That Feeling of “Always-Behind and Never-Enough”—Here’s the Antidote | Ellen Hendriksen

Summary

Summary of "That Feeling of 'Always-Behind and Never-Enough'—Here’s the Antidote" | Ellen Hendricksen on 10% Happier with Dan Harris

In this enlightening episode of 10% Happier with Dan Harris, host Dan Harris welcomes back Dr. Ellen Hendricksen, a clinical psychologist from Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Together, they delve deep into the pervasive issue of perfectionism, exploring its intricate relationship with anxiety and uncovering practical strategies to combat the incessant feeling of never being "enough."

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1. Defining Perfectionism

Dr. Hendricksen begins by addressing the elusive nature of perfectionism, noting, “'Perfectionism is demanding of ourselves a level of performance higher than is required for the situation.'” (04:25). This definition highlights how perfectionism isn't merely about striving for excellence but involves setting excessively high standards that surpass what is necessary.

2. The Root of Perfectionism: Insufficiency Not Perfection

Contrary to popular belief, perfectionism isn't genuinely about seeking perfection. Dan Harris emphasizes this misnomer when he states, "Perfectionism as a word is a bit of a misnomer when applied to the actual condition." (08:48). Dr. Hendricksen concurs, explaining that the core issue lies in “never feeling good enough,” where individuals tie their self-worth to their performance.

3. Dr. Hendricksen's Personal Struggle with Perfectionism

Sharing her personal journey, Dr. Hendricksen reveals how prolonged perfectionism took a toll on her physical health: “I couldn't turn my head to the right because my muscles were too tight. I had blown out my forearm from typing too much. I got a GI illness.” (12:19). These physical manifestations underscored the unsustainable nature of her relentless self-criticism.

4. Perfectionism in Relation to Other Disorders

Perfectionism serves as a linchpin for various psychological disorders. Dr. Hendricksen explains, “Perfectionism is not a disorder in and of itself. It's more of a mindset or a trait. But it definitely lies at the heart of other diagnosable disorders like social anxiety or OCD, eating disorders, some kinds of treatment-resistant anxiety.” (13:01). This connection underscores the pervasive influence of perfectionism on mental health.

5. Evolutionary and Cultural Factors

Ellen discusses the dual origins of perfectionism, attributing it to both genetic predispositions and environmental factors: “It's an interpersonal problem. We do it to try to stay in others' good graces, to try not to get criticized or rejected or judged.” (17:56). She further elaborates on how modern culture, with its competitive and performance-oriented ethos, exacerbates these innate tendencies.

6. The Many Salads of Perfectionism

Using a creative metaphor, Dr. Hendricksen describes perfectionism as a "salad," with myriad varieties but common dressing ingredients: “There's infinite ways of being perfectionistic.” (21:21). This analogy emphasizes the diverse manifestations of perfectionism, from obsession over finances to parenting styles.

7. Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Perfectionism

Differentiating between healthy and unhealthy perfectionism, Ellen states, “Healthy perfectionism is when we strive for excellence... The healthy heart of perfectionism is a personality trait called conscientiousness.” (23:19). She warns against the slippery slope where conscientiousness can spiral into destructive perfectionism if not balanced appropriately.

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The Seven Shifts to Address Perfectionism

Dr. Hendricksen introduces seven transformative shifts designed to dismantle the underlying sense of insufficiency fueling perfectionism. Each shift offers actionable strategies to foster self-acceptance and genuine self-worth.

Shift 1: From Self-Criticism to Kindness

Ellen emphasizes the importance of redefining one’s relationship with self-criticism. Sharing a personal anecdote, she recounts, “My brain is still making those thoughts. I can hear it. But I don't have to sing along.” (33:02). By treating self-criticism as mere background noise, individuals can cultivate a kinder internal dialogue.

Shift 2: Coming Home to Your Life

This shift encourages individuals to align their actions with personal values rather than external performance metrics. Ellen advises, “Am I living the life I want to live? Am I being the person I want to be?” (37:37). Focusing on what truly matters enhances a sense of agency and fulfillment.

Shift 3: From Rules to Flexibility

Rigid rules often trap perfectionists in a cycle of self-imposed obligations. Ellen illustrates, “Rules will start to get in our way when they become rigid, all-or-nothing, or when we impose them on others.” (41:43). Transitioning to flexible guidelines rooted in personal values allows for adaptability and reduced self-pressure.

Shift 4: From Holding On to Letting Go

Allowing room for mistakes is pivotal. Ellen shares, “Mistakes are part of the package deal of being human.” (47:33). Instead of punishing oneself for errors, embracing them as natural occurrences fosters resilience and continuous growth.

Shift 5: From Procrastination to Productivity

Procrastination often stems from perfectionistic paralysis. Ellen suggests breaking tasks into minuscule steps: “Find car keys. Then eat the banana that would fuel your workout.” (50:53). This approach diminishes overwhelm and facilitates steady progress.

Shift 6: From Comparison to Contentment

Social comparison can erode self-esteem. Ellen recommends broadening the scope of comparisons: “Include things you don't have any access to, like work hours or partner support or mental health challenges.” (56:37). This expanded perspective mitigates the negative impact of narrow comparisons.

Shift 7: From Control to Authenticity

Authenticity trumps controlled perfection. Ellen narrates the story of "Gus," a client who initially overemphasized competence at the expense of warmth: “We need to determine if people are friendly on our side or our foe before we evaluate their competence.” (56:50). By integrating authenticity with competence, individuals can forge genuine connections without succumbing to perfectionistic façades.

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Conclusion and Resources

As the conversation wraps up, Dr. Hendricksen promotes her latest book, "How to Be Enough: Science Self-Acceptance for Self Critics and Perfectionists," and her previous work, "How to Be Yourself." She also invites listeners to her Substack, "How to Be Good to Yourself When You're Hard on Yourself," offering further insights into overcoming the challenges of perfectionism and self-criticism.

Dan Harris concludes by highlighting his upcoming meditation series, designed as antidotes to anxiety, furthering the episode's theme of self-acceptance and mental well-being.

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Key Quotes

• Dan Harris [04:25]: “Perfectionism is demanding of ourselves a level of performance higher than is required for the situation.”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [08:48]: “We think we have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person.”

• Dan Harris [16:44]: “Perfectionism is interpersonally motivated. We do it to try to stay in others’ good graces.”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [21:21]: “There's infinite ways of being perfectionistic.”

• Dan Harris [23:19]: “There is such a thing as healthy perfectionism.”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [33:02]: “I can hear it. But I don't have to sing along.”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [37:37]: “Am I living the life I want to live? Am I being the person I want to be?”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [50:53]: “Find car keys. Then eat the banana that would fuel your workout.”

