Ep 72 - EMDR for perfectionism
Hello, and welcome back to the EMDR Doctor Podcast. I'm Dr. Caroline Lloyd, and today I'm talking perfectly about perfectionism. And as I was preparing for this talk, I was just kind of noting how often I use the word perfect just in my daily language. It is often, I have to say, multiple times a day. I don't know whether that indicates that I am actually a perfectionist or not. I wouldn't really identify myself as a perfectionist, as I can sometimes be a little bit of a fly by the seat of my pants type of person, and you know that I'm certainly not a perfectionist in terms of getting my podcast out. It's often not weekly. I often miss weeks at a time of putting the podcast out. But I am trying to be better, but let's not go there right now. But my point with using the word perfect is that maybe in our society we do have a general trend towards wanting things to be absolutely right, which may not be quite healthy when we think about it So perfectionism generally involves three things. Firstly, the relentless striving for extremely high standards for yourself and for others that are personally demanding. Secondly, judging your self-worth based largely upon your ability to strive for and achieve those wonderfully high standards. And thirdly, experiencing negative consequences for setting such demanding standards, yet continuing to go for them despite the huge cost to you.
So this is really a rich topic because perfectionism is very much misunderstood. Many people think it is simply about having very high standards, when in reality, perfection is rooted in fear, and shame, and trauma, and a deep need for safety. And this makes it a really natural topic to connect with EMDR, because EMDR is often about resolving those difficult memories that are to do with shame, and fear, and lack of safety, and trauma So we could sum that up by saying perfectionism isn't about the pursuit of excellence, it's about the pursuit of safety. Now, what do I actually mean by that and how did I get to that conclusion? So many perfectionists are actually not trying to be the best. They are trying to avoid criticism, rejection, failure, embarrassment, essentially feeling not good enough. And what does this relate to? Well, my favorite topic recently is shame. So I did a little bit of a talk for therapists about shame recently, and I think it is really one of the most misunderstood emotions that, that we as humans have. And we all have it, but it's very much hidden and really not well understood and not well treated in therapy. So how does that relate to perfectionism? So if we are feeling shame about something or about ourselves, if we have those core negative beliefs about I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I am bad, I am shameful, I shouldn't exist, all of those negative beliefs that go along with shame, we protect ourself from that. So we protect ourselves against shame because shame is one of the most exquisitely painful emotions that we can have. I believe it's more painful than fear, sadness, grief, anger Almost anything else because it's so awful to think of ourselves as being "I'm not good enough. I am bad." So it's very core, it's very central, so we try and avoid shame as much as we can. And one of the ways of avoiding I'm not good enough is to always be better, always be best, always be perfect. You guessed it. So perfectionism is a defense, sometimes is a defense against shame. So if we can be perfect, then we can't be criticized, we can't be shamed in front of other people, and it's a wonderful protection. So perfectionism often sounds like, "If I do this perfectly, nobody can criticize me. If I never make a mistake, I won't be rejected. If I achieve enough, I will finally feel worthy." So all of those things are antidotes to shame So how do we develop perfectionism? Well, we are often shamed in, in our childhood. So many perfectionists grew up in a situation that may have been emotionally a little bit barren or perhaps conditional. So attention or love was always conditional upon achievement. So you're only worthwhile if you got 100%. Even 98%, um, would perhaps be not good enough. It would perhaps bring on that question of, what happened to that other 2%? Am I quoting from my own childhood here? Um, hmm, let me have a think about that. Um, so, so parents don't need to be awful in order to facilitate the shame that goes with being not good enough. They, they also may be awful. So parents who criticize or punish their children a lot, who never give positive reinforcement for just being good enough, not necessarily doing good enough. Maybe if a child experiences bullying or humiliation or ridicule as a kid, they develop those negative beliefs about themselves. I'm not good enough, I'm bad, I'm not worthy, I need to try harder. And some children who are perhaps parentified, so if they have a parent who isn't doing enough parenting And this can be through no fault of their own. They may just be absent. They may be working three jobs in order to keep the roof over their head, or a parent may be sick and therefore pa- parentify the child, or it may be due to alcoholism or absence for, uh, whatever