing to sacrifice your Saturday morning to
Speaker 3: go pick up trash on the beach, you know, if
Speaker 3: like sustainability or the environment is your value. So that's
Speaker 3: a very long way of saying we can start to
Speaker 3: turn away from did I follow the rule? To am
Speaker 3: I being the person I want to be? Am I
Speaker 3: living the life I want to live by following our values.
Speaker 3: Now that's simple but not easy, and we often, especially
Speaker 3: in perfectionism, start to try to follow our values as rules. So,
Speaker 3: for example, I had a client who said, quote, through
Speaker 3: a combination of God and my mother, I was taught
Speaker 3: to be generous, but for her it was functioning as
Speaker 3: a rule. She said, if a homeless person asked you
Speaker 3: for a dollar, if somebody asked you to babysit, you
Speaker 3: had to do it, which is the exact opposite of
Speaker 3: the spirit of generosity. It was functioning as a rule,
Speaker 3: as opposed to a freely chosen value.
Speaker 2: One of the strategies that came up in the book
Speaker 2: is just like, maybe even just noticing that distinction. This
Speaker 2: feels really like And that's kind of with the dinner
Speaker 2: party situation. I kind of had that where I was like,
Speaker 2: this is starting to feel like I have to and
Speaker 2: that's already a signal that maybe I should ease up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think the first step is simply noticing
Speaker 3: that we feel coerced or obliged. You mentioned that I
Speaker 3: have to or I should, you know, make a pie,
Speaker 3: now I should make it from scratch. Yeah, that's absolutely
Speaker 3: really common, and I think the quality of the experience
Speaker 3: starts to shift if it is something that again you
Speaker 3: can run towards what is meaningful, valued important to you,
Speaker 3: and it will start to feel freely chosen. You might
Speaker 3: still make the pie from scratch, but it's going to
Speaker 3: feel different. Here I'll tell you a story about a
Speaker 3: client I had, and he was a college student and
Speaker 3: all his life had been told that he was smart.
Speaker 3: This label was very important to him, but it also
Speaker 3: created a lot of rules. He said, if I'm smart,
Speaker 3: then I need to study for a long time, Like
Speaker 3: I need to study for like like three hours before
Speaker 3: an exam. I need to basically memorize the study guide
Speaker 3: so that I don't ask any questions that sound stupid.
Speaker 3: I can't ask you any questions that made me look foolish.
Speaker 3: But it was really driven by this sense of Okay,
Speaker 3: now I have to I must, I should. And it
Speaker 3: was quite distressing to him, like these are overwhelming rules
Speaker 3: to try to fulfill. So what I found interesting was
Speaker 3: that as he moved towards values and for his math class,
Speaker 3: decided to try to run towards the value of learning,
Speaker 3: like he wanted to learn the material and there on
Speaker 3: the surface, he didn't actually do anything different. He still
Speaker 3: studied for a long time. He still studied for about
Speaker 3: three hours, but it was because he wanted to understand,
Speaker 3: He wanted to master this material, and he was really
Speaker 3: driven by I want or like, I freely choose this
Speaker 3: as opposed to I have to or Alsseo'm going to
Speaker 3: lose the label of smart. So again, you might still
Speaker 3: make the pie, but that the quality of that experience
Speaker 3: is going to shift. You can tell when you're running
Speaker 3: towards something that you find purposeful and meaningful.
Speaker 2: So far, Ellen set out some pretty useful tips, ones
Speaker 2: that I certainly plan to use to fight my own
Speaker 2: self criticism. But how can we tackle what I've always
Speaker 2: thought is the worst symptom of perfectionism, that it drains
Speaker 2: the fun out of even the most enjoyable activities. How
Speaker 2: can I stop the good stuff in life from feeling
Speaker 2: like a chore? Well, Ellen will have the answers after
Speaker 2: the break.
Speaker 1: What are some activities you find fun?
Speaker 2: Going on a picnic maybe, or having friends over for
Speaker 2: a game night, or working on your favorite craft project.
Speaker 2: On the face of it, these should be enjoyable activities,
Speaker 2: ones that give us a sense of joy. But if
Speaker 2: you have a perfectionist streak like me, you may turn
Speaker 2: these events into tests of your competence. Did I choose
Speaker 2: the best color for that craft project? Did I pick
Speaker 2: the right spot for that picnic? Well?
Speaker 1: My game?
Speaker 2: That guests like the snacks I got, well, they expect
Speaker 2: pretzels and chips?
Speaker 1: What about the dips?
Speaker 2: Perfectionists always want to go above and beyond, which means
Speaker 2: a simple picnic is never just a simple picnic. It
Speaker 2: has to be perfect and win admiration. A standard that
Speaker 2: impossibly high doesn't just take work, it breeds constant worry.
