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**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I mean, you can be creative as a parent. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You could be creative as a husband or wife; you can be creative as a business partner; creative as an individual just putting yourself out to the world with no real feedback. There's really no limit to how you can perceive creativity. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** This is why vulnerability is so intertwined with it, because when I'm being creative, it's like I'm exposed. So of course, if I can do it perfectly, what I'm trying to do is mitigate the fear around vulnerability. So in turn, that's going to make me more aversive too, or I'm gonna not want to ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, there's a saying that says, "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right," which is the exact opposite of "Done is better than perfect", right? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. I mean, there's so much value in just showing up, and when we look at it in particular fields or arenas, we do our best work, we are creative. We're really our best selves when we practice the art of just showing up, and so if I'm always jockeying for perfection, ironically, my lens, the... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, that reminds me of being paralyzed, bracing for a hit means you're stuck in a place, in an emotion or no movement; you're prepared for something that's not actually coming. So you're preparing for the wrong thing, really. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, and ironically-- so with that, when you're bracing yourself, you tend to constrain the way in which you think or see things. So your mental framework just got narrowed tremendously. So it's like, I can't then be creative. I have to stay within the confines of this box, so that I'm sure n... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[08:13\] Yeah. What's interesting is this idea that Brené brings up, which is this concept of a shield, that people use perfectionism or the pursuit of being perfect as the shield to protect against the three things that we don't want often to happen when we seek connection, which is blame, judgmen... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, and so when we talk about this today as a construct, perfectionism is this means of running away from the possibility of shame, and we've talked about shame in earlier episodes, and what it does to our brain. But shame is really, as a construct, this sense of not being enough; feeling li... |
If it's defensive, defenses are designed to protect and to help us buffer other things in life. Well, too much pressure on that one defense system - it's gonna break, because all it takes is the right context situation or intersecting variables and like, "Oh, shoot! I couldn't keep up." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, what you have to really ask though is why are people so focused on this external approval? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, you just nailed it. That's where it goes awry, is if and when my sense of self, my belief about who I am and what I can do is based on, dare I say, predominantly based on the feedback from other people. That's when it doesn't work well. Because it's literally like somebody sees behind my... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, how do you combat that then? So it's not advocating "Don't seek perfectionism, don't seek being perfect." It's the opposite of that, which is, "Where do you find your worth?" Maybe even beyond that, how can you be more secure in who you are, who you believe you are, and not rely upon the feedb... |
\[12:04\] Sure, you're going to have the feedback from others speak into that. It's not so much to decouple it and to remove it. It's just to say-- you said predominant, but what if you can flip that and say, "Well, the majority of my self-worth is derived from what I perceive as my self-worth, versus allowing others t... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. Look, everybody is totally entitled to their own opinion of what they like and what they think is good enough or acceptable, but we're all different. Nobody starts, really, in the same place. I mean, genes play a role, environment plays a role, opportunities... There's so many things tha... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right, because that person's feedback is limited to their awareness, experience and understanding of your life, and it's just a fraction, a moment. And it's also based on a majority of assumptions. It could be comparative to the person prior to you, which may have been more collected, not losing the... |
There's a saying around assume, which we won't say on the show because, hey, that's just a little crass, and we have a very wide field audience, and we don't cuss on the show, but the point is, you know what happens when you assume. Things happen. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right, and so when we're talking about perfectionism, you said, "What do we do?" Well, I'm gonna back up a little bit, and while we've talked about it in general terms, I want to talk about it from the perspective of how researchers have sought to clarify it. I don't know how familiar our list... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[15:56\] I'm not an expert researcher, but I can imagine you want validity and reliability in your research and the data? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That would make sense. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, so validity says, "Is what we're measuring or how we're looking at this actually that?" So it's like, "Is it true?" And then reliability says, "Hey, if somebody else were to repeat exactly our research, would they get the same outcome?" So what I want to talk about is this perfectionism ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, I identify with many of those, personally. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** To some degree. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Sure, and I think many of us can. But this is just it - just because you do some of these things doesn't mean like there's something wrong with you. That's why I prefer to think of every topic we talk about in terms of what's functional and what is not as functional; or what works well, and is... |
So in this, one of the things that they found is it really is this excessive concern over making mistakes that contributes to people who have more difficulty. Because if I am so concerned-- just what we were talking about earlier with outcomes... If I'm trying to mitigate a potential ill outcome, aren't I gonna be real... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. You're too busy being concerned... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...to show up. "What were you doing?" "I was being concerned." |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right, and so with this, that doubts about the quality of their actions -- I see that or hear that similar to this undercurrent of anxiety, suspicion around how good am I doing. I'm not sure. So concern over mistakes is significant, and then the sense of doubt about the quality of your actions... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Nope. Never. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Never, right? That's how you've gotten so far in life. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Some might say... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Low bar. \[laughs\] So self-oriented perfectionism - I just have these expectations that I've got to adhere to or achieve. Then there's socially-prescribed perfectionism, wherein individuals feel like others expect them to be perfect. And then other-oriented, where individuals place high statu... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:10\] Yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right? So people experience these different perfectionistic traits to various degrees. So one person might score high on all three, but they might just fall in an extreme in one or two of those, not all of those. So she found that socially-prescribed perfectionism - this researcher, Molnar - t... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Who would have thought? I mean, when we started talking today, were you like, "Oh, I had no idea my perfectionism could affect my health." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, I guess it would make sense, because if you feel the pressure from others to perform at a certain level, which may not be in line with 1) your capability, or 2) your own personal expectation, you might feel anxious or have anxiety, which is the starting step to other mental health things that ... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. Well, so even thinking about this, I can't help but move this into the lane of work, because I think a lot of people work... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Social pressure's there, yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** In the workplace, we want to perform well. So maybe you wouldn't say perfectionism in the workplace is a negative thing, but if I don't learn how to navigate myself, my mind, my energy in helpful ways, I then become a vicarious participant in my own challenges that I complain about. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's interesting, because an expectation of someone else on you is the standard of perfect. So if in work we're rewarded for performance, for meeting expectations, which as I just said, I think it's synonymous with the standard of perfection, because if someone says, "This is what I expect of you," ... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. Yeah. Now, can I take it a step further then and talk about it in terms of goodness of fit... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Sure. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** ...between what you do? So going, what if there is a marked difference between your expectations and your bosses' or your colleagues' expectations of your performance - now what? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. I mean, I think there's certainly a requirement to do a job. So if you just break it down to "What do we need someone in this position to do to adequately perform in this position?" That makes sense, you're gonna have that. But the flexibility around that, especially when it comes to somebody ... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[24:04\] Right. Yeah. Well, I think about this, for example, in the context of any startup company. When you're doing startup, there's usually a lot of work involved, and a few people are doing a lot of the work. |
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