• Dr. Ellen Hendricksen [56:50]: “We need to determine if people are friendly on our side or our foe before we evaluate their competence.”

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This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone grappling with perfectionism, offering both theoretical insights and practical tools to foster self-acceptance and lead a more fulfilling life. Whether you're a returning listener or tuning in for the first time, Dr. Ellen Hendricksen's expertise provides valuable pathways to overcoming the relentless pursuit of perfection.

Transcript

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Foreign.

[Dan Harris]

It'S the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. How we doing? Perfectionism can really be the ultimate head. You know, it's driving you crazy, that feeling of always behind and never enough. But you tell yourself that you need this relentless self criticism in order to get anything done in order to succeed. That anything less would be an unacceptable, even dangerous lowering of your standards. All lies according to my guest today, Ellen Hendrickson, who's a clinical psychologist at Boston University's center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She's got a new book. It's called how to Be Enough Science Self Acceptance for Self Critics and Perfectionists. This is Ellen's second appearance on the pod. She actually came on several years ago to discuss. Her first book was about social anxiety. It was called how to Be Yourself. I'll drop a link to that in the show notes if you want to go check it out. Anyway, in this conversation we talk about the relationship between perfectionism and anxiety, the definition of perfectionism, and why that word may actually be a misnomer. We talk about Dr. Hendrickson's own struggles with perfectionism and how those struggles manifested through physically the difference between healthy perfectionism and unhealthy perfectionism, changing your relationship with your inner critic, shifting from rigid self inflicted rules to flexibility, how to keep high standards while making room for mistakes, overcoming procrastination, navigating social comparison, and much more. Before we dive in, and on a very related note, I do want to tell you about something I'm doing over on danharris.com all week. Starting today at 4pm Eastern, I'm going to be doing live guided meditations where I focus on specific forms of meditation that were designed by the Buddha as an antidote to anxiety. As you may know, there are four related meditation practices that are collectively known as the Brahma Viharas or Divine Abodes. Not my preferred branding, but really, I found these styles of practice to be immensely helpful in my own life. And you can think of these four interrelated flavors of meditation as a way to take it easier on yourself and more skillfully navigate the world. These styles of meditation have stood the test of time, having been practiced for 2,600 years and are increasingly being validated by modern science, which suggests these practices can have psychological, physiological and even behavioral benefits. So again, I'll be doing live guided meditations all week [e-mail] like any good drug dealer, I give you the first dose for free, meaning today's session is open to everybody and then the rest of the week is really just for paid subscribers. So you know what to do. Again, head on over to Dan Harris and get all the details. We will get started with Ellen Hendrickson right after this. Dr. Ellen Hendrickson, welcome back to the show.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be back.

[Dan Harris]

Excited to have you back. All right, so tell me how this latest book came about, because the last time you were on the show, we were talking about social anxiety. This book is related but quite distinct. Related in some ways to anxiety, but quite distinct from social anxiety. I suspect this, and I'd love to hear this story if you're comfortable telling it. I suspect this book has its roots in your own struggles with perfectionism.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

How did you guess? Yes, I write about my own problems. Yeah, well, and there are enough people out there, I've realized with the exact same problems that it forms an audience and therefore a community.

[Dan Harris]

So.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

So, yeah, for sure. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Social anxiety and perfectionism are, at the very least siblings. Or to change the metaphor, if we drill down on social anxiety, we find a foundation of perfectionism because they're both based on the same flawed perception of self, the felt sense of inadequacy that keeps us separated from others. And in both, we have to work or rethink. We have to work hard to avoid finding ourselves in a situation that would reveal that inadequacy to others. So we need to either hide or avoid or overcompensate. But regardless of whether it's social anxiety, perfectionism, that hiding and concealing and overcompensating backfires because that steals the credit for keeping us safe. And in both, we think we have to perform as superbly as possible for people to like us.

[Dan Harris]

Right.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

So that's the connection. And then you asked personally about perfectionism, and. Yeah, for sure. So let me back up and give a definition of perfectionism. I find it highly ironic that perfectionism researchers can't agree on a perfect definition of perfectionism. And so the one that I like is that it's demanding of ourselves a level of performance higher than is required for the situation. And I like that because you can look at it two ways. You can look at it as like, that's quite healthy. Please keep doing that. You know, shoot for the stars. Do more than the bare minimum. You know, research shows that setting goals and striving to achieve them confers all sorts of cool things like mastery and purpose. So, like, yeah, please demand of yourself a level of performance higher than what is required for the situation. However, where it Tips over into less healthy mindsets and behaviors is when we start to equate our performance with our character. We look to answer that universal very human question of like, am I okay? Am I good enough? By looking at how well we do things like looking at our performance. For me, for too much of my life, I held that classic mindset of making my self evaluation, my self worth, overly dependent on meeting my personally demanding standards that I set for myself. So high school and college probably put too much stock in grades when I was a young adult. And social life is very important. I probably put too much stock in social behavior when I was launching my career. And like a young mom, the measure was productivity. And so not only was I conflating what I did with who I was, but I also did three things that made my life harder. The specifics gets into the universal because this is what we all do when we start to conflate who we are with our performance. One is that I would focus on flaws and details. For example, in my social behavior era, if there was an awkward silence on a date or like I told a joke, no one seemed to get even if everything else went well, that details what I would think about afterwards, I would do the equivalent of focusing on the one frowning face in the crowd of smiles. Two, I would give myself only two options, all or nothing for evaluating outcomes. Let's look at grades. If I was aiming for straight A's and I got that except for 189 that disqualified all the other A's and shunted me from all to nothing. So I gave myself this very narrow criteria for success and a very wide gulf for if we're defining failure as not meeting expectations for failure, When I was looking at productivity too closely, if there were a couple of things on the to do list that went undone, like that wasn't good enough. And then the third thing I did is that I was hard on myself. And so when we fall short of our personally demanding standards, we will often self criticize. But this is, I find, ironic. If we somehow pull out all the stops and meet our personally demanding standards, we decide those standards were insufficiently demanding in the first place and move the goalposts. So that's me. So again, I wrote this book for myself, but I also wrote it for everyone else. I think there's a silent epidemic of perfectionism happening. And as a clinical psychologist at an anxiety specialty center, the the vast majority of my clients have perfectionism at the center of their challenges. But no one has ever come in and said, ellen, I'M a perfectionist. I need help with perfectionism. No one ever says that. What they say is things like, I feel like I'm failing or I feel like I'm falling behind. I'm not reaching my potential. I have so many things on my plate and I'm not doing any of them. Well, we all say things like that. That's because perfectionism is a little bit of a misnomer. It's really not about striving to be perfect. It's about never feeling good enough. And that's something that a lot of us can relate to, especially in 2025.

