This Is How To Overcome Perfectionism @Psych2go

Dr. K’s Guide to Mental Health explores Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and Meditation

#shorts #drk #mentalhealth

[WerbelMicrowave]

Not sure exactly when it happened, but in the past few years I switched from being a neurotic perfectionist to adopting the mindset "it doesn't need to be perfect... it needs to be done" and I have been a lot happier.

[juliusnovachrono]

As someone who has been called a perfectionist, this hits different. This is somewhat inspiring considering it shows that you can only what you can do.

[dvklaveren]

I'd recommend a "go for no" approach. There's this book out there that explains how you should be enthusiastically, but earnestly try to get a yes, even if you fully anticipate a "no".

This way of thinking works as a kind of therapeutic blasphemy for your ego. Being told no, in spite of your best efforts and walking away with a smile helps curb that self-critical part of yourself that says you'll get rejected unless you're perfect.

[callumhigham]

Focusing on the action not the outcome that’s good I’ll use that.

[pyr]

A lesson I recently learned that goes hand in hand with this: you can’t optimize what doesn’t already exist. When you try to start something like the perfect study routine or workout regime or aim training, etc, you’re designing it based on the outcome in mind. You want the routine to be perfect to reach the goal (good grades by the end of the semester, the giga chad bod, reaching the highest rank, etc). It’s better to first start as small as possible. It takes a lot of mental effort to push yourself every day without seeing results. If you workout for 2 hours 5 days a week with no results, you’ll feel like you’ve invested all this effort and have nothing to show for it. If you can find the point where you can feel good about doing the thing even without results, that’s where you should start. Instead of aim training for hour long sessions, do 5-10 minutes. If that’s too much do 1 minute. No one cares if 1 minute/day doesn’t yield anything, and after a few days you’ll feel like you wanna do 2. Then 3. Started this 3 weeks ago, am now meditating the most I have in my life, aim training 25ish minutes/day, finishing books in just a few days. For perfectionists, being told to start small doesn’t resonate because we know that we can optimize and make the ‘perfect’ routine that would accomplish our goals. But you can’t optimize a routine or habit that doesn’t already exist. Hope this helps someone.

[That_Chemist]

Your talk at VidCon was awesome - thanks for pouring your heart out :)

[Wanooknox]

As a perfectionist myself I'm going to focus on the action so hard! I'm going to absolutely crush focusing on the action! 😎

[StepBaum]

For me the most helpful thing in the wolrd was to see and realize, my perfectionism in a weird way made my work worse in the end. Eg. during a titration (analytic chemistry stuff) I took the first couple times so long to be extremely percise just to have crappy results in end because I was too perfectionistic and my stuff evaporated, so all my results were warped and wrong. The saying "Sometimes less is more" really helps out here. Another example is getting a great grade with much less studying than usual, because the work/benefit ratio in a sense is also more perfect even tho in the end the result is less perfect

[mimoleta]

I'm a hardcore perfectionist and it works like a double egded sword for me.

I can end up doing nothing because I am so afraid of failure or a mediocre result and on the other end, I can cry and feel devastated about failing a task and I will be so disappointed that I do it again and again until I get it perfect so it's actually a motivator in some cases.

[jacksonconnell]

It’s been days since I’ve last watched this video, stressing out as a perfectionist for a book I wanted to write. Now, I’m dead serious when I say this video worked for me. All I kept thinking and saying is “Just do it. You don’t know the outcome” and all of a sudden not only do I feel more comfortable in writing, I feel confident to speak up more often publicly (not entirely to strangers but definitely better than before). I feel less of a perfectionist because of it 😊❤

[claudiabcarvalho]

Another thing to consider: is that thing you're acting so perfectionist about really worth that? Because sometimes we worry too much about minor things, and we spent too much energy to do perfectly things that don't demand perfectionism.

[RM-hivv]

Perfectionist, “gifted kid, ” veterinarian, with inattentive ADHD (undiagnosed for the first 19 years of my 22 years practicing) who hit hard burnout 17 years in.

My coping mechanism to push through/mask my undiagnosed ADD was internal motivation though imagining negative consequences if I didn’t Do The Thing. It made the perfectionism feel that much worse.

So I hyper focused on my work, secondarily my relationship/(people-pleaser), always felt I couldn’t give enough to either, and got so far into the weeds giving more than I had to the rest that I spiraled away from any self-care and couldn’t answer “what do *I* want” for all the money in the world. I BECAME only what I DID for others. It was awful.

Realized too late my 20 year relationship was only there for what he could get from me, and when the well dried up, he moved on. Didn’t realize that relationship wasn’t a restoring part of my life. It felt good to “make him happy, ” but when I was tapped out, he never tried to give back.

Anyway, perfectionism and struggles of focus still mean I’m spending 2-4 extra hours after a shift with documentation and calling clients about labs and diagnostic plans and researching things for that day or reading histories and prepping for the next day, but I try every day to let something go, motivate myself without the internal bullying, and just keep trying to treat myself like I would a friend.

It’s hard.

[InceyWincey]

Dr K: Focus on the actions, you can’t study 50 hours a week, maybe 20 is enough.
My Brain: Oh ok.
Also Dr K: Did I do the best I could do? Should I have studied more.
My brain: Noted, study 40 hours a day, got it, thanks.

[codaboi]

I love Dr.K's depiction of people's attitude toward unkowable forces in the world throught the ages lol. "Whether it's god, the universe or RNG."

In 20 years the phrase "god damn it" is gonna be replaced with "my RNG f*ckin sucks dude"

[TravellerZasha]

One thing that helps me is doing quantity tasks over quality tasks. When i'm under a quota I have to turn off my perfectionism to make sure I meet it in time.

[horseforce]

I keep trying to remind myself that done is better than perfect because perfect doesn't get done.

[hunterxgirl]

Being a software developer that hate people asking for estimation and tight deadlines for something I've never done, this helps a lot. I can focus on building the program but the result is out of my control most of the time.

[blop-a-blop]

I have been doing that this year,
rewiring my brain from perfectionnism and constant feelings of guint and not being enough.
At some point, you just gotta work things the other way around. I started with the premice "I need to feel proud of myself". And THEN, from there, instead of asking myself "did my achievements today make me deserve to be pround?" I turned it into "I have done SOME thing(s) right today, so let's count THAT."

[ap]

I’m not a perfectionist but I judge myself a lot. I think there is a slight difference in the fact that I don’t try to make things perfect, but I still have that image in my head of how things are supposed to be and I don’t think I am able to achieve that.

[FrankKimono]

I'm saying to myself: I'm average, I do average job, I have average things and I like it. And don't care. I've stopped using words like: the best, good or the worst, bad as they relate to perfectionistic descriptions of actions, behaviours, jobs, things, features of a person. I just use for example: I did nice job, average job. Even using: ok job reminds me that it has to be the best. As a perfectionist I'm tired of constant striving to be the best, to do the best job etc. Society, schools, employers want you to always be the best, always do the best job, have the best grades, achievements. It is never enough. Vicious circle and never ending story of chasing a perfect state. I'd like to be in the middle to avoid constant disappointment either of doing everything or nothing as it doesn't meet the criteria of being the best. Also replaced words: always => sometimes, all => some, e.g some people are..., not all, I have to do => I may do, I can do