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- [00:00]
Acura
Acura's all new adx. A compact SUV that isn't just built for one thing. It's precision crafted for everything. To escape the grind. With available all wheel drive to go with your flow. With available Google built in. Hey Google, turn it up. Okay. Turning up the volume. And crafted to be heard. With an available Bang Olufsen premium sound system. The all new Acura adx. Crafted to match your energy. Acura precision crafted performance. Google is a trademark of Google llc.
- [00:31]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Travel has always been such a big part of my life, and in a way, it's really what inspired me to start goop. I love discovering new places, new experiences, and finding those really special stays that make a trip even more memorable. Hosting on Airbnb is a great way to make the most of your time away. It's a wonderful option if you have extra space, own a seasonal home, or tend to travel at the same time every year. Hosting is incredibly flexible. You set the dates, welcome guests on your terms, and create memorable stays that reflect the warmth and uniqueness you seek in your own travels.
- [01:08]
Thomas Curran
If you've ever thought about hosting, your home might be worth more than you think.
- [01:13]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Find out how much@airbnb.com hosting when you.
- [01:24]
Acura
Are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas.
- [01:28]
Unknown
To the culture, you get criticized.
- [01:30]
Thomas Curran
You do.
- [01:30]
Unknown
Yeah, did you hear about that?
- [01:33]
Thomas Curran
I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we.
- [01:36]
Unknown
Made it the one. In the sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until.
- [01:54]
Thomas Curran
They change their energy.
- [01:55]
Unknown
And when you change your energy, you change your life.
- [01:57]
Acura
Gwyneth.
- [01:59]
Gwyneth Paltrow
I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the GOOP podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers here to start conversations. Because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. This week, we're sharing a gem from the GOOP Podcast archives. My guest today is Thomas Curran. Thomas is a social psychologist and a professor at the London School of Economics. His new book is called the Perfection Embracing the Power of Good Enough. In it, he explores how perfectionism manifests, why it's on the rise, and its impact on us, individually and collectively. As you'll hear in our conversation, I was drawn to Thomas's work because of where I find myself at this juncture in my life and the reckoning I've had with my own levels of self criticism over the years. We talked about how we have both felt a softening of this in our own lives. And we discussed how and why perfectionism is growing among young people and teenagers. Thomas explains the trap of perfection and why it's ultimately a form of self sabotage. And he shares the steps that we can take to break free from the cycle and into being more radically and wholly ourselves. Let's get to Thomas Curran.
- [03:26]
Unknown
Hello.
- [03:27]
Thomas Curran
Hello. How are you doing?
- [03:30]
Unknown
Very well, thank you. I'm in Canada at the moment. I'm going back to London in a couple of weeks. But for the moment I'm. I'm enjoying a bit of downtime and just talking to people about perfectionism, which is great.
- [03:41]
Thomas Curran
Yeah, really great. So you're also a professor at the London School of Economics. There's psychology in the London School of Economics.
- [03:49]
Unknown
I know, can you believe it?
- [03:51]
Thomas Curran
Interesting. What is the psychology of economics?
- [03:55]
Unknown
Well, kind of like behavior science. Why do people make decisions? Are human beings rational? Yeah, values, preferences, marketing, psychology, all that sort of stuff.
- [04:06]
Thomas Curran
What's your conclusion there? If human beings are rational?
- [04:10]
Unknown
Absolutely not. Couldn't be more irrational if we tried, I don't think. But that's fine because that's what makes us human beings. So there's something quite enlivening about that, although it does drive economists mad.
- [04:24]
Thomas Curran
When I came across your book, I was so struck by the title and it resonated so much and I had so much curiosity around your work and your research on the subject of perfectionism. The book is called the Perfection Trap, which I think perfectly encapsulates where I find myself at this juncture in my life. And I think sort of reckoning with where it stems from, what it is, why so many of us have it, why it's sort of like the acceptable flaw. When someone asks you, you know, tell us about your. Your downsides.
- [05:05]
Gwyneth Paltrow
It's.
- [05:06]
Thomas Curran
It's like, oh, I work too much, or I'm. I'm a perfectionist, or I'm. I'm a recovering perfectionist. So I guess I'd sort of like to frame the conversation by asking you how you got down this particular academic funnel. What was it that drew you to this subject and how did you start to research it?
- [05:26]
Unknown
Yeah, I mean, I'm a perfectionistic person for sure. And I think from an early age I was definitely an anxious kid, so I would find it difficult to perform in really challenging situations. I had a lot of natural talent I suppose. And I was good at sports and in school, but when it came to like high pressure situations, I was tended to struggle. And I don't think I. Obviously when you're young, you don't connect the dots. But as I got older and a lot of other pressures came into my life, things like, you know, academic pressures or pressures to look a certain way, behave a certain way, pressures to have a relationship or to succeed in work, and all these other societal pressures that were kind of bombarded with really started to have an impact, kind of interact, I suppose, with that underlying anxiety and push. Push me into doing things that weren't very comfortable, like working really hard, trying to perfect myself, manage impressions and all that sort of stuff. And over time that really culminated in some quite significant mental health problems which led me to therapy. And through that process I was drawn, I was brought to the awareness that rather than helping me. So I thought the perfectionism was holding me up. It was the one thing keeping me going, it was the thing that was making me bulletproof. Rather than actually doing those things, it was actually creating the problems and it was at the root of the difficulties. And that's really where my, I guess, motivation spot to, to understand this, this trait more, because we actually don't know a great deal about it, particularly at a societal level, like what's going on? Why do so many people feel these pressures? And why is perfectionism so pervasive? So I did the first study to look at how perfectionism is changing over time. We're finding that it's on the rise, which is super interesting, but also a.