[Dan Harris]

Well, let's just pause on that for a second. I hate when people do this to me, but I'm going to ask you to say that again because I think it's worth dwelling on. Perfectionism as a word is a bit of a misnomer when applied to the actual condition.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yes, because the mindset through my own experience and observing that of clients and the research shows that it is less about striving to be perfect and more about never feeling good enough. We think we have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person.

[Dan Harris]

So it's not actually about nailing it. It may manifest as a desire for the perfect outcome of whatever you're doing, but the underlying issue is not enoughness, Correct?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yes. And we often think about perfectionism as like a personality profile, like sort of type A, picky, detail oriented. And it can be that. But again, that heart of it is conflating our self evaluation with our performance. And it can be about anything. Like I talked about grades and social behavior and productivity. But it could be our work evaluation, our weight, our bank account, our last musical or athletic performance, or even more subtle things like, did I stick to healthy eating today? Was I a good parent today? Did I meditate? Did I do it well enough? Did I get distracted? You know, it's anything where we think we have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient, to be enough.

[Dan Harris]

Sixteen years of meditation and you're describing my inner dialogue to this day. Although I will say that I catch myself much more rapidly and much more kind to myself in a million different ways. But the conditioning remains because it is so, so deeply ingrained culturally and historically. The question that comes screaming out of this conversation is, well, how do we address that insufficiency? And we will get to that. But I do want to stay on perfectionism for a second and specifically on your perfectionism, because if memory serves, it manifested physically for you.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah. So When I was researching this book, I came across a paper and I'm going to mangle this title, but it was something like perfectionist at 20, work, life balance issues at 40. And I was like, oh, have these people been in my house? What is this? So, yeah, for me, I think I had been grinding for so long, basically. This is a tangent, sorry, that you use the word culture that our culture rewards in an ever more competitive, ratings oriented, optimization focused culture. It makes sense that we respond by feeling like we're never doing enough, aren't good enough. So I had been grinding for a long time. And yeah, around 40, it really started to manifest in my body. And I went through like a number of rounds of physical therapy. I woke up one morning, I couldn't turn my head to the right because my muscles were too tight. I had blown out my forearm from typing too much. I got a GI illness. So yeah, it absolutely manifested physically. And I'd already kind of known this wasn't sustainable, but that really drove that message home that something needed to change.

[Dan Harris]

So it manifested physically for you. That makes sense. For me, just to me, because, you know, I've had so many of my psychological ailments manifest physically.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

It's like there's a mind body connection or something.

[Dan Harris]

Ellen Langer would say it's mind body unity. It's not even a connection. It's the same thing. I want to pick up on something that's related to this and also that it's a breadcrumb you dropped several paragraphs ago. Where in your work at a center that specializes in anxiety and related disorders. Your sense is that perfectionism is at the root of, and I believe you write about this in your book, it's at the root of, or at least linked to obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders. Can you say a little bit more about this?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, absolutely. So perfectionism is not a disorder in and of itself. It's not diagnosable. It's more of a mindset or a trait. But it definitely lies at the heart of other diagnosable disorders like social anxiety or OCD eating disorders, some kinds of treatment resistant anxiety. Sometimes we will worry ourselves into a depression because of perfectionism. Yeah, the heart is that we have to perform as superbly as we can. And so in eating disorders it's either on body weight or shape or on feeling in control when we eat. In social anxiety, it's that idea that there is kind of a fatal flaw about us and it will be revealed unless we work really hard to Conceal it. We have to perform correctly socially and not make mistakes. So it's at the heart of a lot of what we do. The number of clients I have who are struggling with perfectionism. If you line up 100 different people, you will see 100 different phenotypes of perfectionism. I work with a musician, a stay at home mom, an academic, a neuroscientist. Like, there's just all sorts of varieties of people who are making their performance a referendum on their character.

[Dan Harris]

Performance a referendum on your character. I suspect many heads are nodding asynchronously as people consume this podcast. Where does this come from? Did we evolve for perfectionism or is that more modern development?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Okay, it definitely comes from both within and from all around us, which I think is really interesting. So it's has been shown to be genetic. Again, even though it's not diagnosable, it definitely runs in families. And then speaking of families, it can be conferred upon us from certainly any kind of family, but there are a number of sort of different styles of parenting that have been identified as making it more likely that we'll come out perfectionistic. That is, if we are from a family that's perfectionistic itself. If we're from helicopter snowplow family, where caution and avoiding risk and mistakes is really important. If we're from a family that conferred a lot of contingent approval or like love sort of got confused with pride, we got attention and positive regard when we accomplished things. And then fourth is if our family was sort of chaotic or dramatic, erratic, abusive, when that's where kids will often find safety and control through their performance. You know, if I can't control dad's drinking, at least I can control my grades. If I can't control mom getting angry, I can be charismatic and be the most popular kid in school. So definitely there's some that comes from within, but it also comes from all around us, from the environment, and I would argue from 2025, because every human reacts to the situations we're put in. And so in a society that really is getting more demanding, competitive, performance oriented due to capitalism, competition, advertising, social media, you name it, all these messages are coming at us saying that we have to perform and consume and achieve to ever higher levels to be sufficient as a person. The researcher Andrew Hill says that perfectionistic climates turn us all into perfectionists. I certainly agree.

[Dan Harris]

Just to go back to evolution, would it be safe to say, and this is kind of just a surmise on my end after having listened to you, that there may be aspects of the human Mind dating back to our origins that predispose us toward this trait. But that latent potential has been put on steroids because of how culture has evolved.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, I'll surmise along with you for sure. So perfectionism, we usually think of it as a personal problem, but it's really an interpersonal problem. And we can talk more about that later. But my point is that perfectionism is interpersonally motivated. We do it to try to stay in others good graces, to try not to get criticized or rejected or judged. And so, you know, again, we're doing things as well as possible to tried to keep criticism and judgment at bay. And ultimately it's because we want to connect with people. And so I think evolutionarily, yeah, we learned to perform as well as possible because we thought that it kept the group together, kept it going, helped us get along harmoniously with everybody else. That is my surmising.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, it makes complete sense based on the very limited understanding I have of how we evolved. I mean, it all whittles down to love and safety.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Absolutely. Yeah. But I think the thing that we get confused when we double down on performance is that admiration and being impressive is different fundamentally from being accepted or belonging Again, pride and love are different.

[Dan Harris]

Yes, yes. And the Persona, which is actually probably a kind of form of armor that we create in order to get what we think is love, but is actually admiration, paradoxically and maddeningly gets us further away from what our underlying goal is.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

We could end right now. That is absolutely. That is the message for sure. Because the wall that we put up to try to protect ourselves from criticism and judgment acts as a wall that separates us from others. So we end up being on this pedestal. But that means we're alone. When we're singular, we're separate. It's ironic that we are doing this to try to gain connection, love, belonging, and we end up with sort of an ersatz version of that. Admiration, approval, compliments. But those are fundamentally different.