reason. So if a parent is a- absent and not doing a good enough job of, parenting a child, then the child has to parent themselves, becomes parentified. They have to be good. They can never be bad. They can never let their hair down. They always have to be the grown-up, the adult, the perfect one, um, and that's the way that they survive. So this is one way of creating perfectionism in childhood. So, , learning that making mistakes is emotionally unsafe, so learning that mistakes are punishable, , either by physical punishment or by emotional punishment, maybe by a bit of stonewalling or, , ignoring. So parents who express disappointment in their child and then ignore the child, that child will very quickly learn that they are disappointing, that they are not good enough, And they'll hold that shame, and then they will try harder and try harder and try harder. And whilst we want a little bit of try harder in our children, we certainly don't want it to reach the point of perfectionism, because perfectionism is quite debilitating when it's in full flight. So I guess the conclusion to that is perfectionism is an intelligent adaptation to difficult conditions. The problem is then that what helped us survive in childhood or what helped us get our needs met in childhood then becomes really exhausting in adulthood. And there's a little bit of self-perpetuating reinforcement in adulthood because if we are, if we aim to be perfect about everything we do, we often do a really good job, and then we, um, receive some praise or some promotions or a increase in our pay packet or, receive the admiration of our coworkers or our colleagues, and that can be a little bit of a vicious cycle. Perfectionism can be reinforced in adulthood because in our society there is certain, um, reward in being perfect. Not to mention looking perfect, which is probably a topic for another day. But certainly social media and everything that we see online really does make it hard to show up as not perfect. We do our makeup before we do a podcast, for example. So I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. We only see the perfect version of those people that we follow on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever it may be. Whatever platform we follow, we see often the perfect version, and that can be really hard to kind of work against that in ourselves. So what's the cost of perfectionism? Perfectionism can bring some reward, but there can be a cost. So perfectionism brings anxiety. That's fairly obvious. We worry about being perfect, about making ourself perfect, and that can be really a strong factor in procrastination. So we might find ourselves sitting down to do a piece of work, or, uh, for those of us who are visible on social media, we might sit down to record a podcast or record a reel or do a story, and we might be a bit anxious about how it's gonna be received or how we present ourselves, and that leads to a lot of procrastination. Now, little bit of procrastination, everybody deals with it on some level. If it's five minutes of kind of checking emails or whatever, then it's probably not a major part of your life. But for some people, procrastination can be absolutely debilitating. Procrastination is probably something I should do a podcast about, but people do all sorts of things to procrastinate, and it might be busy work, it might be making a cup of tea, it might be eating a tub of ice cream before they sit down to do that piece of work that they feel m- must be perfect. So, you know, it can have a
really far-reaching effect on our lives. If we are always aiming for perfect, we are very prone to becoming burnt out. So we may find ourself exhausted and not able to do the job that we would really like to do at work. We might find ourselves really having trouble relaxing. So when we should be closing our computer and finishing for the day, we might be going over the work that we've done, polishing it one more time before we send it out to colleagues or our boss or whatever, um, and not closing our computer, not giving us the time off that we actually do need to recuperate and relax a little bit. So we might feel very critical of ourselves, and this chronic selfcriticism can echo perhaps what we learned about ourselves in childhood. So it might be that internal - critic that we learned when we were very young. So if we criticize ourselves enough, often our parents won't have to criticize us. If we're perfect, we can avoid that criticism. So we then internalize that voice and become very self-critical. Sometimes perfectionism can really tie in with imposter syndrome. "I don't belong here. I'm not good enough. How can I compete against the other, my other colleagues?" That kind of fear of being in the workplace and fear of showing up. We might have difficulty enjoying our achievements. So we might get to the end of a task or do a presentation or a webinar, get to the end of it, think, "Oh, that was okay. I did it." And then a minute later, we're thinking about how we could make it better, how we could do it again, how we should've done something else, and, um, e- essentially not enjoying the fruits of our labor and not