- [07:08]
Thomas Curran
Little bit worrying and probably not surprising, right, Given social media's impact on culture, et cetera.
- [07:14]
Unknown
Yeah, I definitely think social media is having a big, big impact on this. There's no doubt about that. There are other pressures, of course, like in schools and the workplace and all that sort of stuff, but definitely social media is having an impact.
- [07:24]
Thomas Curran
Are perfectionism and anxiety kind of paired in your mind?
- [07:29]
Unknown
Yes, there's a lot of research to suggest that perfectionism is very strongly correlated with anxiety and ruminative anxiety. The worries, worries about how we're looking, appearing and performing in comparison to others, but also in the eyes of other people. We're petrified of doing things wrong, for instance, or failing or slipping up, because in our minds we feel like people are watching and they're waiting and they're going to let us know. So perfection is really about concealing, hiding. It's about trying to create for ourselves and other people this perfect life and Lifestyle that we want other people to see, which is fine until things start to go wrong, until cracks start to appear. And when those situations come into our lives, when we do find ourselves in challenges situations, perfectionist people really struggle because essentially they go in on themselves. They're very self critical and they tell themselves all the time that they're not good enough. And that's really problematic from a psychological perspective.
- [08:24]
Thomas Curran
So this sort of seed of perfectionism, is it coming from growing up in a household with a parent of a certain type? Like what are the origin stories?
- [08:36]
Unknown
So perfectionism is about 30 to 40% genetic.
- [08:39]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Really?
- [08:40]
Unknown
Yeah, it's very strong, but that's very consistent across most personality characteristics. In fact, a lot of other personality characteristics like neuroticism, meticulousness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and all the rest of it are about 50% inherited. So it's really strong, like really, really strong genetic component. But we also have to bear in mind that that leaves a lot for the environment to explain too. So you know, 30 to 40% genetic, but that still is at least 60% for an environment to explain. And when we're talking about environmental factors, yep, you can talk about early life experiences. Parenting conditionally regarding parents is something we zoom in on when we're thinking about perfectionism. That's parenting where you know, when you've done something well, you're given a lot of praise and approval. But when you haven't quite succeeded, that praise or approval is withheld or subtly deferred on the condition that young people keep doing more, keep trying, but harder, keep working to do better. That's problematic because what that teaches young people is that they're, they're only really worth something when they've succeeded and that when they haven't quite met that benchmark, that there must be something wrong or that they, they need to continually work and do more to correct those mistakes. And of course that makes us very failure reverse. It makes us worried about making mistakes and slipping up, which are very highly perfectionistic tendencies. But it's not just conditional regard. Parents can also project their own perfectionism onto young people too. So you know, you have perfectionist parents. Young people see that they're very impressionable creatures and, and they will of course mimic and take on those tendencies themselves. Anxious forms of rearing as well, where you, where you're hypersens or worried about managing impressions or not slipping up again. Young people will, will see this and they'll also, they'll also see those ways in which they should behave too. So there's all sorts of parenting styles and practices that can empty into perfectionism. But I must emphasize that it's not just about parents. And in fact, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that this is a broader problem than just those early life experiences, because modern society these days just radiates perfection everywhere you look. Perfectionistic ideals and fantasies just bombarding us through social media, as you talked about, and other areas, advertising, movie theaters and all the rest of it. And that can also impact on our sense of need to be perfect.
- [10:57]
Thomas Curran
Right. And I would think, too, even as you say there is a genetic component, but we are currently swimming in this culture of, you know, highly presentational perfection, sort of, you know, unnatural ideals. I mean, I grew up obviously in an era without social media and all of that, and I, I definitely think I had those tendencies anyway, but I feel like they sort of kicked in later in life. Like, I don't think of myself as a perfectionistic kid at all. I was kind of much more easygoing and accepting. And so I'm not sure exactly what happened along the way, but I feel like it was more in my 20s and late 20s when I started to get infected with it and then really, really hung on for a good, you know, couple decades there. I'm not sure if it matters, like, so much even why I'm a perfectionist, but the, the patterns that it's driven me to are quite punishing.
- [12:01]
Unknown
Can I ask you what that perfectionism looks like in your own life?
- [12:03]
Thomas Curran
It's changed over time, I would say. You know, in my 30s, I was trying to hold everything together, and I had focus on keeping myself physically strong, being able to do multiple things at one time. I sort of had this complex around, like, I can bear what other people can't bear. That's how my perfectionism showed up, like, loaded on me. Whether it's like emotional trauma or, you know, trying to do two careers at the same time or raising kids by myself. It was like that. That's. To me, it was most pronounced in that phase, like that I. I wanted to be able to do things that nobody else could white knuckle through. And it became really important to my identity, and it was incredibly harmful.