[Dan Harris]

And I would just add to that even if you're not getting the approval and you're still a perfectionist, because I think that describes many of us. I've been a failed perfectionist in many areas of my life. I'm not getting what I hope for and I'm kicking my own ass. The compulsive, reflexive, persistent self evaluation removes you from the world, makes you less available, less authentic, and widens the gulf between you and what you actually want, whether you are singular or not in your achievements.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we don't see the world as it is. Right. We see the world as we are. And so if we're holding ourselves to personally demanding standards, we assume other people are holding us to those same standards. But that's not what relationships and connecting are about. Think about why your friends are your friends. Are you friends with your friends because they're good at things? Because they meet personally demanding standards and metrics? Like they're good at public speaking, or they always pick a good restaurant or they're good at meditating? Probably not. I'm guessing you're friends with your friends because of how you feel when you're together. You feel supported, understood, like you can be yourself and that you don't have to perform at all. Like, that's that difference.

[Dan Harris]

Real friends. Yes.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Real friends. Right. Not connections or networks. Yeah, right, exactly.

[Dan Harris]

I can't remember who said this, but it's something like, people never remember what you say. They remember how you made them feel.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yes. So the Internet taught me that. That's a Maya Angelou quote. But the Internet is often wrong, so I could be wrong on that.

[Dan Harris]

But she said so many brilliant things. The odds are pretty high that that's true.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

For sure.

[Dan Harris]

All right. There's a term you use in the book, the Many Salads of Perfectionism. Have you heard from Sweet Green's lawyers? And what do you mean by this?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Sure. Okay. What I mean by a salad of perfectionism is that it's this tortured metaphor where there are a million different salads out there. Like, things as different as tabbouli and nissoise salad and jello salad are all salad. So there's all these different phenotypes. Likewise, as I alluded to before, you line up a hundred different people with perfectionism, and you have a hundred different phenotypes. There's infinite ways of being perfectionistic. So, you know, again, it could be about how much money you're bringing in. It could be about how healthy you ate today. It could be whether or not you yell to your kids so many different ways. But the definition of a salad is that it's a variety of ingredients bonded by a common dressing. So there are some commonalities in perfectionism. Most people will be sort of allergic to mistakes. I say that we have sort of a peanut allergy to mistakes, and if you make a mistake, there's a big reaction. We often procrastinate. We often compare ourselves to others. We do this thing called perfectionistic self presentation where we show the world what's going well and we sort of hide what's not going so well, colloquially, this is called duck syndrome. It's where we look like we're gliding effortlessly across the surface, but really our little duck feet are working really, really hard underneath the surface. So there are a number of things that bind people with perfectionism, even as we all look very, very different.

[Dan Harris]

That lance, that makes complete sense. As promised, we are soon going to get to, like, how does one address the root causes here? This sense of insufficiency, but just staying at a higher level for a second. There's a lingering question that I suspect some listeners are gnawing at in their minds, which is, isn't there a case for perfectionism and high standards? Sometimes, and I believe you even say in the book there's a difference between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, no, for sure. Okay. It's like some, again, some researchers would disagree with me, but others would totally agree with me that, like, there is such a thing as healthy perfection perfectionism. And that's when we strive for excellence. We do good work for the work's sake. We set high standards, we care deeply. Like, please keep doing that. In fact, the healthy heart of perfectionism is a personality trait called conscientiousness, which comes from the root word conscious or conscience, our sense of right and wrong. Essentially, conscientiousness is, according to research, including by the psychologist Dr. Angela Duckworth, who's better known for her work on grit. Conscientiousness is the number one trait for a good life, both subjectively and objectively. So if you got to choose a personality, conscientiousness is the one to choose. And sometimes that does overgrow into perfectionism. We have self control that sometimes gets a little out of control. But yes, it can absolutely be healthy and at its heart means well and can do great things.

[Dan Harris]

So how do we walk the line between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

So we can't entirely separate out ourselves from our performance, nor would we want to. Of course we're going to feel proud when we do something. Well, of course we're going to be bummed or disappointed when things go wrong, but I think we can try to separate them out a little bit and be able to gain some distance and perspective. There's a difference between our self worth and our performance. The technical name for this is over evaluation. Our evaluation of our work gets overgrown and becomes an evaluation of ourselves. So one of the things we can do is we can try to shift from evaluation to information, to make it about the work, not about you. So we could take the stance of, like, a sculptor eyeing a block of marble or like a chef tasting a dish. We inherently know that the sculptor and the sculpture are different. The chef and the dish are different. All right, I'm going to mix my metaphors. Our attention is like a spotlight, and we get to choose where to point it. If we point it at the work, whatever it is we're trying to do, we generally feel better and perform better. If we point it at ourselves, we generally feel worse and perform worse. And so I'll tell you a story from the book to illustrate this. I tell the story of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and his time at UCLA under the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. During his time there, or around that time, the UCLA basketball team was just a powerhouse and had seven in a row, national titles. It was incredible. All under Coach Wooden. And so two education researchers, doctors Roland Tharp and Roland Gallimore, decided to sit in the stands for every single practice of the 74, 75 season to see, like, what is the secret sauce? How does Coach Wooden do this? And what they discovered is that he very seldom praised or criticized his players. That instead he would focus on the work. He would tell them what to do and how to do it. So he wouldn't say things like, good job. Or no, like, you stink. You have to practice more. He would say, pass from the chest, take lots of shots where you might get them in games, pass the ball to someone short. He would give you information as opposed to evaluation. And that shift from yourself to the work seems subtle, but makes a big difference.

[Dan Harris]

So do you never want to say to yourself, good job?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

