Perfectionism

Welcome everyone.

Today we're going to talk about perfectionism.

Essentially,

At the end of the day,

We have two kinds of perfectionism.

So perfectionism can show up in the type of person who needs everything to be perfect all the time is high achieving is high outputting is always striving and striving and striving.

Then we have the other side of perfectionism,

Which can be paralyzing and can often look like procrastination or like people aren't getting anything done at all.

This essentially is this fear of failure.

So while it has to be perfect,

You can't launch anything into action because if it's not perfect,

It's not worth doing.

So you can see that we have the two different elements of this in many different ways.

I am definitely guilty of perfectionism,

Which is why I wanted to come on and talk about this today.

Essentially,

We are also looking at something that is very,

Very closely tied to anxiety.

Perfectionism is sort of the byproduct of feeling anxious and feeling like we need to control our environment in some way.

It's managing our fears in a lot of ways.

And I'd like you to see it as a protection coping strategy,

Something that we often develop as young kids.

To cope with many different fears or things that are uncertain in our environment.

Really,

It gives us this very tricky illusion of control.

And I say illusion because it is.

It paralyzes us rather than making us feel safe.

But then we feel like we need to make things even more perfect to control the environment as we go into the future.

It gives us this sense that we can somehow be prepared.

For what is coming.

Which isn't true.

None of us can ever be prepared for the future and anxiety and perfectionism are both very much a future oriented.

This shows up in our lives in many ways.

In terms of perfectionism on the body,

It throws us into fight or flight response really quickly,

Which pumps a lot of stress hormones through our body.

And if people,

If you're a perfectionist,

You'll know perfectionists are often more prone to stomach aches,

Headaches,

Things like this,

Because they're holding a lot of stress and contraction in their body.

How it shows up cognitively in our thought process is perfectionists tend to be quite obsessive in their thinking,

Tend to ruminate a lot of things,

Tend to continue to spend a lot of mental energy going over and over and over plans of action,

Thinking that a solution will present itself,

Which it doesn't always do.

Socially perfectionism can also create some difficulties for people it can lead to us feeling like we want to control others if we want it to be perfect that we need the parameters of something to be exactly as we need them to be.

It can also lead us to really being controlling people in a lot of ways.

So while we're trying to help someone else or giving the illusion of helping someone else,

What we're actually doing is trying to solve and soothe our own anxiety by telling what other people,

What they should do and what we need them to do to make us feel safe.

Perfectionists are fantastic at scanning their environment for danger.

And so they're doing that for other people as well,

Finding solutions and feeling like they need to fix other people to also make their own perfectionism anxiety go down.

So you can imagine in family dynamics,

This can create a lot of difficulty,

A lot of disappointment between people and conflict if we're trying to force our will onto other people because we're trying to alleviate our own anxiety.

Feeling-wise,

Perfectionists also have a tendency to get quite overwhelmed,

Have a tendency towards sadness,

Depression,

And this sense that just they're never satisfied.

And then on an energetic sort of spiritual level,

They spend all their time in their head.

And not grounded in their body.

So most of the activity is happening in their head constantly through thoughts and they're not actually feeling present and grounded and calm in their body.

So I have two questions for you at the end of today's video.

How does perfectionism show up in your life?

And how is it trying to protect you?

Thank you for joining me today,

And we'll see you on the next video.