- [12:55]
Unknown
Yeah, it's, it, it is, it's. It's quite a punishing way to, to go through, like trying to push through all times and all causes and all situations. Sometimes it's really healthy to slow down. But perfectionism doesn't give us a permission to do that. It continually forces us to work through Challenge and setback and strife, when actually what we really need to do is slow down, seek help and recuperate, I suppose, allow ourselves to do that. And that's actually one of the most difficult things about perfectionism. It just doesn't allow us to do that.
- [13:31]
Thomas Curran
And are all high achieving people, do they have this perfectionist streak?
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Unknown
I would say a good proportion? Yes. We don't actually have any like hard data on that, so it's really hard to say. But I would caution that it doesn't necessarily mean that perfectionism is necessary for success.
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Thomas Curran
Right.
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Unknown
I think what we see is the tip of the iceberg in the, in the extremely high, high, high performance people have made it to the very, very top. Of course we want to learn from those experiences and we can learn a lot from their experiences. But sometimes they can mislead us a little bit into believing that it was a. Perfectionism got there. Probably they got there despite the perfectionism, not, not because of it. And we know that because a lot of data suggests that there's a very weak relationship to perfectionist and performance. Actually, in fact there is no relationship between those two things. So yes, it is true that a lot of perfectionistic people are really high performers, but that doesn't mean perfectionism is why they got there.
- [14:27]
Thomas Curran
Right. Okay, so there's a correlation there, but if there's not a causation.
- [14:32]
Unknown
Yeah. So there's two reasons why we don't necessarily see a high correlation with perfectionism success. The first is that they work really, really hard, but it's unsustainably hard. And you tend to find perfectionism is closely linked to things like burnout, just a kind of cynicism, devaluation and reduced accomplishment in the workplace or whatever it is we might be doing. But there's a second more interesting reason why perfectionistic people find it really difficult to find lasting success. And that's because the world class self sabotages. And what I mean by that is that they will avoid or need to avoid failure to such an extent that they'll sabotage the chances of success to do that. Because avoiding failure is way, way more important than feeling like we've been successful. And we know this because we've done a lot of lab based research. And I'll tell you quickly about one study. We've got people in the lab and we told them to do a cycling task, right? These are young, young athletes and we said you should comfortably meet a certain distance in a certain amount of time that should be comfortable for you. So go away and do It So they got on the bike and they cycle really, really hard to meet this goal. And then at the end we told them that sadly you failed, you didn't quite meet the goal, but it's okay, you can try again. And then the non perfectionistic people, well, on that second attempt they put in just as much effort, if not a little bit more. But the perfectionistic people did something really interesting. Their effort fell off a cliff on that second attempt because in their minds you can't fail at something that you didn't try. And so what they're doing is they're preserving themselves. They're wanting to avoid that shame, embarrassment, guilt that they felt the first time by just taking themselves away from the situation. And it's not just avoidance that we see by the way. It's also things like procrastination which are wrapped up in the same psychology where something is so tough, so difficult, so challenging that we just want to do anything we can to avoid feeling those really difficult emotions so that we just avoid them and remove ourselves. But we're only damaged of course by the passage of time. And so that also is not conditioned to performance either. So perfectionists work unsustainably hard, they burn out, but they also self sabotage procrastination, avoidance, which is not in any way conducive to success. So that's why perfection has a weak relation.
- [16:43]
Thomas Curran
Performance that's super fascinating.
- [16:51]
Acura
Acura's all new adx. A compact SUV that isn't just built for one thing. It's precision crafted for everything to escape the grind. With available all wheel drive to go with your flow. With available Google built in. Hey Google, turn it up. Okay. Turning up the volume. And crafted to be heard. With an available bang and Olufsen premium sound system. The all new Acura adx. Crafted to match your energy. Acura precision crafted performance take your vibes on.
- [17:16]
Unknown
Go, go, go, go.
- [17:18]
Acura
Google is a trademark of Google llc.
- [17:24]
Thomas Curran
So what are the other, for lack of a better word, what are the other symptoms of it? Right, so you said they work really hard, but they burn out their self sabotagers. If someone's trying to diagnose whether they're a perfectionist or not, what are the other symptoms? Quote, unquote.
- [17:44]
Unknown
Well, think about a time where you've been successful is a good, good starting point. Now what was your first emotion? Was it relief that you didn't screw up? Well, that's probably an indication that you might have a little bit of perfectionism. Because really perfectionism is the thief of satisfaction, is a fee for joy. Essentially what it means is we can't derive any lasting satisfaction for some from success because the better we do, the better we feel like we're expected to do both ourselves and other people. So we always set a new floor for ourselves that we can never regress from. And it's so exhausting to keep running on that treadmill that that's the most debilitating thing I think about perfection. It kind of exposes our dreams as nothing more than dead ends because the next we make it, it's like chasing the horizon. The closer you get, the further it moves. Like that is what perfectionism is. And it doesn't allow us to just savor and, and, and be content in the moment of our accomplishments and being able to reflect on his accomplishment and find a lasting sense of joy and satisfaction from having made it a certain way. Because we've got to keep doing more, we've got to keep having more. So that's, I think that's the biggest one. There's also a very harshly self critical component of perfectionism that I think we also have to be attentive to because perfectionistic people can be very self critical, particularly when things haven't gone well, very hard on themselves. And that's, by the way, that's one of the reasons why it can be really problematic in terms of our mental health. But yeah, if you are worried about failure, if you are highly self critical and you find it hard to derive lasting satisfaction from success, those are very key signatures of perfections and behavior.