No, no, no. Again, there are degrees of this for sure. You know, we can certainly be proud of what we do, but it's. We're trying to get some perspective and get some distance, that we are not our work, we are not our performance, that those two things can be related, but not if you picture a Venn diagram. We want it to not be completely overlapping, which is what I will often see when folks come into the clinic. So we work to try to crank them apart just a little bit. And that. Okay, here, this is another quick story. A potential client emailed me and say, hey, I'd like to work on perfectionism. I said, cool, come on in. And we set up an intake. And the day before, she emailed me again, and she said, you know, I have given this some thought, and. And I want to wait until I have lots of time and can put lots of energy and effort into, like, Fighting this problem. What I said to her and what I would say to listeners who might be, you know, nodding, is that to your question, you don't have to separate out worth and performance or never say good job. Just like a 5% difference, a 10% difference, that's really all you need. It's not this complete cleaving of worth and performance.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, Ellen talks about the seven key shifts for addressing the underlying causes of perfectionism. Well, you've brought us to the practical, which I've been promising for a while. And the book consists of seven different shifts we can make to help us address what you're calling, and I'm sympathetic to your argument, what you're calling the underlying root cause of perfectionism, which is a sense of not enoughness, insufficiency. So shift number one is from self criticism to kindness. My goal for the rest of the interview is to kind of just go through as many of these shifts as we can cover. The first one is from self criticism to kindness. Can you, I suspect we may have already covered some of this, but can you hold forth on that one?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, for sure. Let me just normalize things also that everybody criticizes themselves from time to time. Self criticism is the core of humans ability to self regulate. A healthy dose of self judgment helps us evaluate our behavior, modify it to improve ourselves. Like get along more harmoniously with our fellow humans. Evolutionarily, we critique ourselves to better ourselves. So some self criticism is going to happen. But perfectionistic self criticism is particularly harsh and particularly personalistic. It's about us. I have found that as an anxiety therapist, I have two levers I can pull. I can pull change or acceptance. We could change self criticism and we can. But I've gotten a lot farther with folks by trying to change their relationship to self criticism. What I mean by that actually here, this is a good story. Many years ago I was on your show and I was there as a first time author. This was the biggest show I had ever been on to date and I was quite anxious. We recorded and you asked such good questions and were so kind. And along the way I made a totally reasonable number of mistakes. I think I lost my train of thought at one point. I think I stumbled over my words a couple times. At one point I actually remember thinking that I had offended you. And so after recording, despite you and your producer and everyone just being so nice and so complimentary, like that's all I could think about. All I could think about was like the errors. And so I was just kicking myself on the Way out the door. And my poor editor, who had come with me, steered me into the nearest bar and bought me a gin and tonic, ostensibly to celebrate. But I think he knew that my self criticism had really started, started going. And so I have now, fast forward seven years, done this enough like something with a microphone or put my work out into the world enough that I know this is just kind of what happens, that I will do something with a microphone and then my brain will just start to zero in on the mistakes or the details or the things that went wrong and we'll focus on that. But rather than trying to not think about that or like, let me reframe this, which, you know, absolutely can work. I have tried to change my relationship to the self criticism and think, you know, this is just how I'm wired. This is what happens when I do something involving a microphone. And it's just part of the script. Kind of like, you know, I go to a restaurant, the hostess seats me, the waiter comes, I order, the food comes, I eat a pay, I leave. Okay, that's just the script. When I do something, a podcast recording, part of the script is that I record, I leave. I think it stinks. I think about all the mistakes I made and then usually it's fine. And if it's not fine, either I can learn from that or sometimes things just don't go well, and that's okay. And I know that other people have their own version of this. Like my partner, whenever he gives a PowerPoint presentation, comes home and thinks it sucks. And we'll think of all the mistakes he made and we've learned this is just how it goes. This is just part of the script. And so by taking the stance of kind of listening to my self criticism, like the music at a coffee shop, that has made all the difference. It's there. My brain is still making those thoughts. I can hear it. But I don't have to sing along. I don't have to take my self criticism seriously or literally. It can just happen and I can change my relationship to it.

[Dan Harris]

I'm really interested in this dialectic change. I don't know if I'm using that word correctly, but change and acceptance, the argument you just made for acceptance, completely lands for me. And as you were talking, I was thinking about the work of both Kristin Neff and Ethan Cross, both of whom have been on the show. I'll put some links in the show notes. They both talk a lot about rewiring your own inner chatter. So it would be less on the acceptance side, although they're both pro acceptance, but more, their emphasis is more on the change side that you can learn, anybody can, without massive meditation interventions or anything like that. Learn how to just develop the habit of talking to yourself kindly. And it doesn't have to be cheesy. Well, it can be cheesy, but it doesn't have to be unrealistic affirmations, but pretending that you're perfect or being in denial, etc. Etc. It's more like the way a good coach talks to their players. And so I'm just curious, what's your take on the. We've talked about acceptance, but what about on the change side here as it comes to the inner critic.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Man, you teed me up just right. That was great. Okay, so yeah, absolutely. No, I love Kristen Neff. Her work actually helped me understand perfectionism because she says that self compassion consists of three things of self kindness, of non judgmental mindfulness, and connection to the larger human experience. But the perfectionistic brain is reverse threaded for all three of those things. So instead of self kindness, we're wired to be self critical. Instead of non judgmental mindfulness, we can be judgmental. We zero in on flaws. And instead of connecting to the larger human experience, we see our struggles or mistakes or shortcomings as things that set us apart rather than as common experiences that connect us to others. That is not carved into a stone tablet. Like we can absolutely change all of those things, but just our starting point is kind of we're coming from an inside a hole basically. And so I was taught the Kristin Neff method that self compassion was talking to yourself like a good friend or yeah, talking to yourself like a coach. But my perfectionist brain thought that that meant that I had to generate a steady stream of articulate and effective self compassionate hype. And that was too high a bar. So, so on in pulling, in pulling the change lever, I learned, oh my gosh, Ellen, you don't have to make it that complicated that it can be one word, it can be easy or two words, you're okay or something way less self compassion. Presidential speech writing, esque. But in addition to words, again, pulling that change lever, I learned that self compassion can also be actions. And for me at least that was a lot easier because I feel like it is hard to control our thoughts. Like don't think about a cheeseburger floating above my head. It is hard to control our feelings. You know, if you've ever been told calm down or just relax or cheer up, you know, you probably wanted to Punch the person in the face. You can't just change your emotion, but you can. And when I say you, I mean everybody. We can control our actions. So self compassion can be turning towards our pain and suffering and asking, what do I need? And so it could be something as simple as taking a few more minutes under the warm shower on a cold morning. It could be, I did this yesterday. I made myself go to the gym even though I didn't want to because I knew. I just know from experience that it'll make me feel better. But it can also be giving ourself permission not to do everything we expect of ourselves. It could be deciding to skip the gym because what we really need is an extra hour of sleep. All in all, self compassion can be words and can be actions, which was really helpful for me. And it's turning towards our pain and suffering and asking, what do I need with care and understanding.

[Dan Harris]

Chris Germer, Kristin Neff's longtime research partner and pal, said here on the show that the preeminent question of self compassion is what do I need right now? And so amen to everything you just said. Shift number two. So just to reset, we're talking about perfectionism. Ellen's thesis is that what lies beneath perfectionism is a sense of insufficiency. And so, like, how do you start to feel like enough? Well, there are these seven shifts that she's going to propose in the course of her book, which you should read. We've talked about the first one, which is from self criticism to kindness. Shift number two is coming home to your life. What do you mean by that?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

So with the coming home to your life, essentially what I mean is that perfectionism drives us to focus on performance, to focus on being good at things. And I posed the question of essentially, let's change the yardstick. Rather than measuring ourselves by did I do the thing? Let's switch over and ask a completely different question, which is, am I living the life I want to live? Am I being the person I want to be? And so that implies that that takes us from a lower power position where we have to do the thing. And our, you know, every performance is a referendum on our character. So our worth is never a settled question to being able to, to choose. And we'll get into this later, but based on our freely chosen values, what do I want to do? What is meaningful, important, purposeful, fun for me? And if I could choose how to live my life and what to do next, what would I do? And surprise, we can, you know, within our Context, we can do that. That's essentially in a nutshell, what I mean by coming home to your life.