Speaker 2: It turns what's supposed to be fun into a chore.
Speaker 2: And this, doctor Ellen Hendrickson says is the problem of
Speaker 2: demand sensitivity.
Speaker 3: So demand sensitivity is exactly that. It's a heightened sensitivity
Speaker 3: to perceived requests or demands. We orient to the shoulds
Speaker 3: of life and what we should be doing. So what happens, though,
Speaker 3: is that we turn wants into should Okay, So for me,
Speaker 3: I keep a running list of books I'd like to
Speaker 3: read or movies I'd like to see on my laptop. Okay,
Speaker 3: but then it's part of all list and my life
Speaker 3: is already full of lists and full of things I
Speaker 3: have to do. And so when it comes time to
Speaker 3: you know, sit down and turn on Netflix or the
Speaker 3: book comes in from the library or arrives at the bookstore.
Speaker 3: Now it's a task. Now it's something I have to
Speaker 3: do because it's part of list, and that I lose
Speaker 3: interest completely.
Speaker 2: And that gets to something I've experienced a lot, that
Speaker 2: kind of pernicious outcome of demand sensitivity, which is what's
Speaker 2: called demand resistance.
Speaker 3: Yes, so demand resistance is when we feel so overloaded
Speaker 3: with tasks or shoulds that we start to bulk, We procrastinate,
Speaker 3: we kick the can down the road, even if it's
Speaker 3: something we initially wanted to do, because if we only
Speaker 3: make room for the shoulds of life life, all work
Speaker 3: and no play makes anyone a resentful human. So we
Speaker 3: might do the thing, but we do it with a
Speaker 3: little bit of a resentment or a little bit of
Speaker 3: passive aggression, and that can affect our relationships, you know,
Speaker 3: especially if they're important relationships to us, like with our
Speaker 3: partner or our workplace, and it can just make us
Speaker 3: feel like life is this never ending, people pleasing grind.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is something I go through a lot
Speaker 2: especially demand resistance part.
Speaker 1: How do we fix this?
Speaker 3: So I do have to say, like, this is hard.
Speaker 3: Even doctor Mallinger says, this is one of the most
Speaker 3: difficult things to change when we're trying to pull back
Speaker 3: on our perfectionism. So, okay, let me give you an
Speaker 3: example from my life. So I am really bad at
Speaker 3: keeping up with my email because I see my email
Speaker 3: as a to do list that other people make.
Speaker 1: Not so the biggest not ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a lot of us in this
Speaker 3: same boat. So what I've learned to do is to
Speaker 3: try to turn towards my values. And I've found that
Speaker 3: if I think about replying to the individual, the person
Speaker 3: on the other end of that email address, because I
Speaker 3: value my relationship with them, then this all freeze up.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like coming the dried paint out of
Speaker 3: a paint brush. Just everything just kind of gets freed
Speaker 3: up and works more easily, and then I don't feel
Speaker 3: that resistance in getting back to them. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not some magical one eighty, but it absolutely allows me
Speaker 3: to let go of that demand resistance and make things
Speaker 3: work and get back to them.
Speaker 2: I think it also helps just to remember there's a
Speaker 2: reason you're doing this. Right, It's not like, for example,
Speaker 2: in the email case, it's not just this endless list
Speaker 2: of demands that are coming to you. But there's a
Speaker 2: value behind it, right, you know, there was some project
Speaker 2: that you were working on that you really cared about,
Speaker 2: or there's a friendship that you really want to attend to,
Speaker 2: or work colleague that you really care about. Even just
Speaker 2: kind of reconnecting with your values. I feel like it's
Speaker 2: powerful for reducing some of this resistance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think we can apply all that
Speaker 3: to because okay, email something we have to do, like
Speaker 3: we do have to do that we got to figure out, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: how am I going to make this work? But then
Speaker 3: when it comes to the optional things, I think we
Speaker 3: can dare to be unproductive. For many of us, there
Speaker 3: is a rule in our head of I should always
Speaker 3: be doing something productive or I should always be improving myself.
Speaker 3: And so I think we can dare to be unproductive
Speaker 3: and turn towards what looks interesting. What does your mind
Speaker 3: keep like wandering towards? And so I think if we
Speaker 3: tap into what makes my spidy senses tingle, what do
Speaker 3: I really want to do? That might be hard? To
Speaker 3: answer at first if our want muscles are very underdeveloped.
Speaker 3: But I think with some practice, we can tune in
Speaker 3: to what we enjoy, what we would like to do,
Speaker 3: what looks fun or cool or interesting, and allow ourselves
Speaker 3: to do that rather than slog through another should.
Speaker 2: I think this is especially important at the new year,
Speaker 2: where we're all finding ourselves right now. This mantra of
Speaker 2: daring to be unproductive, I feel like, is one that
Speaker 2: a lot that I definitely am going to resonate with.