- [19:20]
Thomas Curran
Are you looking at me?
- [19:25]
Unknown
I, I, you know what? Like I, when I was going through this research, it was like, yep, yep, yep, that's me, that's me, that's me. Like this was very much me searching respect. I think a lot of people feel these things.
- [19:37]
Thomas Curran
Yeah, it's, it's super interesting, you know, to, to read through a book because when you're a perfectionist you feel isolated in it. You know, it's not something that people really talk about in terms of, you know, I don't know what I'm being driven by and, and I can never satisfy myself. Like it's not really dinner party fodder. So I think it was really interesting for me to have it articulated in these ways because also it's become this catch all this sort of like trite, like, oh, I'm a perfectionist. It just means, you know, I have ocd in this particular way. But it's okay. It's like culturally acceptable and actually it's, it's very Damaging?
- [20:18]
Unknown
Well, it is. And I'll ask you a question. In your word, do you think that perfectionism is something that you've seen grow? Do you think it's something that's very widespread right now where you are?
- [20:28]
Thomas Curran
I'll start with the cohort of people that I'm like with a lot in my life in a non professional way, and that's teenage girls. My daughter's 19, my son is 17, all his friends, his female friends, my daughter's friends, my stepdaughter. It's so startling to me the standards that these girls are holding themselves to. And luckily I wouldn't say it indexes extremely heavily into physical looks. It's more, what am I getting done? What is the quality of my work? Am I impressive? How am I showing up in the room? How much responsibility can I bear? It's really extraordinary to me to see how these cohort of girls are like hyper, hyper capable in a way that I'm like, is this okay? Like, aren't they supposed to be, you know, 17 and kind of fucking around? I mean, I was not like that when I was 17, but I observe that in such an incredible way. And then also in my peer group, women who are, you know, probably my best friends are probably like 45 to 50. I see a kind of easing of it starting to happen now where we're all a little bit like, this is fruitless, like, what are we driving towards? You know, My friend Glennon Doyle, who has a great podcast, she I've referenced this a lot. It really stuck with me. At the beginning of the year, she discovered she had anorexia, but she was talking about how she had this unbelievable amount of discipline, which I think is just runs right in parallel with, with perfectionism. Right? You're so disciplined because you're driving towards achieving something so hard. And then she kind of stopped and asked herself, but then, what am I a disciple of? And that to me is such an interesting question. Like, I want to be the disciple of something that I contemplate and ruminate on as opposed to like whatever my wiring is, whatever the genetic pieces, whatever the culture has told me, and then whatever I've reinforced by brutally telling myself over and over again that I'm not good enough. That at the end of the day, like, I'm not enough. I'm not enough. I can't, you know, I can't get there. So I'm on the one hand feeling positive about the fact that these 50 year ish old women are like, forget it. Like, who am I, I want to like myself, like it's good enough, you know, but, but also as concerned about these teenage girls I see. I mean, it's striking.
- [23:23]
Unknown
Yeah. It's so interesting that you make that distinction because I am concerned actually about the world that young people have to come of age in these days with social media and the pressures there. I'm sure there is a lot of pressure at school too, to continually excel because they're standardized tested all the time.
- [23:43]
Thomas Curran
Yeah.
- [23:43]
Unknown
Which way. More than we, we were, and I certainly was. And they, they're so concerned about how they're doing and whether they're doing enough and, and even objectively high grades are not enough because they, they feel like they should be doing better, they should be doing more because suddenly now they're surro elite achievers. And it's, it's all a pressure cooker. So much of a pressure. And we're seeing that in the data. We're seeing that exactly that in the data that young people are really struggling with, with a lot of these pressures and they're internalizing them as pressure to be perfect. But what's really interesting is it's social pressures. So we have three dimensions of perfectionism. Self, which it comes from within other, which is projected outwards onto other people, and social, which is perceived to come from the outside world. And young people are telling us that it's those social pressures to be perfect which they're feeling in greater regularity. And it's on an exponential curve right now. So this is going up really quickly and it will continue to go up really quickly into the future. So yeah, young, young people have got a difficult world to navigate right. Right now. And I think it's up to us as parents and those who work with young people, teachers, educators, to really work hard to push back against that culture. Because I think it's so important that young people know it's okay. That just, you know, existing, being, living, breathing, it means you're enough. That's all, that's all that matters, that makes you. And that you don't have to prove yourself all the time. You don't have to demonstrate to other people that you're worth something all the time. That, you know, it's about joy, it's about purpose, it's about trying to find meaning in life, to flourish like a flower. Flowers don't compete with each other by the way. They grow in their own special ways. And that's the most important thing. The message I think that young people need, need to hear right now that you know, if they keep chasing this perfect idea, it's gonna, you know, this, it's impossible and they have to find their own ways in life. So. So yeah, it's really interest that distinction because we see that in the data.