[Dan Harris]

Just trying to think this through as it would apply to me. So I, I could be obsessed with being a successful. And then that's a goal post that always moves, for sure. Writer and podcaster, and that would be a label. Or I could be more focused on hewing closely to my underlying values, which would be cultivating positive relationships in every aspect of my life. And the latter is much. Confers much more agency.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Amazing. Yes. Yeah. And then like, what's under being, quote unquote, like successful podcaster and writer? Is that that you're helping people? Is that building a community? Is that serving others like those sound like values, and as long as those feel freely chosen and not like a new rule, then yeah, absolutely, you're running in the direction of values as opposed to trying to stick to some rule or some label.

[Dan Harris]

Right. And freely chosen seems important also because depending on what your chromosomal structure or pigmentation is, society can impose upon you values that may not be your own.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, for sure. In the book, yeah, I try to make a distinction that folks from sexual, racial, gender minorities, there's another layer because again, yeah, all humans react to the situations we're put in. And so if we're put in a society or an institution or a workplace that overtly or covertly tells us, you don't belong here, you don't deserve to be here, then that resulting urge to prove ourselves, to earn our way into the group, is no longer a personality trait, but an understandable reaction. An example I give. So Dr. Gary Mitchell from Duke researches college prep programs designed to launch high achieving black and brown kids into impressive career trajectories. And he finds that at some of these schools, the kids in the college prep programs may be subject to higher standards of behavior of academics than kids from, say, like legacy or like donor families. Perfectionism can be institutionalized even, and there can be higher expectations for certain folks. And so one solution there is representation. You know, when everybody belongs, it lessens that external pull to prove that you belong. And so you can spend less of your bandwidth proving you belong by doing excellent work, and instead you can just simply do your excellent work. And then another solution is community. And so Dr. Mitchell calls this a thick sense of cohort. And that assures us that we're not alone. So there can be a very real pull to prove ourselves. And then, yeah, that is conferred by the environment for sure.

[Dan Harris]

Shift number three. You nodded to this a little Bit earlier is from rules to flexibility. Say more.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, okay, so we alluded to rules a little bit. Like, okay, I gotta be a successful podcaster and writer. We all have rules. And especially, like those of us with perfectionism, we wanna know the rules so we can follow them. And like, ironically, if there are no rules, we set up personally demanding rules and then we follow those. So, you know, think about making up rules for healthy eating or making up rules for, like, I don't know, training for a 5k or something, studying for your chemistry exam. Like, it's not that rules are bad. It's when three different things happen that they start to get in our way. So one is when our rules become rigid, we apply them no matter the situation. So, like, we try to follow the diet even on Thanksgiving, then we're getting ourselves into some questionable territory. Two, the rules are all or nothing. If we follow the rules acceptably, we're acceptable. If we mess up, then it renders us unacceptable. I ate a cookie, so that ruins my entire healthy eating for the day, and I'm bad. And then three is when we start to impose our rules on other people, it can get in the way of our relationship. For example, I'm sure I have the right way to load the dishwasher, but if I try to impose that on my other family members, then, you know, it's going to cause some commotion. The dishwasher just always comes up. That's the classic example. So the shift is trying to shift from following the rules. Did I do the thing? To values, which we alluded to before? And I want to take just a minute to define values, because it's a word that gets thrown around a lot. So I'm going to give you the definition that. So Mike Tuhig and Clarissa Ong, who wrote an excellent book called the Anxious Perfectionist, defined values as having four qualities, and I think the fourth one is the most important. So one is value is continuous. So you're never done living a value. So a value is different than a goal. It's like making a million dollars is not a value. That's a goal, but like financial security or wealth or, I don't know, whatever that could be considered a value. You're never done. Values are intrinsically meaningful, meaning you'd care about it even if no one else knew. So, like, getting famous isn't a value, but like putting in the work and putting good work out into the world is. Values are under your control, meaning they're not contingent upon anyone else. So, like, being loved isn't a value, but being loving is. Is. And the fourth one, again, this is the one I think is most important. And we already use these words, but they're freely chosen. Values are never coercive or obligatory. So you freely choose to follow them and you're probably even likely to be willing to tolerate some discomfort or inconvenience to do so. So it's like the value of sustainability or like giving back might be why you're willing to give up your Saturday morning to go volunteer to pick up trash on the beach, rather than spending that same morning relaxing at the beach. And in perfectionism, the thing that I feel like we need to watch out for is that oftentimes rules will sort of masquerade as values or values will function as rules. That sense of it being freely chosen is what differentiates them. So the example I always like to use is, I had a client who said through a combination of God and my mother, I was taught to be generous. But she said that that meant if somebody on the street asked her for a dollar or a neighbor asked her to babysit, she had to do it. It was the very opposite of the spirit of generosity, because it was obligatory and coercive. The sense of I have to, that's what I have clients and folks watch out for is, does this feel obligatory or does this feel freely chosen? If it's freely chosen, it's functioning as a value. This is a very long answer. But when we stop living by only rules and shift over to values, we might not even do anything particularly differently. So for instance, I had a client who was very concerned about being a good friend. Amongst other things, there are things she had to do if she was going to be a good friend. She has to remember her friend's birthday, she has to ask them detailed questions about their life, like if they go for a walk together, she's going to surprise them with their favorite coffee order. None of these things are bad, they're lovely, please keep doing them. But it's that sense of have to, it's that sense of coercion, like the duty, the obligation behind it, that can make that friendship feel like a people pleasing grind. So she, this client, she tried to shift to a value of being supportive, being attentive, and then she was freely choosing to remember their birthday, ask them detailed questions about their life, maybe surprise them with their favorite coffee order. But the quality of the experience changed. It felt like a want rather than a should. And that made all the difference.

[Dan Harris]

Let's just go back to the cookie for A second. Because I think that's probably deeply resonant for a lot of people. And it describes me. And thankfully not anymore. Although occasionally. But you were using the example of, I have these food rules, I slipped up and ate a cookie and the whole day is out the window and I'm a bad boy. Smack me on the snout if I'm understanding this heuristic of, you know, moving from rules to flexibility. It's like, yeah, I can have cookies once in a while. My value is to take care of my body, to be as healthy as I can, but not miserable sometimes. Some cookies. That's what's called for my stating the spirit of this correctly?

