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Perfectionism sneaks into the tiniest corners of life. Triple checking an email. Feeling guilty for missing a workout or hearing this little voice whisper. You know, if you're not flawless, people are going to judge you. If that sounds familiar. This episode is for you. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning. You're in the right place. Hello, Relishers, it is
Alyssia here. And welcome back to the Relish podcast. So today we have got a very full entree episode to map out together. We're going to go through what perfectionism really is, where it comes from, how it shows up, and some practical ways to loosen its grip. And I'll also say this perfectionism isn't all bad and we're going to talk about that too. If you have been enjoying these episodes, please tap, follow and subscribe so that you don't miss what's ahead. And if you know someone who struggles with perfectionism, this is the perfect episode to share with them. It is such
a common thread, and who knows, it could be the reminder that they need today. So what is perfectionism? I always like to start with definitions. Perfectionism is a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable. Perfect means entirely without fault or defect. Flawless. Now, perfectionism can sound kind of noble on the surface, but as you may suspect, either logically or maybe you just know from your experience, it is a setup. It's a setup for suffering. Research consistently shows that perfectionism is actually not a strength, but it is a risk factor. It is strongly linked to anxiety, depression, eating disorders, burnout, even early mortality. In other words, it does not make us feel better. It actually
makes us stuck. Perfectionism is an all or nothing trap because I'm either perfect or I'm a failure. I'm. I'm successful or I'm worthless. And here's the kicker. It's not even possible to actually be perfect. So why do we do it? Where does perfectionism come from? One way or another, we learned it. So, for example, maybe when you were little, maybe you came home with a report card full of A's, and the one thing that your parent noticed was the B. True story, by the way. Or maybe you spilled milk at the table and got scolded for it. Also a true story. So yes, those both happened to me. And you know, it wasn't trauma, you know? I'm not judging my parents
and as an adult, I totally get it. But the point is, at that time, my very young brain that was still developing learned mistakes, equal rejection. So you've probably had your own moments, and they don't have to be dramatic to leave an imprint over time. Your nervous system wires into that lesson that if I get it wrong, I won't be loved or I'm going to disappoint someone. That is how perfectionism starts. It's not a conscious choice. It is a protective strategy that your brain thinks will keep you safe. And we can blame. You know, social media, our parents, the culture that we live in and probably all of those play a role. But
my approach is, you know, quite simply, perfectionism is conditioning for whatever reasons, probably various reasons your brain learned it, and a truth that you're probably seeing. I love coming back to here is that your brain loves binaries because binaries feel safe. Good. Bad. Right? Wrong. Success. Failure. They offer a sense of certainty in a world that's unpredictable. But what feels safe can quickly become a trap. Psychologists talk about some different flavors of perfectionism, if you will. There can be self oriented where you are expecting yourself to be perfect. You can be other
oriented where you're expecting other people to be perfect. You can have socially prescribed perfectionism. That's where you're believing that others are expecting you to be perfect. And there can also be more either overt or covert manifestations of these. So I kind of see a mix in myself, and for me it doesn't actually show up as I want to be perfect. It's more a fear of making mistakes. So the behaviors, the actions, the manifestations can look similar, but the origin pain and the intention behind it can be different. Regardless, I don't really think it matters which one you label yourself with for the
purpose of this episode. What matters is recognizing the root of what seems like all suffering I'm learning through this podcast is binary thinking. Often when perfectionism shows up, it comes with a lot of other behaviors alongside it. Some common ones you might recognize are being really hard on yourself self-criticism over striving, burnout, a fear of failure or rejection, procrastinating or paralysis. Needing external validation or needing approval from other people. And another big one is comparison. Okay? But all of this boils down to the same loop that if I can't be perfect, I am a failure. And that's really shame. Shame is a sense that there is something wrong with me. It's different than guilt. Guilt says I did