- [25:37]
Thomas Curran
I wonder for those of us raising these teenagers who are being bombarded all the time by these ideals. It's so the water that we're all swimming in and I don't know the degree to which we're even aware of our unconscious biases towards achieving and capability and perfection and all of that. So what is the antidote to that with, with a teenager? Because also they don't listen to very much that we say anyway. So does it become about us trying to model stuff or are there practical things we can do to help kids orient towards self valuing instead of the perfectionistic tendencies?
- [26:17]
Unknown
Yeah, and at first, this is a really important question. I'd like to first preface it with, with a clear statement that it's not easy to be a parent, particularly in the modern world. And, and there are a lot of pressures, very real pressures by the way out there to, to succeed. Because life is becoming a bit harder for young people. It's hard into the best universities. It's harder to get into the elite professions. And the elite professions are the only professions right now where wages are increasing like everywhere else. Right. It's becoming a lot, lot tougher for young people. So of course, look, those pressures are real. They're live. And it's understandable that parents will feel them and want their kids to do well. That's the first thing to say. But you can have high expectations, you can have high goals, but you can do so in a warm and caring environment that provides love and support unconditionally. And what does that mean? That means that no matter how well your offspring do, if they come home and they've got an A grade, amazing. Celebrate that. Hug them, tell them that's an incredible achievement, well done. But if they come and they don't get the grade that they wanted and they're upset, which they will be, tell them it's so. Tell them the same things, exactly the same things. Be unconditional in that love and affection that you showed them. Tell them it's just one test out of many, many hundreds of tests that they're going to. It's not an indictment on them. It doesn't, it doesn't say anything about how much they worth or how much they matter or how much they're loved or approved of by their parents or their Teachers, this is just one stepping stone in a, in a path that's going to take you in the direction that you want to take. And I think that's the most important thing. Unconditional love and approval. No matter, no matter what's happening in young people's lives, that's so, so crucial. They need that. But also, you know, like you mentioned, try to be, to lead by example too. You know, teach young people that failure is humanizing. It's not humiliating. You know, so whenever you fail, share that with, with your kids, tell them you had a bad day, they tell them you screwed up. Share that information with them and, and teach them the joy of that, the very humanizing joy of being a fallible human being. And sometimes things don't work out the way we planned. That's okay. There's always next time. So those are things I would bear in mind when thinking about parenting practices and all the rest of it. But I would just say it's tough. It's tough and you're doing such a great job.
- [28:41]
Thomas Curran
Well, that remains to be seen. So you touched on this, but these three types of perfectionism that you studied, the self oriented, the socially prescribed, and the other oriented, how did you land on these three segments?
- [29:01]
Unknown
So to answer that, decades of work that hasn't, hasn't been done by, by me, it's been done by two clinicians called Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flat. And they just asked perfectionistic people, you know, what does perfectionist look like to you? What are the thought process, what the behaviors, what the emotions that you feel? And across hundreds of interactions, they arrived at these three elements because they saw that perfection wasn't just a personal characteristic that I need to be perfect, nothing but perfect. But it also contains all sorts of social elements around. Everybody expects me to perfect, and that's why I need to be perfect. But also my perfectionistic standards are what I expect other people to also hold themselves to. And so these kind of three really core elements came what sort of generated organically through just interacting with perfectionistic people. And that's where they come from.
- [29:47]
Thomas Curran
And in society, does everybody have some degree of each one of these aspects?
- [29:55]
Unknown
Yes. So it's useful to think of perfectionism as a spectrum rather than a kind of I am or I'm not a perfectionistic person for a couple of reasons. But the main one is to say you're a perfectionist and you're not. Perfectionist means quite fixed. Right? And that suggests that there isn't a process that we can, we can go about changing Those tendencies. Whereas if you think about perfectionism as a spectrum, what we can begin to see is that some people will be high, some people be low, some people will be more or less in the middle. And that spectrum can move. And that's also the most curious thing about perfectionism. Because everyone on score somewhere along the spectrum of self, social and other oriented perfectionism, some will be high on self, some will be low on social, some will be in the middle of other, and then all sorts of different combinations. And so no one perfectionistic person looks like another. And that's also the really fascinating thing about perfectionism. So it's really useful to think about it as a spectrum.
- [30:45]
Thomas Curran
But there's criticism at the heart of each one of these, right? Because in self oriented perfectionism it's like that negative voice in your head criticizing yourself the socially is that your friends or the world at large is going to be critical and the other is that you are critical of other people for not living up to standards.
- [31:09]
Unknown
Absolutely. That self criticism is the root of these three. And it makes sense if you think about it. Because if you're putting yourself through hard passive criticism when you haven't achieved excessively high goals, and it's only fair that other people are gonna, are gonna be expected to go through that too, right? That's only fair. So as much as like Irish, I expect me to be perfect and I'm critical of myself, I'm going to be a critical of you if you're not perfect too. But there's also that social and because, because we criticize ourselves for not being perfect, we then feel that everybody else is doing that too. That you know, we're no different to those around us. And as a consequence, it isn't just that I expect you to be perfect. Perfect. Oh, I expect myself to be perfect. But everyone else expects to be perfect too because they're waiting to pounce with judgment and criticism when I haven't met those high expectations. So. Absolutely right. It's that, it's that critical response to imperfection that really drives these three elements.
- [32:04]
Thomas Curran
So how is that genetic? That feels so environmental to me. Like being self critical because it feels like you're embodying a voice, right? It's like a personification of, of a voice. So how can that be genetic perfectionism?
