Stress & Anxiety Recovery Podcast

PERFECTIONISM - "I'm always wondering what people think of me"

• Shelley Treacher Underground Confidence Recovery • Season 4 • Episode 27

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Do you worry too much about what others think of you? This can lead to overeating for comfort. Today, I talk about trying to be perfect and how it can have bad effects, like causing overeating, stress, and feeling really sad. I point out that perfectionists have unrealistic expectations for themselves and explain why. I suggest building up your own self-esteem and judging yourself in a reasonable way.

You might like this podcast next: How do I Stop Self-Criticism?


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 Today I'm talking about caring too much what other people think of you. I'm talking about perfectionism. Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. I help you to get control of your eating or any other toxic or difficult behaviour or patterns, through understanding the stress that lies underneath,  and finding other, more substantial ways of comforting yourself. 

But before I talk about perfectionism, I want to tell you about one of my sessions last week. So, right on cue, just as I deliver a podcast about money... And understanding what's beneath our money worries so that we can perhaps shift a little to learn to be able to cope a little bit better. One of my clients came in with some severe money anxiety. And I know this is a very real concern for a lot of people right now. In a nutshell, what happened in the session was she talked it out. She began the session in some form of fight or flight or danger response, with her nervous system feeling really triggered.

She even said, "I'm just finding it so difficult to regulate right now." And she talked it through. SHe talked about how she was feeling, all the different scenarios that were happening in her life, some practical considerations, and she got it all so much off her chest that her nervous system calmed down.

This is, putting it simply, what happens when you talk it through. Your nervous system gets a chance to calm down. 

By the end of the session, of course none of her money issues were solved.. But she did feel in a much better place to tackle it all. 

My message here is that you can't tackle your money issues, or any other difficult issues, from a place of anxiety and hyper arousal. It's really difficult to make decisions, to plan for things, to be rational when you're in this state of heightened insecurity.

So, my suggestion to you, if you're worrying about money, is to find a way to feel better within yourself, to calm down, slow down your breathing, and to take care of how you feel first. I've got lots of content here that can help you self regulate. And it might also help to talk it through with somebody. 

But now let's talk about perfectionism, and the idea of caring a little bit too much about what everybody else thinks of us. Which undoubtedly is something that people often want to talk through with me. This can be what lies behind a lot of comfort eating.  My inspiration for this podcast was being invited to speak for Stylist magazine.

Here the article leaned towards a perfectionist streak in the eldest daughter of each family. If that's ringing a bell for you, you might want to check out the article. But it made me realise that perfectionism is actually something I hear about quite a lot.

What I mean by perfectionism here is when someone sets unrealistic high expectations of themselves and then works really hard to meet that goal. And then feels really bad about themselves when they don't achieve this unrealistic goal. I have several of these clients in my practice.

These are people who work so hard to get everything right in all of the areas. People who often feel paralysed about making any decisions, just in case they get it wrong.  These people often Continuously feel like they have to prove themselves So much so that their personal life, their work, their social life, and their relationships can be affected by this  they can often seem quite rigid. 

 We can also sometimes think that being perfect means never having any negative feelings. But that's, at the very least, just not realistic.

There is research to show that perfectionists have significantly higher levels of depression and stress compared to people who aren't so perfectionistic, and this comes as no surprise does it really? Feeling you have to perform to your best all the time sounds really stressful to me. 

But aren't we all guilty of it? Don't many of us feel bad if we don't perform to our best? I have a particular friend who often, when I hear from him, he tells me how he hasn't done much that day and he feels really unproductive.

Clearly he puts himself down for this. But he's also aware to some degree that this is a pattern for him. And so we have a mutual relationship where we tell each other when we feel this way and then we help each other to feel better about it.

And it just helps to get that permission from someone else to look after myself. And he the same, hopefully.

It's in our culture, isn't it, to be overproductive?   And to think that that's a virtue. So perfectionism can be an addiction. Our society values success so highly. But really. If you're feeling depressed or stressed, this perfectionism comes from a sense of low self worth and seeking approval.  It's tipped over the edge from productivity to caring too much what others think of us.

One characteristic of perfectionism is paralysis.

I think this state in particular can lead to overeating. Procrastination in itself can be perfectionism.  And to add to that, perfectionism might also be contributing to the way we feel we have to look, which again might trigger paralysis.

Perfectionism might also be contributing to disordered eating. Where some of the time, you're controlling your eating, and your shape, and your weight. 