something wrong or bad. Shame says I am bad, I am. What's wrong? So it's not that you know I failed the task or the behavior. It's not about the behavior. It's a sense of I am a failure. It's who I am. We internalize the failures in the mistakes as who we are, as it says something about me. And that shame keeps us stuck in this all or nothing mindset. That behavior Where we become. What to me, in my experience, feels like the swinging pendulum trying to control our experience. You know, no one likes uncertainty. The brain craves certainty. We want to be in control. We want to avoid the unknown. And this is what
perfectionism is subtly trying to do. Its trying to control. So I'll share a personal story some of my long time munchies. If you're listening, you might remember this. Okay, how I struggled with disordered eating, both with binging and restriction. And I also struggled with exercise addiction for years. There were many times in my life when I would be following whatever my plan was at the time. You know, it could have been for days or weeks and then I would have an off day, you know, I would eat some sugar or I'd, you know, skip a workout or binge something. And the
story in my head Ahead. Was. It's all ruined. You know that pendulum would swing so hard. Like. Well, fuck it, I'll just begin again on Monday. And then Monday. Sometimes turned into, you know, the next month. Meanwhile, I'm actually doubling down on the same habits I wanted to change because the belief was, well, I blew it anyway. I might as well eat all the cereal in the house. You know, cereal was one of my go to binge foods. Now, the irony, of course, is that I always ended up eating way more than I would have if it had just been the one off day.
Your body doesn't actually care if you miss a day. It doesn't care if you eat some sugar or skip a workout. But if I'm doing that every day, that's when it becomes a problem for my body. What matters isn't if we miss the one day, it's how quickly can we return to alignment. The body is so adaptive. It's resilient. It's the mind that panics. It's the story, the all or nothing belief that keeps you stuck. We have talked about how perfectionism shows up in our lives, and I want to dig into one of the sneaky ways it shows up, at least for me. And that has
been streaks. All right. So, you know, like the chain of days where you are on track, you are on track until you're not until you miss one. So let's get into that. I know many of us in personal growth love a good streak. You know, I want to do this for ten days, 30 days, 50, 100 days. I get it. They can be really motivating. And the intention is for that streak to be a tool that can keep us up with whatever behavior we want to keep active and alive. It's like a tool of accountability. You know, I love my peloton, and they used to do this thing where they would keep track of how many days in a row you have worked
out. Maybe they still do. I don't know. I haven't actually been on mine in a while, but I remember, you know, 5 or 6 years ago, there was a time where I had to go on vacation, and I was so irritated and uncomfortable having to let go of my streak. And I went as far as to think, you know, should I try to use the peloton app on my phone to keep the streak going? You know, and maybe from their perspective, it was a smart business choice, but it really made me miserable on my trip. And the tool is no longer meeting the intention of actually helping me with my
workouts. Now it's just reinforcing this maladaptive behavior of perfectionism. So streaks pose the same problem I was talking about. They hold us to this perfectionistic standard, and as a tool they can lead to rigidity and fear. You know, I have friends and clients who can't go without their phone for a day because they can't miss their, you know, Duolingo streak or whatever. This is the opposite of freedom and relishing your life. This is attachment and fear of letting go, of control. The streaks can feel motivating, but what happens when you miss the streak when you break
it? So then we're back in the shame. We're back in. I've failed. I'm bad. I'm never going to be able to do it again. I talked about this just the other day. I did a quick bite on tools, not rules. The problem is not actually the streaks themselves. It's how we relate to them. It's when the streak becomes the point, the tool becomes the rule. And then when I break it, I don't just feel disappointed, I feel defective. So when it comes to streaks, I tell clients the metric shouldn't be how many days have I gone in a row? The wiser question is how do I meet myself when
I miss a day? Can I actually just begin again? My body doesn't care if I eat sugar or, you know, miss a workout or a couple workouts or whatever. The mind is the one that cares. If I mess up on Tuesday. I actually can just begin again on Wednesday. And it could be, you know. 7:03 p.m. on a Wednesday. It doesn't need to be Monday or next month. And that's actually doing my body so much more justice. An example for myself of this. When I started meditating a decade ago, I the very first year that I started, I only did five minutes a day. I was not, you know, I didn't have