- [32:18]
Unknown
Like, like an other, like a bit akin to neuroticism, a kind of worry and anxiety about how it, how we're doing, how we're performing, how we're looking. And that part of perfectionism is certainly genetic in the sense that there's a kind of ruminative orientation that unfortunately we're just born with and we tend to be a bit of a worry water. Suppose you could say, for want of a better phrase, as we go through like. But the self critical element of perfectionism, this idea that we're never enough, we're not enough as we are in my mind is very much environmental. That part is certainly learned outside in wider culture in what we're told about how satisfied we should be with our existing life circumstances, how we're told all the time that there's something more that we could be, that we could have, that we could do to never stop, to keep chasing and never necessarily feel contented. Because if we did feel contented, that would be a massive problem for our economy as it's organized right now. Because if we stop, if we stop consuming and everybody was happy with a good enough standard of life, then you know, we're going to soon find that businesses are going to close, jobs are going to be lost, healthcare, education, all these things we won't be able to afford anymore. And, and the whole thing comes crashing down. We know what happens in a recession. So there is a sense that this is systemic, that there is a constant need for us to continually improve ourselves because that's how we improve our economy. And I think that's where these feelings are not enough and never enough. And this feeling is a deficit and lack and worry and self criticism. I think that's where they're coming from and why it is that we're seeing a lot of that these days as young people are growing up into a really, this economy with social media at the heart of it. As much as we can talk about this at an individual level, and we should, There is also, there is also a really important message in my book that this, this is not your fault. That the way you feel and, and these issues that you're struggling with and perhaps feel find it really hard to snap out of, have a broader context and actually they're logical and rational responses to almost relentless social conditions going on around you. That telling you you're not enough. There's always something more. There's actually something incredibly comforting about, about that knowing that there is a, there is a bigger picture here and that, that none of this is anything that's wrong with you and that actually you're living in a society that's, that's pushing you in this direction. And if you can, if you can wrap your head around that, then you can really start on a journey of what we might call rehabilitation from perfectionism for a much more informed place. And you can begin to see everywhere and all around you that these things are designed to make you feel like that. And you can choose to reject them, you can choose to ignore them, and you can choose a different direction instead. One that's predicated on finding meaning and purpose and living inside the joy that is our families and children and communities and not, not having to consume and not having to work so hard all the time. And I think that's a really, really important message for, for people to hear.
- [35:25]
Thomas Curran
Yeah, absolutely. And that also when, you know, maybe for me right now, for example, I feel like I'm straddling those two things, right? I'm sort unhook from these really strongly held ideas that I need to be X, Y and Z in order to be acceptable or lovable, etc, and move more wholly into this idea that's really sort of like came with an upgrade that happened when I turned 50, which is just like, no, the, the answer is to be wholly yourself, be radically yourself, come what men and define for yourself what those benchmarks are, those attributes, not, not have them be imposed on you from anywhere else. And I think when we ask ourselves those questions, we become much more embodied with the idea that we are okay as we are, as you say, when we lean into those relationships we have with the people we love. I mean, I'll speak for myself anyone. I'm operating from that embodied place of being myself. Like, I do feel whole, but it's when I click back into like the work mentality, that's when I start to regress back into the more perfectionist kind of thinking, you know, especially because it's so easy for us to look around and aggregate data around what everybody else is doing and what best practice looks like and what a best in class metric for this is. And so we start driving towards that. It's just very easy to get tripped back up into that. At least for me anyway.
- [37:05]
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. Master clinician Karen Horny once said that there is nothing more joyous than being all of ourselves with all of our feelings and saying and doing all that is mine. And there is nothing more uncomfortable than trying to be somebody else, somebody perfect. And, and that's that, you know, that's quite profound. She was, she was a clinician in the 50s and 60s and saw thousands of thousands of thousands of patients and, and she came to the conclusion that really the core root of neurosis in her day was what's called an alienation. From ourselves. We're trying, we, we're not in contact or contact of ourselves trying to reach an impossible ideal that makes us feel very tense and creates a lot of inner conflict. And so what you said there is extremely profound because that is so, so important. Trying to pretend, go about and managing impressions, working in the service of an idealized image is really uncomfortable. And reconnecting ourselves should be, in my opinion, the focal point of recovery from perfectionism.
- [38:17]
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- [38:49]
Thomas Curran
Are there cultures where you see this more predominantly than other cultures? Are there cultures that are where people feel more at ease being who they are and kind of in the present? Or is this across all industrialized? Like how does, how does that look?
- [39:08]
Unknown
Well, of course all, all roads lead to Zen Buddhism. But you know what, like it's so true. I know it's a cliche, but it is so true that if you, if you can connect with the, with the present moment, if you can be grounded and live each day as it comes, it's so much of a more contented and happier place to be. By the way, I know there's a very privileged thing to say. I grew up in a very poor town and I know that letting things happen can be the difference between, you know, making a rent payment or losing a job, whatever. I understand these things and it's really important to bear that in mind. But nevertheless, it's so, so, so important to try to be grounded and live in the moment and, and a lot of cultures are able to do that way better than others. And I think, yeah, Western culture is particularly difficult in that respect because the imperative is to continually continue drive economic activity forward, which means that we constantly have to pursue goals, ideals. They're not ours that are somewhere in the distance. This, you keep going, keep moving, keep doing, be somebody else, somebody else all the time. There's a, there's a material product for every hole in your life and that has to be constantly plugged all the time. There's never an end to it. And so I think those sort of cult really lend themselves to that idea of self alienation way more than certain others. And that's why I strongly believe that yes, this is a genetic, but there is also a strong cultural element to it and it's a very key feature, I think of Western culture in particular.
