Is Perfectionism Harming Your Relationships?

I recently interviewed clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, whose book How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists came out on January 7th. We talked about perfectionism and how it impacts our relationships.

Dr. Marisa G Franco (MF): What are some hidden signs that people might exhibit perfectionistic tendencies?

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen (EH): Perfectionism is a misnomer. At the anxiety specialty center where I work, nobody has ever come in and said, “You know, Ellen, I’m a perfectionist. I need everything to be perfect.” People come in and say, “‘I feel like I’m failing.’ ‘I feel like I’m falling behind.’ ‘I have a million things on my plate, and I’m not doing any of it well’”. Sometimes you’ll get a little narcissistic flavor of, “‘I’m not reaching my full potential’ or ‘I’m not optimizing my life,’” but it’s the sense of not being good enough. And I think that’s something that many of us can relate to.

In fact, I would say the majority of my clients have perfectionism, at the overlapping Venn diagram center of their problems, but almost never do they self-identify as perfectionists.

MF: It sounds like there’s this rigidity of self that I have to be a certain way to be valuable, so I therefore, cannot fully express all these different parts of me and the result is a narrowed way of being, or a decrease in overall expressiveness.

EH: For sure. It’s the idea that worth is contingent upon performance.

MF: Something I deal with in the realm of friendship for worth being so attached to performance, [relates to] romance and marital status. Oh, I need to have a romantic partner to be acceptable in modern society, and even if I have these friends, they don’t count as, a legitimate community, because, they’re not what monopolizes the definition of what’s perfect.

EH: Absolutely, I mean in perfectionism, we orient to rules. That doesn’t mean that the rules have to make sense or have to be even within our values. So I think it’s easy to absorb this message from society that, romantic love is the ideal, and to not see all the platonic love around us.

There’s a sense that rolling back perfectionism has to be a total overhaul. And I want to emphasize that, if we do roll back perfectionism, we might not do anything differently at all. We don’t have to change anything. It might be just that we start following our values, as opposed to the rules, what is really important to me? What does make me feel connected or loved or accepted, or what do I enjoy?

It’s just a different mindset driving it. You don’t have to do anything different.

MF: It sounds like, as you’re describing it, too, that perfectionism is about avoiding certain emotions, such as shame, or feeling bad or wrong. There’s the inability to metabolize those emotions, so you just have to consistently run from them. That sounds tiring.

EH: There is a term called emotional perfectionism, and that is, either feeling or demonstrating, only the good stuff. So I only allow myself to feel happy. If sadness or shame comes along, you squish those to only demonstrate certain emotions—no matter what we have to put on a happy face or be excited or perform the positive emotions, regardless of what we feel. I think a lot of us are raised that emotions are dictated by the situation at hand as opposed to how we truly feel.

MF: Yeah, that sounds counter to vulnerability.

I think about perfectionism as something that goes on within you, but is there also perfectionism that people apply to others—thinking people around me have to be perfect or I don’t [like them]?

EH: 100%. So there’s, there are three types of perfectionism. There’s self-oriented perfectionism, and that’s what we think of when we say the word perfectionism. So that’s being hard on ourselves.

But then there’s other-oriented perfectionism, which is when we’re hard on the people around us, and ironically, is usually the people closest to us, like a partner or kids, you know, our direct reports at work. It’s the people we think reflect on us.

And then the third type is socially prescribed perfectionism, and that is assuming that others will be hard on us. In a demanding society, that is the one that is increasing exponentially.

Perfectionism Essential Reads

Trapped by Perfection

Beyond Perfectionism: How to Build Sustainable Success

MF: It seems like wherever there are high levels of control, there’s potential for perfectionism. If you’re trying to really control something what is the perfectionism that might be underlying that?

EH: Yeah. And that could be self-control, control of others, or it could be putting our best foot forward so others can’t control us.

MF: Well, are there any other things that you feel are important to share that we haven’t gotten to?

EH: We haven’t talked about self-criticism.

We don’t have to stop criticizing ourselves. In fact, we probably won’t, because self-criticism is the heart of human regulation. If we try to stop criticizing ourselves, we’re fighting biology and evolution.

Instead, what we can do, is to try to change our relationship to our self-criticism. And, you know, some brains are more optimistic or pessimistic, some are more introverted or extroverted, and some are just wired to be a little more self-critical, mine included. But I don’t have to listen to that. I can take it less seriously and less literally and approach it like the music in a coffee shop or the music that’s in the background at a grocery store. You can hear it, but you don’t have to dance along. I don’t have to change myself or talk to myself differently. I can just let it go by, you know, like sushi at a revolving restaurant. That’s just what my brain does, and that’s all.

When you know [self-criticism] is part of the process, it helps you not fold to it because you’re like this is another wave in the process.

MF: Wow. So it’s like, self-acceptance isn’t about cheerleading yourself all the time, but having enough distance from your critical thoughts so you’re not constantly internalizing them.

EH: A lot of people with perfectionism won’t try new things, and won’t take a risk because they don’t want to struggle or be bad at something.

If you think oh this is how it works—I am supposed to fall on the bunny slope. I am supposed to stare at the blank page, having no idea what to write—[you’ll feel better]. Negative emotions are only a problem if we think they shouldn’t be happening.

MF: On a podcast, you mentioned something about more Beatles less Frozen…

EH: I have a little bit of beef with [the idea that] you have to let your bad feelings go. That implies an unwillingness to have them. You need to make them go away. And so, yeah, the tagline is, less Frozen—you don’t have to let it go. More Beatles—let it be. It can just sit there. It can just be there. You don’t have to shove it down, because it’s just going to pop up like a beach ball pushed underwater.

Let it be there and go run towards what’s important, meaningful, and purposeful for you.