Speaker 2: So now we get to tip number four, another one
Speaker 2: that I have a tough time with. But you've argued
Speaker 2: that we need to redefine failure. Explain what you mean.
Speaker 3: Sure, So if we define failure as not meeting expectations,
Speaker 3: if we set that far for adequate at flawless, it
Speaker 3: means we're never allowed to not meet our very high,
Speaker 3: personally demanding, often unrealistic expectations and ten thousand foot view.
Speaker 3: If we set these again very high standards and we
Speaker 3: inevitably don't meet them over years and decades, we rack
Speaker 3: up a lot of failures and then we start to
Speaker 3: feel like failures. So a rule that I set for
Speaker 3: myself that I didn't even realize until Actually, So I
Speaker 3: was in grad school and I was analyzing some data
Speaker 3: and was just flailing and struggling by myself for honestly hours,
Speaker 3: and when I went to go show my professor my numbers,
Speaker 3: they were all wrong. And she looked at me and said, Ellen,
Speaker 3: you don't have to do this yourself. And she had
Speaker 3: articulated a rule that I didn't even realize I had.
Speaker 3: Through that lens, I could look back and realize that,
Speaker 3: you know, my over compensation is hyperindependence. And so you know,
Speaker 3: from navigating friend to drama or like trying to move
Speaker 3: furniture like I would do it all myself. So I
Speaker 3: had set this high, personally demanding standard for myself. And
Speaker 3: so if I were to ask for help, or if
Speaker 3: I were to take advice or be vulnerable, that would
Speaker 3: mean that I was failing. It would mean that I
Speaker 3: wasn't reaching that expectation, but it wasn't working for me.
Speaker 3: So what we can do is we can look at
Speaker 3: is this working, is this feasible? Is this workable? And
Speaker 3: when it's not, rather than doubling down and saying, okay,
Speaker 3: well now I really have to do this all myself,
Speaker 3: we can try to do something different and in this example,
Speaker 3: ask for help, take advice, be vulnerable. And what that
Speaker 3: does particularly is it sends two messages. It sends I
Speaker 3: trust you. When we show other people some of the
Speaker 3: mess instead of only the correct highlighted answer at the end,
Speaker 3: it signals I trust you to see some of the
Speaker 3: mess and not to judge me. It also sends the
Speaker 3: message of we are the same, and rather than putting
Speaker 3: ourselves in an invulnerable position of kind of having this
Speaker 3: like coach mentee relationship or teacher student relationship, it puts
Speaker 3: us on an equal level with the people we love
Speaker 3: and who care about us. And so by asking for
Speaker 3: help or showing some of the mess or being a
Speaker 3: little bit vulnerable, we signal I trust you. We're the same,
Speaker 3: and that is what brings us closer instead of what
Speaker 3: perfectionism tells us is that we have to earn our
Speaker 3: way into being liked by doing things well. So ironically
Speaker 3: showing we are capable of doing things poorly or that
Speaker 3: we need their help, they have something to offer us
Speaker 3: that draws us closer as opposed to just performing as
Speaker 3: superbly as possible.
Speaker 2: You talked in the beginning about how this was the
Speaker 2: book that you needed, as writing the book and engaging
Speaker 2: with these strategies made you less perfectionist a little bit happier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Well, Okay, so I would say that I
Speaker 3: am still perfectionistic, like I still said high standards. I
Speaker 3: still work hard, I still care deeply about the people
Speaker 3: I work with and for, But I think I'm also
Speaker 3: more flexible. I think about what would work here as
Speaker 3: opposed to did I follow the rules? I think about
Speaker 3: am I living the life I want to live? Am
Speaker 3: I being the person I want to be? Rather than
Speaker 3: simply doing the generic right thing and ironically showing some
Speaker 3: of that mess and showing that I struggle. So telling
Speaker 3: people about my successes and also my failures brings us
Speaker 3: closer together. So ironically I feel more supported and connected
Speaker 3: than when I was really in the grips of unhealthy perfectionism.
Speaker 3: Can I kind of end with one closing please message? Okay,
Speaker 3: A message I want to send to everybody who sort
Speaker 3: of identifies who's been nodding their heads as they've been listening.
Speaker 3: So I got an email from a potential client, somebody
Speaker 3: who wanted to come in and do some work on perfectionism,
Speaker 3: and so I said, cool, come on in and we
Speaker 3: set up a first appointment, and then the day of
Speaker 3: the appointment, she emailed me and canceled, and she said,
Speaker 3: I've taken a look at my schedule and my bandwidth,
Speaker 3: and I want to wait until I have time to
Speaker 3: work really hard on this. I want to make sure
Speaker 3: that I can give this the effort it deserves. And
Speaker 3: what I said to her, and what I'll say to
Speaker 3: listeners out there, is that you don't have to do
Speaker 3: that much differently, that even being five percent less hard
Speaker 3: on yourself, you know, ten percent kinder to yourself, or
Speaker 3: simply trying to change your relationship to your self criticism
Speaker 3: or that over evaluation, that's all you need to do.