any intention to become an experienced meditator. I wasn't trying to reduce anxiety. I was just curious about the practice. I was drawn to it for various reasons and without any attachment. I was like, okay, let's try five minutes a day. It felt approachable. Now did I get it every single day? Like, no, I miss sometimes. Did I track how many I did or didn't get? No. I mean, it's actually kind of interesting reflecting now because that's so my tendency. It's interesting with this I didn't, and now it's the like. One thing I still do, um. But I didn't put pressure on myself. I didn't put
pressure on myself to do it perfectly every day or even more than five minutes. And all of this helped. And then if you consider after a year of doing five minutes every day, guess how much meditation that is? Okay, if I actually did it every day, I calculated it out before this. That's like 30 hours. And even if I did it five days a week, that's over 20 hours. And there's a ton of literature demonstrating that changes in the brain happened from far less practice than that. All right. And then by the end of that year, that habit, the five minute habit, was
so ingrained in me that it was a much quicker journey for me to jump to ten, 20, 30 minutes and beyond meditating. And to this day, meditation is still my primary practice that I come back to. It's the one thing I come back to again and again. So tiny moments and tiny practices accumulate. It doesn't need to be perfect to. Matter. And in fact, it will probably end up being more impactful if we are not trying to be perfect because we aren't stuck in shame or judgment, and then we can just begin again with kindness. So let's talk about some practical ways to work with perfectionism. What do we do about it? Here are some practices I have found helpful. One is celebrate good enough. Ask yourself
what would good enough look like here? It's not about lowering your standards. It's choosing humanity over rigidity. You are a human. You can't be perfect. Choose something reasonable. And when you do that. Notice the discomfort of feeling you need to do more. And then just don't. Don't do anymore. You know you don't need to do anything about it. You just respond to it rather than react. One way to do this that I used to do right when I first realized how perfectionism was debilitating for me, is practicing imperfection on purpose. So I would intentionally miss a day intentionally, you know, do something that, like,
bothers you, wear mismatched socks, you know, send the email without reading it five times. Start to train your nervous system to survive. Being imperfect, you know, widen your window of tolerance for imperfection. Another way to work with this is to challenge your perfectionistic thoughts. So you could use tools like CBT, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy or Byron Katie's the work. Those are tools that can help you ask, you know, is it true, is it true that this mistake is going to ruin everything? Those are tools that can help you reframe and get perspective. I also like to play with language. So instead of saying I'm lost. Try. Mm. I'm
disconnected. I'm a little disconnected right now. The lost or. I'm. I'm off track. I'm off. The bandwagon is very rigid. It's fixed, and I'm disconnected as fluid. And even the word itself makes space to reconnect. The fluid language opens up to possibility. I did an episode on this a couple of weeks ago. Self-compassion. I also did a deep dive on this a couple of weeks ago. But the sentiment with self-compassion is be kind to yourself and acknowledge progress, not perfection. Treat yourself like a friend. If someone that you love and care about were working toward the same
goal as you and they were not perfect, what would you say to them? That's the way you're going to speak to yourself. Something else I want to mention perfectionism. I've said it's a setup. It's a setup for black and white thinking. But that is not to say that you haven't benefited from it. And it's also not to say that you Can't continue to employ the skills that you've learned. Sometimes when I work with people on perfectionism, they know that it's hurting them. They know it's damaging, but they are very afraid of doing work around it, because their fear
is that their perfectionism is what's brought them success. And I want to speak to this because in some ways that's actually probably true. And that's okay. And in fact, this could be true with a lot of your conditioned patterns, this conditioning, you know, this stuff that we took on when our brain was developing as kids to navigate our environments, you know, and particularly the unmet needs. Recall the example I shared where I learned to fear making mistakes. My brain has fired those pathways over and over again. It becomes familiar to the brain