- [40:34]
Thomas Curran
So does either gender or race play into this at all?
- [40:40]
Unknown
So we don't find much difference in gender in terms of mean levels, but certainly we could argue that, that there's a lot more pressure on girls and young women to women in general to, to look and behave a certain way. There's no doubt about that. And in fact, actually I mentioned Karen Horney because her insights came from clinical interactions with women in patriarchal culture. And she observed that they had to be somebody else, somebody perfect all the time. They had to bend themselves to the whim of that culture in order to conform. And it was that conformity that was creating the conflict, that was creating the perfectionism, was creating the psychological difficulties. So. Absolutely. And don't think it's any surprise that the insights around perfection came out of observations of patriarchal culture and its impact on women. No doubt about that when we're talking about ethnic background and minorities. Well, yes, I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that it's a lot harder for people with ethnic backgrounds to make, make their way in modern society. And so that need to overcompensate, to overcome structural hurdles and barriers, prejudice threats and stereotype threats and all the rest of it that they encounter mean that they have to work so much harder, they, and do so much more just to stay at the same level. Well, of course that's exhausting. That puts a lot of pressure on those individuals to do more and be more and work harder. And I don't think there's, I think there's a lot of literature now coming out about, you know, having to overcome as they overwork just to be on this at the same place as other people, which is having a massive impact on things like mental health and perfectionism. So I think gender and race do play an important role in.
- [42:10]
Thomas Curran
And what is the impact of this way of thinking on our mental health?
- [42:17]
Unknown
There's many different ways that you can look at how perfectionism impacts mental health. It's what's called a transdiagnostic risk factor, which means it doesn't just impact on one aspect of mental, but it impacts on many aspects of the mental ill health. So things like anxiety, depression, self image concerns, self presentational concerns. We see it correlated with self harm, depression, low mood, ruminative cognition, all sorts of things, all sorts of clinical and non clinical outcomes. And the reason for that is because it's it's so encompassing and we talked about this earlier, but it pushes us to continue to keep going even when we need to stop. It's almost anti resilient. It makes us extremely fragile and vulnerable to every roadblock. Even a small bump in the road can really tilt us. And you see this a lot with perfectionism. They find it really difficult to cope with setbacks. And these things happen to us all the time by the way. You know, like heartbreak, grief, loss, global pandemic. Comes out the blue, you know, things happen to us all the time which, which are going to create a lot of challenge and setback. And perfectionist people find it really difficult to navigate those setbacks because they want to try and control and perfect everything and all around them. And that's just so difficult. They don't seek help, they motor through, they don't allow themselves to rest. And over time that, that builds anxiety, that builds a lot of depressed mood, low mood, exhaustion, fatigue is kind of listlessness that we see a lot in perfectionist people and, and that just compounds, right? It kind of builds and builds and builds until the dam breaks and, and you start to experience some significant mental health problems. Pushing ourselves through pain is one of the reasons why perfectionists struggle. Another is this, this idea of self defeat that we talked about, self sabotage. And they, they start to be in a cycle of low success which makes them feel worse because obviously success is so important for their mental state. So if they fail then they experience a lot of anxiety, their self esteem plummets, so then they overcompensate and that leads to more failure, which then, which then you start to see this negative spiral start to occur among perfectionistic people. So it's interaction with success and failure is also important in this context. But you know, just in brief, it's important to remember that perfectionism has huge impacts on our, on our mental health from various different pathways. And it's important we actually recognize the extent of it because I think we know like we talk about perfectionism is like we know it has this baggage, but I don't know if we 100% understand the extent of that baggage, which can be really quite profound.
- [44:49]
Thomas Curran
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- [44:51]
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- [45:01]
Thomas Curran
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- [45:57]
Thomas Curran
So how do we begin to, to rewire ourselves from this? You started by saying you are a victim of this yourself. Do you have a practice? How, how can people kind of move out of that cycle that you're just referring to?
- [46:14]
Unknown
Yeah, it's a journey. That's the first thing to say. And there's no like quick fix or hack that I can give you that will instantly mean you can overcome perfectionism tomorrow. It's repeated exposure to setbacks, failure, challenge that I think help. And so putting ourselves out there is really important. Brennan Brown talks, talks about vulnerability. I think that's crucial and I think opening ourselves up to the world, even if you're not a world champion at it, do it anyway, particularly if it brings you purpose and joy. Like, you know, I'm a really terrible singer, for instance, but I love playing guitar, so my perfectionism held me back. Now I just go out and do it because I, I love doing it. And that's, that's more important than hiding this in this perfect person, this imperfect person I'm trying to disguise. So put yourself out there. That, and, and that can't just social life. Your leisure life can be in your work too. You know, if you don't feel you're a very good presenter, put your hand up to do a presentation. What I'm saying here is go through those emotions and that discomfort because it's going to feel uncomfortable doing things that are outside of that comfort zone. But that would, that discomfort will teach you something really important about the perfect person that you're trying to emulate. And is that perfect person really worth living in fear for? Like, is it really worth living in fear? That's stopping me doing these things, moving forward, growing, developing. And you'll find that as you put yourself out there, as you encounter these challenges, as you go through the discomfort, you'll realize actually that's not worth living in fear that actually what's more important is that I'm doing things that, as you mentioned, that are true to me, that I find purpose, meaning, and I want to learn and I want to grow. So put yourself out there, put your hand up to do uncomfortable things and just learn to sit with that discomfort. It's not going to be easy at first, but the more you do it, the easier, easier it will become.