enjoying our success. And perfectionism can contribute to relationship problems. So not only really striving hard to show up as perfect in the relationship, but also then maybe expanding those values to the other person and demanding that they show up as perfect in the relationship. And that can be an enormous burden for a partner to bear So what do we do about perfectionism? So traditional talk therapy or CBT will focus on the actual process of the perfectionism. So it includes things like, CBT will include things like challenging the thought processes, or setting better goals, maybe smaller goals, or maybe goals that are more easily achievable, or maybe breaking down goals into smaller sub-goals. So these are some of the, um, practical advice that you'll get with standard, talk therapy, which can be helpful. So I'm not saying that these things are bad or shouldn't be talked through, but they don't address the underlying process So sometimes traditional talk therapy will inspect the assumptions and the unhelpful rules, and this is going down a level. So this is kind of interrogating what sits behind the, the behavior of perfectionism, and this can be helpful as well. So we might be thinking about core beliefs and how they serve us, and so on. But thinking about core beliefs only goes a certain way to changing those core beliefs, and this is where EMDR can come in. So what EMDR will do is focus on the cause, the origin of those core beliefs of I am bad, I'm shameful, I'm not good enough, or I need to try harder than everyone else, or I need to be more successful than everybody else. Any of those core beliefs to do with the perfectionism. I, I must be perfect might be a core belief. So EMDR will delve into the origin of those core beliefs and actually process those memories that were instrumental in creating the core beliefs. So we might go back to very early childhood with those really early experiences with parenting or schooling, and find those difficult experiences, those difficult memories, and then we'll process them. And with EMDR, what we do is we separate the emotion from the memory. Once the emotion is gone, then we can believe something different about ourselves. So after we've processed a memory that is one of those kind of core memories that caused the negative belief about ourselves, once we've processed that, then that negative belief does not have to stay. It can just evaporate and be replaced by something better. I'm good enough just as I am. I am human. I'm a good human I'm human, sometimes I make mistakes, and it's okay to be myself. So some of those positive core beliefs are what we install when, after we've processed those difficult early memories. And once that is done, then that's the hard work done, and we don't then have to try on the surface level to change all the behaviors. So we can still have big goals, but as we're pursuing those big goals, it's not the perfectionism that's driving it. We can just pursue big goals because we enjoy a big challenge, or we want to get something big a- achieved, and it doesn't have that vicious kind of negative, critical, underlying perfectionism of, "I must do this or else I'm a bad person. I'm bad. I'm..." whatever it might be. So addressing perfectionism won't necessarily change our goals in life, but it will make it a bit easier to pursue them from our core values, not from the hypercriticism of ourself that fits behind perfectionism. How good would that be? How good would it be to have less fear of making mistakes, more self-compassion, greater flexibility, the ability to change direction if we run up against an obstacle? Maybe better boundaries. Maybe, "No, I'm not working till 9:00 PM tonight. I'm stopping at 6:30 so I can have dinner with my family." Or maybe 5:00 because that's when you pay me to. I don't know. Better boundaries. Maybe an increased willingness to try new things because we're not so afraid of failing at them So people don't lose their ambition after they do EMDR for perfectionism. They lose the fear that was driving it, and then they might find themselves driven or, uh, engaged with a goal because it fits with their values, because it brings them joy and happiness, because they know they're bringing good to the world And they may find it easier to work on their goals because they're not hampered by so much fear, self-criticism, , procrastination, all of those things that sit alongside perfectionism. So I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope you found a few little nuggets in there. If you would like to know more about shame, my webinar about shame, , is on my website, emdrdoctor.com.au, under the Trainings tab. If you would like to work with me, feel free to go to my website, emdrdoctor.com.au, and have a look at the For Clients section. Or if you are a therapist and you would like to have some supervision or consultation around cases, feel free to go to my website, once again,
emdrdoctor.com.au, and have a look at the For Therapists button, and you'll find the Consultation and Supervision button to look on there.
I hope this has been helpful to you. I will talk to you again soon. In the meantime, take good care. Bye for now.
