Good afternoon everyone. Happy Friday Eve, and welcome to today's webinar hosted by Patagonia Health. Today's webinar topic is on overcoming perfectionism.
My name is Denton Dickerson and I will be your moderator for today. If you are not familiar with the Zoom webinar platform, make sure to take a look at the control panel on the bottom of your screen. This is where you can configure your audio settings, send chat messages, and ask questions.
Today our presenter is Dr. Matt Zakreski. He is a creative clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Neurodiversity Collective. I am going to let him take it from here.
Okay, thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me. Very excited to be here with you all today.
So yes, that is me, that handsome gentleman right there. This presentation is called How to Stop Moving the Goalposts: How to Overcome Perfectionism.
As a clinical psychologist, I feel like my biggest job is to merge neuroscience and neuropsychology with clinical practice to make these skills accessible so we can use them in our day-to-day lives. That is what I am here to do. We are going to learn about perfectionism and talk about some techniques to manage it.
I will tell you this upfront. Almost every time I give this presentation, somebody cries because a lot of us sit with high levels of perfectionism thinking life cannot be any other way. This is just how life is, and maybe it is not.
I am going to ask for some participation. Because this is a panelist format, I cannot call anybody out on video, so you are lucky there, but I do hope you participate. This is a personal process, and if you have a big reaction to it, your body is trying to tell you something. Lean into those feelings.
We all play a role in how perfectionism manifests in our own lives, our employees’ lives, and our kids’ lives. We are not here to blame anybody. Once we know more, we can do better, and that is what I am here to help you do.
We are going to jump into our first activity and it is a drawing task. I am going to give you a minute to grab a piece of paper and something to write with. And yes, I put my money where my mouth is, I have mine here too.
Denton, that means you too, buddy. Just because you are the big host guy does not mean you do not have to do the thing.
Denton: Awesome. I will join in.
If everyone has their materials, I am going to click a button and an image will appear on the screen. I will give you 60 seconds to draw the image. Now, 30 seconds is not enough time to draw this. I very intentionally picked an image and time frame that makes this basically impossible. Just do your best. No one is grading your work.
Here is our 30 second timer. Three, two, one, go.
Eight seconds left.
All right. You can put your drawing aside. We will be coming back to it.
Perfectionism is characterized by a person striving for flawlessness and setting high performance standards. This is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding other people’s evaluations.
To truly have perfectionism, you must strive for flawlessness, set high standards, have critical self-evaluations, and be worried about others’ evaluations. It is multidimensional. There are thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In a word, perfectionism is about anxiety.
We are going to reframe perfectionism as something understood as an aspect of personality that plays out in interactions with demand situations. These demands can be personal, like cooking dinner for the in-laws, or professional, like giving a webinar on perfectionism to 90 healthcare professionals.
There are two major types:
Adaptive perfectionism:
High motivation and realistic goals. You derive pleasure from success.
Maladaptive perfectionism:
Unattainable goals that lead to depression and anxiety. Success brings only relief, not joy.
There are also three directional types:
Perfectionism is about avoiding failure and avoiding the pain associated with failure. As we get older, we learn more strategies to avoid failure. Some are helpful, many are not.
The one thing all perfectionism has in common is failure. You cannot live life without failing. I just stumbled over a word and there is a typo on a slide, which makes the perfectionist in my brain scream.
The difference is what we do with failure. The healthy perfectionist learns from it. The maladaptive perfectionist either obsessively increases effort until joy is gone or quits entirely.
I always quote Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus:
If at first you do not succeed, find out why.
During COVID the concept of invisible perfectionism emerged. Many of us are overworked and overwhelmed. If you imagine your emotional thermometer melting down at 100, most of us are waking up at 92. Our brain says everything must go perfectly today or I will melt down.
Of course, things do not go perfectly. Then we explode over something small and feel shame. The cycle repeats.
We need to learn what we can take off our plate and what we must let go of.
Procrastination is about trying to control anxiety. If I never finish the project, I never have to get feedback, which means the project stays “perfect” in my mind.
Anxiety makes problems seem bigger. The more we avoid, the bigger the problem feels. Eventually we flip from avoidance to panic, and then it becomes urgent.
Here is an 89-degree angle. Have a great day.
If this bothers you, you are not alone. Many people react strongly to imperfection in the environment. It makes the perfectionistic brain itchy.
I will move past the slide so you can breathe easier.
Perfectionistic feelings are rising globally, and this correlates with 24/7 media and social media.
We compare ourselves to others. When we were younger, our comparison circle was small. Now it is global. Our brains have not adapted to that.
If we are going to compare, we need realistic targets. We cannot be the best in the world at something. We can compare to people in our environment or learn from others instead of judging ourselves against them.
Psychologist Randy Frost identifies six major components:
The key word is perceived. It does not matter how much criticism is actually happening. It matters how much you believe there is.
Gauss was considered the greatest mathematician of his time. He refused to publish anything unless it was perfect. After his death, they discovered unpublished work in his desk that would have advanced mathematics by 50 years.
You can be successful as a maladaptive perfectionist, but imagine how much more successful you could be if you allowed yourself to make mistakes.
Here is my bear drawing. A few contextual notes:
Comparing your drawing to mine is absurd. You were never meant to succeed at an impossible task. Yet you probably judged yourself anyway. This illustrates how perfectionism works.
CBT helps change maladaptive thinking patterns such as:
We cannot stop thoughts from coming, but we can change our relationship to them.
Rather than judging from the top down (expecting 100 and noticing what is wrong), start from zero and recognize how far you have come.
We expose you to the fear, then teach you to calm down from specific stress points. Over time, you learn how to manage higher levels of stress.
ACT teaches that feelings are not good or bad. They simply exist. When we acknowledge them rather than fight them, they lose their power.
Research shows:
Our brain often fixates on the 1 percent of negativity, but most people are rooting for us.
A story about a student athlete demonstrates that when we focus on what a person can do rather than what they are not doing, their performance and confidence improve.
Good is the enemy of great, but great is often the enemy of done.
Every activity has things we can control and things we cannot. The unknowns are always part of the process. We must accept that.
I really enjoyed giving this talk to you all. I hope you got something from it. If you have any questions, here are ways to reach me. I will send the slides so you can share them out. We also have recommended TED Talks and books that can help you or your kids.
You were an awesome audience. Thank you for giving up your Thursday afternoon to be here.
Denton:
Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Dr. Matt. That was an amazing presentation. Love what you said about “should equals shame plus could.” I thought that was great.
Dr. Matt:
I try to live my life by it.
Denton:
Thanks everyone for joining our presentation today. Patagonia Health is an integrated EHR, practice management, and billing solution. If you want to learn more about us, visit www.patagoniahealth.com.
I hope everyone has a great day, and thanks again, Dr. Matt.
Dr. Matt:
Thank you. Have a wonderful day.