to the point where it's happening compulsively. Think about that word compulsive. You know, you are not consciously trying to be hard on yourself or judgmental or fearful. It just happens. That is the react energy we're talking about. We're not choosing it. But those patterns, like perfectionism or fear of making mistakes, they also come with gifts and with skills. And that could be different skills for each of us depending on how it manifests. So for me, it has made me pretty detail oriented, pretty diligent. It's made me reliable. It's made me hard
working. If I start working on this pattern of perfectionism and I want to break the black and white nature of it all, you know, from fixed to fluid, I still get to retain those skills, being detail oriented and being a hard worker. The difference is, instead of using that perfectionism compulsively as a protective mechanism. I can use the skills from a place of agency and choice. I can respond rather than react. Instead of that pattern controlling me, I actually gain more control. All right. I'd just like to bring that up, because I want to
reassure you that this path to shedding the compulsion, it's very freeing. You actually get more control. I also want to acknowledge something for my neurodivergent listeners, because various neuro divergences can be inclined toward perfectionism, being diagnosed ADHD, and autistic myself. For me, the black and white thinking, the rigidity, craving, certainty, these in many ways feel innate. And while recognizing that this is in part my brain's wiring, you know that in a lot of ways it's been helpful. It's been normalizing and validating of my experience. I think it can also be limiting if I relate to it
in a fixed mindset kind of way. So if I decide this is just how I am, this is just how my brain is and there's no possibility for relief. You know, that doesn't give me a lot of agency that keeps me stuck. And I can't speak for anyone else. But through a lot of inner work for me, I have learned to separate. What is that neurological inclination from the social conditioning that I picked up to navigate the world? And that clarity has given me more choice and more ease and less rigidity. So I still love my routines, morning routines, evening routines, work routines, travel routines. I've got more routines than I can count,
but I used to be. The way I used to relate to them was I was very rigidly attached to them. I was I would become very distressed when I couldn't have them or keep them. And now this work around them. My reflection, my understanding, the mindfulness tools it's all helped me see that I can enjoy the routines, I can make use of them when I can have them, and when life requires more flexibility, I can let them go better than I used to be able to. Okay, now. And I know my system thrives when I can have them, but I do not become nearly as distressed if I have to
travel or people or in town, for instance. And I'm also clear about which routines are the most important for me to prioritize as non-negotiable. So neuro divergence. I know it shows up differently for everyone. My situation won't apply to everyone, but I wanted to share that because this has been very empowering for me to dismantle some of my attachments by being fluid and curious enough to look at it. And ultimately, whether you are neurodivergent or not, all human brains are prone to black and white thinking. That's just normal. So if you take one thing away from today, let it be. This
perfectionism is just a pattern that your brain learned. It's not who you are. You can keep the gifts that it gave you, but you don't have to let them run the show. So here is your reflection for today. Where in your life do you notice perfectionism sneaking in? And what might it look like to practice in perfectionism, even just a little bit? Maybe this week. Maybe it's letting yourself send the good enough text without rewriting at 18 times. Maybe it's forgiving yourself for missing a workout. Maybe it's celebrating that one
imperfect action instead of shaming yourself for not doing more. All right. Remember, transformation requires transition. Progress happens in that gray area, not in the black and white perfect binaries. Because if I am so attached to a binary, the truth is I am probably not seeing clearly. All right, thank you so much for being here with me today. If this episode resonated, please share it with a friend who might need permission Permission to practice in perfectionism. And if you haven't yet, please tap, follow and subscribe so that the next episode can land straight in your feed. And please also come find me on social,
you know? Follow me @alyssiasheikh for daily tools and reflections. And if you would like to support the podcast, please leave a five star rating. quick review that makes such a difference in helping others find us. All right, I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your week.