[Ellen Hendrickson]

100%. Yeah, for sure. So are we getting into mistakes now?

[Dan Harris]

Oh, sure, let's. Let's do that. So that, that is. That is shift number four, which is mistakes, mistakes, colon. From holding on to letting go.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Sure. When we're over identified with our performance, whether that's. Yeah, healthy eating or productivity, social behavior, et cetera, et cetera, good parenting, whatever it is, there's no room for mistakes because then it reflects on us. Personally, I have a shout from the rooftops. Rant where? Okay, so I think the conventional advice about perfectionism is you have to lower your standards or you have to stop when things are good enough. And that doesn't go over well with people with perfectionism. If we're still working on separating out our worth from our performance, settling for subpar or mediocre performance means we're subpar or mediocre, and we're not going to do that. So I think semantics are important. Keep your high standards. The high standards are not the problem. What I try to focus on is to make some room for mistakes that's different than lowering our standards. And so I've told the story before, but I think it bears repeating. I was working with a pediatrician, and she had been a pediatrician for 25 years. You know, long storied career. She came in one week and was just beside herself because she had misdiagnosed a little girl who came in with what she thought was constipation, and it turned out to be appendicitis. Kind of a big mistake. The little girl ended up later having to go to the emergency room, have emergency surgery. She was fine, but my client was just kicking herself, saying things like, I should retire early, maybe I should get my head examined. Like, I'm a terrible doctor for her. I would argue that we actually don't want to lower her standards or like, stop when things are Good enough. She should keep the high standards of correctly diagnosing every kid who comes through the door. But there are going to be inevitable mistakes over a 25 year career. Not because she's incapable, not because she's incompetent, but because she is human. It's just going to happen. Mistakes is part of the package deal of being human. And so I like to try to ask people appropriate to their situation, like all right, over a 25 year career, like what percentage of misdiagnoses do you think is reasonable? Or how many cookies do you think you're going to eat in a day? What is a reasonable amount of mistakes or screw ups or escape hatches or whatnot? It doesn't even matter what the answer is as long as that answer is non zero. Because that little bit of wiggle room is all we need to allow ourselves some of the inevitable screw ups that are part of the package deal of life.

[Dan Harris]

Yep. Yep. I often tell my staff I expect excellence and I expect mistakes.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Amazing.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, Ellen talks about the negative impacts of social comparison, why warmth and connection can be more impactful than high quality performance, and how to channel who you are at your core. Shift number five from procrastination to productivity.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yes. Okay, so procrastination. So people are often surprised that this is part of perfectionism, but you know, I think it makes sense. Procrastination is not a time management problem. I think the research is starting to show us and it's starting to show up in popular writing as well. Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem. And then perfectionism puts everything on steroids because aversive tasks require quite a bit of self regulation. You have to focus and get your act together, regulate enough so you can do this thing you don't want to do. And self regulation deteriorates under emotional distress. So if we're feeling distressed and overwhelmed because our standards are unrealistic, we feel like we have to do the whole thing in one go or we are not allowed to make mistakes or we have to do this easily the first time. That sort of overwhelms our self regulation. And procrastination steps in as a coping mechanism and it's a double whammy because it allows us to both avoid the task that's making us feel bad and immediately replace it with something that makes us feel better. Whether that's pandemic era procrastibaking or like going into a TikTok rabbit hole. Not that I've ever done either of those things. What we can do is the classic of break tasks down into steps so small you feel no resistance in perfectionism. We can make them ridiculously small. No one has to know how small our steps are. I worked with a gentleman who was trying to motivate himself to go to the gym, and his first step was peel a banana. Then he would eat the banana that would fuel his workout. And then his next step was find car keys, which I found highly relatable. Anyway, the point is that the steps can be really, really small, and that's okay. No one has to know how small they are. And if you feel resistance, break it down even more. So that's one. And the less classic newer technique that I found was quite helpful is to connect with your future self. It's found that folks who procrastinate and folks with perfectionism relate to their future self in a brain scanner almost as if they're relating to a stranger. We think that our future self will feel like washing the dishes or writing our literature paper or working on that slide deck when we know from experience that's not the case. But it doesn't even matter if we picture our future self doing the task or not doing. If we can just kind of create a more realistic relationship with our future self and not kick the can down the road to it, assuming it'll be motivated and happy to do all these tasks, then it's easier to get started.

[Dan Harris]

Now I love that we've done episodes. I'll drop a link in the show. Note, we did a whole episode about relating to your future self. In the interest of time, I'm going to move us along to the final two shifts. Shift number six of seven is from comparison to contentment. My wife the other day pointed out in a great moment of using my own teaching against me that I was falling into comparing mind because I joined a new workout group and I'm definitely the least fit person in this group. So anyway, from comparison to contentment. Say more about this, if you would.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

We must be in the same workout or in similar workout groups, because I feel the same way every time I go to the gym anyway. Okay, so I want to start out by saying that comparing ourselves is inevitable. You're not doing anything wrong there. So Dr. Leon Festinger, who originated the theory of social comparison, essentially found that it's hardwired. I mean, we can't even tell if we're tall or short without comparing ourselves to others. So to try to stop comparing ourselves entirely is essentially fighting biology. But what perfectionism is doing is we're Comparing ourselves to others to answer the question, like, am I doing okay? Am I enough? But then we're outsourcing our worth to the people we're comparing ourselves to and our self esteem will rise and fall with each comparison. So what to do is so social comparison is at its heart a lack of information that we tend to compare on one metric. So to your point, like fitness or something that's happening with a lot of young people, like, number of social media followers or likes. I had a client who was comparing herself to her boss based on age and title. So like, why am I not farther along by this point in my life? We compare apples to apple pie, basically, and we always come out behind. And so what we can do is to try to broaden the comparison points until we're what I call comparing apples to tennis balls. With my client, she was comparing on age and job title. If she's trying to answer the question, am I good enough? We tried to flood the zone with tons of different variables. So like, we included things she knew, like education, time at the company. Company, and then a million things that she didn't have any access to, like work hours or partner support or mental health challenges, possible nepotism. The point is, if we're asking am I good enough? The goal is to include so many comparison points both in quantity and variety, that the answer becomes, well, I can't determine that by comparing myself to this person. And so the whole thing breaks down. The point is that we compare on very few things and restake our whole self worth on it. And so what we tried to do is to make it a little bit ridiculous and leave us with the conclusion of, well, only I can determine if I'm sufficient. I can't outsource it to my view of this person.

[Dan Harris]

I love it. Because it's like the antidote to comparison is more comparison.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Right, right, exactly.

[Dan Harris]

All right, shift number seven.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Okay.

