Experts say the COVID pandemic added to the stresses of job insecurity and food shortages already felt by People of Color and young adults. You've heard the term countless times, but what does having a type A personality actually mean? We'll go over common traits, how they compare to type…. Psychologists and psychiatrists have a lot in common, but they also have some key differences. Nothing is.
If you have misophonia, certain sounds might trigger intense irritation, disgust, and physical discomfort. Get the details on symptoms, treatments…. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Mental Health. Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph. Symptoms Causes Treatment Prevention What is perfectionism? What are the symptoms of perfectionism?
What causes perfectionism? How is perfectionism treated? Or send a random silly text to a sibling, or take the dog to the dog park, or whatever activity tends to help you feel more connected to people. The point is to have a collection of go-to strategies ready ahead of time so that when the emotion strikes, you have several alternatives to perfectionism ready at hand and easy to implement.
The first level of perfectionism reduction is an okay place to start—identifying the emotional triggers for perfectionistic behavior and substituting new, less destructive behaviors that meet the same emotional need as the perfectionism.
You can be aware of your painful emotions and really feel them without doing anything to try and reduce them or make them go away, including perfectionistic behaviors or any other coping strategy. This is, by the way, the essence of mindfulness : To be aware without thinking or doing anything. Just observe. Why would I just let my painful emotions happen without trying to reduce them?
I get it. Just sitting with and tolerating uncomfortable emotions feels dumb, not to mention painful. Even the really painful ones. And there are consequences to treating them as if they were.
But they do feel dangerous. Unless we do something about them, that is. Which is why most of us are in the habit of instantly trying to fix or distract ourselves from uncomfortable or painful emotions. Turns out… Not much. Again, this is the whole idea behind mindfulness. But if we always take action to reduce our emotion or distract ourselves from them, we never get the chance to really learn that for ourselves.
And how will this help my perfectionism? The habit of always doing something in response to uncomfortable emotions is itself the problem. Running away reinforces beliefs that our emotions are dangerous, making us even more likely to run away from them and toward a coping mechanism like perfectionism instead.
This knowledge gives us the freedom and confidence to accept and ride out our emotions rather than compulsively trying to make them go away.
The secret to overcoming perfectionism is to practice being tolerant of our emotions. Especially the ones that are strongly associated with perfectionistic behaviors. I recommend starting to keeping a small journal or simple notes file on your phone. Whenever you feel the pull toward perfectionism, take a few minutes to reflect and answer the following questions:.
Do this exercise long enough, and it will start to become painfully obvious what your emotional triggers for perfectionism are. The idea is to build up a tolerance to the discomfort of negative emotion. Then after two minutes, you can decide to go ahead with the perfectionistic behavior anyway or choose to do something else. After a while, try bumping the time up to 4 minutes, then 7.
Finally, building a mindfulness practice is a great way to practice both emotional awareness and emotional tolerance.
Most of the advice out there on overcoming perfectionism falls flat because it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes perfectionism. When we understand this fundamental difference, we can more successfully target our efforts to change by working to become more aware and tolerant of our emotions.
And if we can do this—accept our emotions rather than run from them—we can remove the need for perfectionism in the first place. Thanks so much for helping me to understand why I am different from my other siblings. Today I am still fighting that battle. Very insightful! I can relate to the article. I guess am somehow guilty of this attitude. Thanks for the jolt Nick! Thanks, Ana! From my personal experience, perfectionism is strongly connected with generalized anxiety and it all comes down to the illusion that one can actually have control over life itself.
Under this illusion we strive to fix everything and avoid every single unexpected, uncomfortable and uneasy instance of our lives. Thank you so much for this article. Thanks, Anna! Great post, it makes a lot of sense. Came back now to work, cause this lifestyle didnt feel good and now i realised after 1,5 months of structure that i cant start any business because im jumping from one idea to the other.
Trying to make my next success more perfect, and successful. But thats the problem, its an underlyinng compensation for how i deal with emotions -thats the problem — not the outcome itself. Thanks for the thoughtful reply James. Nick, I really appreciate the sentiment behind this article. This is one of countless examples….
But then I resume my day-to-day affairs and must make a decision in the form of one action or another or responding to someone, a deadline, an opportunity, etc.
I truly believe that when we feel good about ourselves and unconditionally held, there is no need for these behaviors. The problem is that the response is habitual, like any addictive or compulsive response.
Wishing unconditional self-love to us all…. Hi Emily, thank you for your response. Perfectionism, as you explain, can be a major struggle and source of suffering.
Love your writings. I save them and share them with my clients. Are you just an astute student of psychology or do you work in the field as well? Thanks Julie! Yeah, a lot of the ideas from my articles come from content that comes up repeatedly in my own sessions with clients.
Hello, I desire to subscribe for this webpage to obtain latest updates, thus where can i do it please assist. The problem I still have is the feeling that by forcing myself to do nothing and let the sadness, hurt, pain, disapppointment and more wash over me is that it does not pass for me when it needs to.
Procrastination can lead to greater feelings of failure, further perpetuating a vicious and paralyzing cycle. Because a less-than-perfect performance is so painful and scary to perfectionists, they tend to take constructive criticism defensively, while high achievers can see criticism as valuable information to help their future performance. High achievers tend to have equally high esteem; not so with perfectionists.
Perfectionists tend to be very self-critical and unhappy and suffer from low self-esteem. They can also be lonely or isolated as their critical nature and rigidity can push others away as well. This can lead to lower self-esteem. Recognizing that a change may be needed is a very important first step toward creating a more easygoing nature and achieving the inner peace and real success that comes from overcoming perfectionism and being able to say that "almost perfect" is still a job very well done.
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