Sometimes I experience a kind of paralysis. I'm sure this is a very common one. The way it shows up for me is in scrolling.

It can be so addictive, so triggering, and so compulsive. I go to check my phone to do something specific, and I get drawn into something else. Completely forget what I was doing in the first place, and find myself watching something comforting, funny, or endearing.  Lately I've taken to challenging myself to notice these periods.

Often in my head I have the words, Oh, look, I'm doing it again. I don't want to be doing this. I'm gonna stop. And then sometimes it's a bit of a wrench to stop. 

What has this got to do with perfectionism, you might be asking? I think sometimes in the background. I get hooked in by negative thinking.

Something like, Oh, I wasn't doing anything important anyway. It doesn't really matter. And I think sometimes behind that thought, Is a kind of imposter syndrome. The feeling that I wasn't going to do a very good job anyway.

Knowing this, I can consciously try and change it. 

Behind all of this, behind perfectionism, behind my paralysis sometimes, is thinking that there is a right way to do everything. So, feeling resentment, shame,  depression or feeling trapped, if it doesn't get done right.   

This could even extend to eating, because there really isn't actually a perfect way to eat.

 Some side effects or signs of perfectionism aRe obsessive compulsive behaviours or insomnia. Where the nervous system is overactive. We're overthinking and stuck in worry. 

In terms of neuroscience, the part of our brain that's responsible for planning, for decision making, and the fear centre, is activated in perfectionism.

This part is all about self monitoring and self control. With the fear centre being activated, it's understandable that the fear of failure might be driving perfectionism. 

There's another study that shows that people who care what others think can evaluate and adjust less effectively.  This is compared to people who have their own internal sense of evaluation.

I took a Salsa spinning course recently. This was a four month online course to improve my spinning on the spot for dancing. Most people can't imagine that it would take four months, but trust me, it takes a lot longer.  This course involved speaking with, being coached by, and sending my videos of my progress to quite a famous Salsa teacher. Before I started the course, I told a couple of my friends about this.

And both of them responded with, I don't think I could do that. And actually up until that point, I hadn't been scared.  But then I got a little bit starstruck. 

As it turns out, she was incredibly good at her job. Of course. Not only was she a great detailed instructor, but she was also a very good coach. She encouraged me to show her all the mistakes. All the times when I looked like an idiot, or so I thought. And as well as learning a lot, I had a lot of fun with her. 

The reason I'm telling you this is because it was such a great lesson in undoing perfectionism. She taught me that there isn't a perfect way to do anything. 

And that every time you do it, in this case spinning, it's slightly different. That you can never get the perfect spin. Or repeat what you thought was your perfect spin. So my attitude was firmly focused on learning. And the enjoyment of that learning.  Which was utterly real for me because I could see minor improvements happening every day.

It was quite simple. The more I practiced, the better I got at it, and the better it felt. I would have missed all of that if I'd got upset about trying to be perfect. Don't get me wrong, I was human about it. I did find my lack of skill frustrating at times. But I knew that if I carried on, it would change.

The feeling of being not good enough, and so striving for perfection, caring what other people think of us,. Often comes from feeling you've had a critical history, and so developing a self critic. As with many of my clients. They were scared to disappoint their parents as children, having experienced some level of criticism, whether it was intended, or whether it happened by default with a parent who was also perfectionistic.

In this case, the nervous system learns to be scared, And will get triggered at any sign of criticism or danger. 

 This can even be embedded in our nervous system before we're born. Because in the last two months before we're born, implicit memory is formed. 

 We feel pretty safe in the stable environment of our mother's womb. This makes us feel like we're in control of our environment. Being born, we feel out of control. Our environment changes pretty dramatically. And apparently, this leaves us with a desire to gain control.

Joan Borisenko once said, "Every human being on the face of the Earth Shares the same addiction, and that's the addiction to control."

self-awareness is the way through and awareness that the goal we're trying to attain might not be realistic.

A great example of this is how social media is warping our view of what's normal.

 As people present the best of themselves and how great a time they're having and how easily it would be to fix yourself with lots of adverts that tell you so,

we get a pretty warped view of what life should be like. 

 Getting to understand how your self worth developed, processing any trauma that's been caused, reframing how you feel that shame, the anxiety, the depression. Particularly in the context of what's actually achievable and normal, the standard. These are the ways to get through perfectionism. This and developing an internal sense of evaluation. 

One question you can ask yourself to start exploring this is how come the perfectionism makes you feel safe? What's so compelling about it? And then it's been suggested that you also build your inner support committee. 