[Dan Harris]

From control to authenticity.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

There's a lot in these chapters under this shift. So this is dealing with emotional perfectionism, which can be internal or external. And essentially it boils down to needing to be appropriate. However we define that in one's felt or demonstrated emotion. Oftentimes people with perfectionism have learned that emotion is a response to the outside situation as opposed to how we actually feel inside. That we present as sad because the situation is sad, or we present as amused because the situation is supposed to be light hearted. So I'll tell you a story about a client named Gus who, well, we'll call him Gus. So he came in because he wanted to optimize his performance at work and specifically wanted to work on public speaking. And so that already raised this flag for me for perfectionism. Anytime somebody says optimize, that tells me perfectionism. He wanted to be really, really good at public speaking and to come off as, you know, not making any mistakes, be impressive, leave everyone with their jaw hanging open. But what happened is that his perfectionistic self presentation manifested as over preparing and over practicing to the point that it came off as wooden. Before meetings where he would present, he would stand at the podium silently rehearsing his stuff slides and he would ignore the people who came in. And then when he gave the presentation, he would perform his slides like it didn't really matter who was in the room. And so what he was doing is to back up to some theory. Susan Fiske at Princeton says there are essentially two dimensions on which humans evaluate each other. There's competence and warmth. And competence is like how skilled, talented, capable is this person. Warmth is like how kind, caring, good hearted is this person. And in perfectionism, we double down on competence. We want to give a good performance, but it turns out that warmth comes first and carries more weight in making a good impression on other people. That we need to determine if people are friendly on our side or our foe and working against us before we evaluate their competence and whether or not they're capable of carrying out those intentions. That was nerdy and heady. So what Gus was doing is he was doubling down on competence, but at the expense of warmth. So we tried to double down on warmth, keep competence. We all want to be competence. We're not doing a 180 and flipping from competence to incompetence, but we're just going to add on some warmth. And so instead of over preparing and over practicing, tried to roll him back to preparing and practicing. But, you know, not to the point where he came off as wooden. When instead of silently rehearsing his slides as people came in, he greeted them by name, said, hello, you know, how was your weekend? And then this was the most important. When he presented, he focused on sharing his knowledge and the story he was trying to tell with the energy of look at this cool rock. I found rather than trying to perform as like Gus the impressive expert, to boil it all down, when Gus was using perfectionistic self presentation, yeah, sure, he avoided mistakes, but he also missed out on connection with his colleagues and showing his colleagues that he cared about them and trusted them. That when we show people a little bit of what's under the rug or Allow them to see us before everything is perfectly polished and we have the correct highlighted answer at the end when we say, like, oh, here's a little bit of my mess. We're sending two messages. We're saying, I trust you because I showing this to you before, it's, like, perfectly polished. So I trust you not to judge me or criticize me. And two, we are the same. We are equal. This is not some kind of, like, mentor mentee relationship or teacher student relationship. Like, we're both human. We're both equal. And implicitly sending the message of I trust you and we are the same is really going to draw people closer to us and get us that. To come back to the beginning, that connection and belonging that we're ultimately looking for.

[Dan Harris]

There was a lot in what you said, but the one thing that really stood out to me was the rock. I'm gonna present as if I'm showing you a cool rock. And I'm guessing that Gus likes rocks and that you, as a wise therapist, honed in on who he really is at his core, which is a dude who likes rocks. And if you can channel who you are at your core and bring that energy into whatever room you're occupying, people are going to like you. Because we all like realness.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Absolutely. Yeah. Like, it's the energy of, like, hey, look at this cool thing, you know, as opposed to, like, I must present this perfectly to you to your point about authenticity and actually for our overall, like, trying to increase our feeling of enoughness. I feel like so many of us will try to, like, hype ourselves up or psych ourselves up with I got this. Or before our client Gus could go onto his public speaking, maybe he would try to reassure himself. But what we can do instead is to affirm what we know to be true about ourselves, even if it has nothing to do with the situation at hand. You can do this before or after. So let's pretend Gus's presentation goes poorly. He might be tempted to reassure himself he's actually smart or he's actually talented or to, like, think about presentations where it did go well, and that can try to make himself feel better that way. But that doesn't often work. And what we can do instead is try to focus on the things we know to be unquestionably true about ourselves. I think rocks are the coolest thing ever. Or, like, reading books and making art make my world go round, or I was put on earth to help the less fortunate, or, like, I have wicked awesome style. Or, like, whatever. We genuinely hold Dear I'm a great dad, can shore up the story of ourself and thicken our skin, which can buffer against self esteem threats. So I didn't make this up. This is the work of Drs. Jeffrey Cohen and David Sherman. And they find that the goal is not to flatter ourselves or to again reassure ourselves that we're actually smart and most things go well, but to really maintain sort of an overarching narrative of the self's adequacy which again creates that buffer against the inevitable mistakes and struggles and setbacks of life.

[Dan Harris]

This has been enormously helpful. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book, the name of the book that you wrote before it, and also anything else that we should know that you're like doing in the world that people can go consume.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Yeah, sure. So this book is how to be self acceptance for self critics and perfectionists. The previous book, which is about social anxiety, is how to be yourself, quiet your inner critic and rise above social anxiety. And the place I am most active on the Internet is Substack. I have a substack called how to be good to yourself when you're hard on yourself, which encompasses both those topics and other related maladies of being human.

[Dan Harris]

Anybody who's talking about the maladies of being human is an ally of mine. So we will put links to all of those in the show. Notes Dr. Alan Hendrickson, always a pleasure. Thank you.

[Ellen Hendrickson]

Great to talk to you again. Thank you so much for having me.

[Dan Harris]

Thanks again to Ellen. Always great to talk to her. Don't Forget today at 4 Eastern, live on Substack, I will be kicking off a meditation miniseries where I will be focusing on some styles of meditation that I refer to as the Buddhist antidote to anxiety. I'm talking about the Brahma Viharas, these four interrelated styles of practice which include loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, and something called sympathetic joy, which you can think of as compared to of the opposite of schadenfreude. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'll focus on one of these styles of practice. And then on Friday we'll do a wrap up. And every day I'll talk for a few minutes, just kind of setting up the Brahma, the horror that we'll be focusing on that day. Then I'll do 10 minutes of meditation. Then I'll take your questions. As I joked at the beginning, like any good drug dealer, I give you the first dose for free, meaning today's session is open to anybody. But if you want to join for the rest of the week you gotta sign [e-mail] and just to say if you can't afford it just let us know and we will hook you up. Also just to say I think this is really the direction we may head in with danharris.com just increasing the cadence of community oriented events where we can get together and do a practice together. And by the way if you can't make it live we send out the session the next day via email so you can do it on your own time. Before I let you go I just want to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands wrote our theme SA.