Speaker 3: We can still walk around with a lot of rules
Speaker 3: in our head or with the urge to be productive
Speaker 3: every minute of the day, but we don't have to
Speaker 3: listen to them. And instead, if we run towards those values,
Speaker 3: towards what's purposeful or interesting or meaningful, we might not
Speaker 3: even do anything different. It's the mindset beneath that that
Speaker 3: will have changed, and that doesn't take a lot of
Speaker 3: effort or hard work, contrary to what perfectionism tells us.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I love that message.
Speaker 1: As a perfectionist, it's important.
Speaker 2: To remember that the good stuff in life doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be a hard slog, and Ellen thinks the first
Speaker 2: step can be easy. We can just start right this
Speaker 2: moment by questioning the demanding voice in our heads. If
Speaker 2: it says we're not enough, we can fight back and
Speaker 2: say I am. During our interview, Ellen admitted that she
Speaker 2: still struggles with perfectionism from time to time, and that
Speaker 2: her residual self criticism was bound to torment her after
Speaker 2: our interview, making her feel like she'd messed up or
Speaker 2: said the wrong things during our chat.
Speaker 1: So I decided to call her up and check in.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hey, Ellen, it's LORI calling Hi.
Speaker 3: Thank you for following up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, yesterday in our interview, you mentioned this idea
Speaker 2: that sometimes you beat yourself up after interviews, or that
Speaker 2: you might need an emergency gin and tonic. So I
Speaker 2: just wanted to check how is the perfectionism going today?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the short answer is I did not beat
Speaker 3: myself up.
Speaker 1: Yay yay.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm delighted to report that. The long answer
Speaker 3: is that, you know, I did have some thoughts, So
Speaker 3: I did think like, oh, I revealed too much. I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: that could have been more polished. But I am having
Speaker 3: to report that the thoughts didn't hurt in the way
Speaker 3: that the phrase beating myself up. So yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think i've this has happened often enough to note that
Speaker 3: it's just part of the script. It's just the order
Speaker 3: in which things happen. So for me, it's you know, like,
Speaker 3: do interview, I think it sucks, realize it actually didn't,
Speaker 3: or if it does, you know, learn from it, do
Speaker 3: it again. It's kind of like when you go to
Speaker 3: a restaurant, there's a script. There's just what happens. You
Speaker 3: look at the venu, you order, you get your food,
Speaker 3: you eat, you pay, you leave. So you know, for me,
Speaker 3: that's the script for an interview. But for other people,
Speaker 3: those self critical thoughts might automatically come after an exam,
Speaker 3: like oh I probably failed, or after a party where
Speaker 3: we kind of review the low lights and kick ourselves,
Speaker 3: or maybe after a work presentation. It's just but it's
Speaker 3: it's just the script playing out. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: next time we have to work harder, or that we
Speaker 3: have to reassure ourselves that we're actually talented, or that
Speaker 3: people like us. We can just let it play out like, Oh,
Speaker 3: there's that thing my brain does.
Speaker 1: Oh I love this.
Speaker 2: This makes me feel so much more encouraged to start
Speaker 2: using some of your strategies myself. So we can flip
Speaker 2: the script on the script as it were.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm so glad.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Ellen, it was really great to connect again.
Speaker 3: Great to connect with you. Thanks for following up. Thanks, thanks,
Speaker 3: bye bye.
Speaker 1: So there you have it.
Speaker 2: Ellen's effective tips on how to feel like you're enough
Speaker 2: to recap. They include tip number one. Talk back to
Speaker 2: your self criticism. Remember that you can control that mean
Speaker 2: voice in your head. Tip number two. You've got to
Speaker 2: overcome over evaluation. Remember that your worth is just not
Speaker 2: contingent on your performance. Tip number three stop turning fun
Speaker 2: into a chore. Combat your demand sense activity and get
Speaker 2: back to the fun parts of life. Tip number four
Speaker 2: redefine what you mean by failure. You can make the
Speaker 2: switch from an exam mindset to an experiment mindset.
Speaker 1: And tip number five.
Speaker 2: When it comes to fighting perfectionism, baby steps are the
Speaker 2: way to go. In the next episode of our how
Speaker 2: To season, we'll be switching gears. We'll explore some ways
Speaker 2: to put our goals and problems in perspective, and we'll
Speaker 2: learn the benefits of realizing that you're not the center.
Speaker 3: Of the world.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're going to learn how to get over
Speaker 2: ourselves all that next time on
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos,