Have you been called a perfectionist? Are you sick and tired of playing the perfectionist game which leads to perfectionism anxiety?
If so, then check out this Month’s Book Therapy pick. It’s The Anxious Perfectionist: How to Manage Perfectionism-Driven Anxiety Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Clarissa W. Ong Ph.D. and Michael P. Twohig PhD. This book is all about breaking down anxiety and perfectionism.
If you’re new around here, my name is Diana Garcia, Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Florida, and owner of a Private Practice called Nurturing Minds Counseling. My Book Therapy Series is a monthly book series I pick one mental health self-help book to recommend, summarize, and explain three key insights from the book. Watch the video below or scroll down for the blog to help your perfectionist anxiety.
Watch The Video on The Book for Perfectionism Anxiety
Read The Blog on This Book for The Anxious Perfectionist
As you can see from the picture, this month’s pick is:
This book isn’t necessarily broken down into different parts. It has 10 chapters, with a forward and introduction. The first couple of chapters focuses on perfectionism, particularly stress, anxiety, and worry. It also breaks down what perfectionism is, including what the underlying reason that perfectionism exists, what drives perfectionism, and the function of how this shows up in people’s lives. The book focuses on the relationship between being a perfectionist and anxiety and how it doesn’t always serve you in the best way.
A good portion of the book is then dedicated to guiding you to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) skills to help you manage unhelpful perfectionism anxiety. To be honest, I’m an ACT nerd and it’s one of the main therapeutic modalities I use in my work hence why I gravitated towards this book on the anxious perfectionist.
Insight 1 from The Anxious Perfectionist
The first key insight is breaking down the two different types of perfectionism. The book goes through adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism. Adaptive perfectionism is typically when we strive for achievement; it’s gratifying, it’s based on meaning, and it’s motivated by this desire to approach and gain things.
You’re not focused exclusively on the outcome of any goal, you’re enjoying the process as you’re going along, so you can actually stop and smell the roses on the journey. You have a causal relationship with high standards, so you can kind of take it or leave it. There are instances when you adhere to standards and other instances where you can flexibly drop them. Basically this type of perfectionism can actually be helpful at times.
In contrast, maladaptive perfectionism is where you notice this pattern of self-criticism. You tend to have rigid and unrealistically high standards for yourself. There is not much room for flexibility, and you feel distressed when you cannot meet these standards. Ironically, even when you do meet them, you’re still dissatisfied! Maladaptive perfectionism is a lose-lose game.
The Anxious Perfectionist Book talks about the basis of this avoidance strategy and how it is motivated by this fear of something happening. Whether it is fear of failure or fear that you’re not good enough, fear is at the core here, and it’s more outcome-based. When you’re thinking of a goal, you’re just exclusively focused on getting the gold star, the A+, the promotion, and you lose sight of the actual process. This causes you not actually to enjoy whatever it is that you’re striving for. You just focus on the following outcome, and then, when you get that outcome, it’s not long-lasting because your perfectionism says, ‘okay, what’s next?’
Another big piece of maladaptive perfectionism is a consistently committed relationship with high standards, where there isn’t flexibility. It’s this idea that you must constantly meet these unrealistically high standards for yourself in all areas of your life. Notably, it can manifest in areas such as work or education, but it can really show in all areas, such as your role as a parent, a partner, a child, or a sibling. Do you resonate with adaptive perfectionism or maladaptive perfectionism? Maybe it’s both!
Insight 2 from The Anxious Perfectionist
Insight 2 from the book talks about the role rules and reasons to maintain your perfectionism anxiety. Rules are the weapons that perfectionism uses against you. It is not necessarily the rules themselves, but your obedience to them is fundamental here. Your perfectionism says that there are all these rules that you must follow. Maybe some of them might make sense, and you say, ‘well, these are values of mine, and they’re important.’