Here's a process by Melanie Greenberg that helps you to do some of this. 

Step one is to soften. The idea here is to start embodying your experience so that you connect your brain with your body.

Here, I'm asking you to locate in your body where you feel that tension. Once you've located it, you can start to breathe into that area. 

The second step is to help you soothe or regulate that place. Here, you're literally introducing comfort and soothing to that area of you, to that tension. You can demonstrate acceptance and understanding. You might want to do this physically by putting a hand over that area. You could give yourself a gentle hug. You could also put your hand over your heart. You could give yourself a little massage. Or do any of the other practices that I've mentioned in previous podcasts. 

The third and final step is to allow.

Rather than focusing on trying to get rid of this experience and feeling,  your job here is to accept how you're feeling, and to refocus on self acceptance. This process softens the rigidity. And helps you with self compassion, which really needs to be how you evaluate yourself.

 I have a good example of this from my life this week.  I went to a birthday party this weekend. I was tired that day.  You know how you just don't feel on top form sometimes? This day for me was that day.

I noticed I was feeling more negative and hopeless than usual and thought it might be hormonal. Then later in the day, I fell out with one of my friends,  and so I arrived at the party still processing some of this, and still feeling tired. All the way through the party, I kept checking how I was feeling.

Who I wanted to sit with, where I wanted to be, what I wanted to be talking about. And whether I was okay. I knew I wasn't on top form, I was the first to leave the party.

For a moment, I was frozen, thinking, I don't want to be here anymore, I want to go. But I'm a bit nervous to be the first person to get up and do that. I did it anyway, because I wanted to go. I'd made a couple of jokes and people had laughed, so I was happy with my performance. And so I left, and it happened quite easily and quickly.

I thought about giving myself a hard time on the way home, but mostly I was just really grateful to be going to bed. And later I found out that the host, even though she looked like the perfect, funny, interesting, sociable host, she really was. I later found out that she'd been dreading the party.

A party is a melting pot for potential perfectionism, isn't it? And looking back, I could see how everybody navigated that path in their own way. 

My message here is that we're all dealing with this. Parties are not easy for anyone, I don't think, but we can connect in our lack of being perfect.

Before I finish talking about perfectionism, I just want to caveat some of this by saying that perfectionism isn't always terrible. There's another study that shows that we often believe the most stressful events in our lives are also the most meaningful.

Pushing our limits. 

 One of the most life giving things that I do at the moment is cold water swimming. I'm still doing it. I swam in 10 degree water the other day. It was painful for a few minutes, but then it felt great.  Apart from all the great cold water benefits, I'm getting such a kick out of pushing my limits. This can't fail to help me cope with difficulty.

Because I'm growing and developing my internal sense of self regulation. Although I couldn't possibly say that I'm trying to be a perfect swimmer,  it's enough for me that I get all of this from it. There's absolutely no need for me to make this great exercise as well. 

 This is another good example of what's needed to be understood to overcome perfectionism. It's the development or the gradual understanding that disaster doesn't happen if we are not perfect.

 Today. First, I talked about overcoming stress before you tackle your money issues. Then I talked about what perfectionism is. And how we might care too much about what people think of us. I talked about how perfectionism can induce depression, shame, and anxiety. I also talked about how perfectionism can lead to paralysis. And how this might relate to comfort eating. I mentioned a few studies about perfectionism, showing that there might be increased depression. One study showed that the part of our brain responsible for planning, making decisions and the fear centre are activated during perfectionism. I talked about the contribution to perfectionism of having had a critical upbringing and then developing a self critic. I talked a little bit about trauma and hyper arousal in the stress system.

And I gave you a little exercise to soften, soothe, and allow around the tension that you have around being perfect. I gave you a couple of examples of how I cope with not being perfect, and I encouraged you to develop a sense of internal evaluation rather than caring what others think of you.... And then I ended saying that striving for more isn't always a terrible thing to do.  Hopefully you saw that pushing your limits can be very different to being self critical. 

 Next week, I'm going to take a break from doing a longer podcast.  

However, I am still going to deliver you a  small podcast, which will be utterly relevant to The Comfort Eater.

If you want help exploring and overcoming your inner critic and your perfectionism,  please let me know. . If you enjoyed this podcast, can I encourage you to write a review? Even the briefest of sentences would be helpful.   Thank you so much for listening today This has been Underground Confidence with Shelley Treacher. I'll see you next Thursday.