Sometimes values can be values in certain instances, but they can cross over to rules when they become rigid, and there’s not a lot of room for adjustments or mistakes. For instance, let’s stay you value being a good mother and you’ve identified being nurturing and affectionate as qualities that are part of this value. But you’re human so you’re not always kind and compassionate, sometimes you’re grumpy and you snap at your kids. In this instance, your perfectionism might use this “value” and make it a “rule” that you than use to internally beat yourself up because you didn’t meet this self imposed standard.
With perfectionism, there are a lot of rules that are in place, and a key factor is knowing whether this is a rule or a value. With rules, fear is at the core here, so there’s a fear that you’re going to be a fear of failure, you’re going to be a disappointment, or that something’s going to happen if you don’t adhere to these rigid rules.
Perfectionism tricks you into believing that it’s something that it’s important to you and that you value it. It also tricks you into believing that it’s not necessarily a rigid rule, but it’s going to help you get something that’s important and meaningful to you.
The second half is reasons, that’s when your perfectionistic mind will give you all these reasons why these rules are essential. Sometimes when you slow down, you realize maybe these reasons don’t make sense. You don’t even know why this is important to you. Maybe, at some point, you learned this rule; when you were growing up, it was essential, but it’s not anymore. For example, let’s say you identify “Discipline” as a value of yours. But when you further explore this, you start to acknowledge you just integrated your father’s value of Discipline and incorporated but it’s not all that important to you.
However, your mind still tries to convince you that this is truly important to you. Our mind works by trying to make sense of the world, and we like having explanations for situations. When thinking of reasons, think of it as your mind giving you all these reasons to try to understand the world. So, it makes sense that your mind gives you reasons for rules, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will always be helpful for you.
It is essential to learn how to shift through the perfectionism rules you’re adhering to and decide whether you want to listen to them. If they’re rules that are important or meaningful to you, then that’s okay!
Insight 3 from The Anxious Perfectionist
The third insight is the metaphor of the price of the perfectionist game: I love how the authors use this analogy of perfectionism as a kind of a game and that there is a trade-off here. There is a trade-off between your time, your energy, and what you’re taking time away from to follow these rigid rules. If there’s a rule that you want to be a reliable employee, but if you spend an hour over-researching a project that should take you 20 minutes, you lose those other 40 minutes that you could have used to spend time with your kids or your partner. The big piece is recognizing that there is a price to perfectionism.
Notably, the book talks about the high costs of stress, anxiety, and worry they notice in people who struggle with perfectionism. Honestly, it’s recognizing that there’s almost a transactional nature where every time you listen to your perfectionism, you’re giving something up: time, energy, focus, or attention. The book doesn’t say that you have to let go of all instances of adhering to perfectionism. If there are instances when you’re adhering to that adaptive perfectionism, it might be helpful to continue. More so, it’s helping you realize to step back and when you’re about to engage in a behavior because you’re listening to your perfectionism, decide if it is vital to you and if it is worth the trade-off.
Let’s say you’re about to do an all-nighter for a project that maybe isn’t that important to you, or maybe it is worth it to you; you are the one that gets to decide what’s a valued decision as opposed to blindly listening to this perfectionism game and rules that are in place. That leaves you exhausted, burned out, stressed, and worried.
Consider what the cost of buying into this perfectionist game has been for you. I want you to get a clear idea of what the cost and trade-offs in your life of constantly listening to perfectionist have been.
I encourage you to pick up this book if you struggling with perfectionism anxiety. There are a lot of concrete tools that are going to help you move through perfectionism.
Next Steps
For some more resources, check out the links below:
- Check out this blog on Is Being A Perfectionist A Weakness?
- If you’re ready to work on your anxiety and perfectionism in therapy, check out this page to learn more about counseling with me in Florida.
- If you need extra resources and supportive coaching instead of therapy, feel free to explore my coaching business. I’m here to help!
And as always, I hope you continue nurturing your mind, body, and soul, whatever that looks like for you.
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