- [48:01]
Thomas Curran
What does the discomfort help us practice or what does it say to us?
- [48:07]
Unknown
It tells us that at some level we're scared. There's a trepidation there and an apprehension about things that are unknown and that we're not quite sure how things are going to shake up. And in. And in a perfectionist mind, of course, one of the hardest things to deal with is this possibility of failure that actually we might, particularly public failure, we might expose a weakness in front of people. And what I'm saying, when I'm saying sit with that discomfort, is to try to reflect on it and ask ourselves, well, why is it we feel these things? And what is. What is the worry? And the worry, of course, will be that we don't emulate this kind of perfect ideal that we hold in our mind's eye that we want to be. And I'm asking each and every one of us, and I do this to myself all the time, is, is that person really, as I say, is it really worth this trepidation? Is it really worth that fear to live in, to live in the shadow of this perfect self? Love somebody who you know, somebody else, somebody perfect. There's not you. And so that's. It can do that trepidation if you know, yes, it can feel difficult and it can feel like we don't want to encounter it. But what I'm trying to say is that we can learn something incredibly important about ourselves through it. And so opening ourselves up and allowing those feelings in, I think is vital. So that's what I mean by trying to sit without discomfort and learn how to sit with it and see it as something that's really important rather than something we should be avoiding through avoidance or procrastination or whatever it might be, be. And that take courage. But I do believe it's vitally important to push, push ourselves a little bit and equally at the same time, self compassion, because by doing so you're going to encounter lots of moments where you are going to reveal a bit of chink in the armory every now and again. And you are going to encounter setbacks and that's fine. These are very humanizing experiences. But don't go in on yourself. It's so, so important to be kind to yourself, to tell yourself it's okay, okay, you just screwed up, you just slipped up or things didn't pan out the way you hoped. And that's also okay. That just happens. And, and that you, you've achieved so much, you've come so far and there's always next time. That's a much better internal dialogue than to go, how could you be so stupid? What were you thinking? Which is often the, the types of, in a narrative or in a dialogue that I used to give myself all the time when I didn't think I'd done a very good talk or whatever, avoid those kinds of things. And finally, I would say one of the things perfectionistic people do a lot, I certainly count myself in this is they, they think in very black and white terms like, I must do this, I have to do that. And if I don't, it's going to be catastrophic. They catastrophize a lot. And so that's why you know, this has to be done. It's very rigid, it's very inflexible ways of thinking. When those thoughts come into your mind and you'll know, you'll know because you'll be, there'll be forced to put a lot of pressure on you to move forward. I would, I would suggest writing them down. You know, I must, I must submit this flawless presentation on X date, right? And ask yourself, like, how much you actually believe that? Like actually believe that and is it, is it a must or is it would like to, or is it would be good if it could and start to organize and prioritize your life around things that are important and things that aren't quite so important and ask yourself what, what's the likely consequence if I don't do, do that too? Like, is it as catastrophic as I think it is? And again, this can really help to reframe those very rigid and irrational types of thoughts into more constructive and compassionate ways of thinking. So, you know, there are, there are other things that I talk about in the book, but I think those are the three main practices that have helped me.
- [51:34]
Thomas Curran
For me, like the real light bulb moment of this conversation was around perfectionists also being self sabotagers. I had never, like those seem totally mutually exclusive to me. Right. Like, why would you ever self sabotage if you're trying to do everything perfectly? But it makes, it makes so Much.
- [51:58]
Unknown
Sense you talk about self acceptance are the things that you do in your life that you think help in this respect.
- [52:06]
Thomas Curran
I have really tried to change the dialogue that I have about myself with myself because I used to really quickly default to a place of extreme negative self talk. And that has eased up, I would say, over the last decade. Like, I've. I have made an effort to do that. And I think once I've healed that layer, what's come underneath is this deep sense that, you know, part of these patterns of behavior, they do kind of try to anesthetize me away from the feeling underneath, which is that, again, like, on some level, I am a failure or I can only be a failure. And so I've constantly tried to prove to myself and other people that, well, I'm not, because look at the empirical evidence is that I did X, Y and Z, or like, I raised a happy kid, or I. I'm building a successful company or whatever those things are. Like, they all, you know, resisting that urge to make everything a data point to prove to myself that I'm not a failure. And not all day, not every day. But there is this part of me that goes through life with this narrative. That's really what I'm trying to understand is, like, how do I heal her? Like, how do I heal that part of me that drives so much of this behavior?
- [53:30]
Unknown
And a lot of it is from just real life experience. So, for instance, you work so hard, let's say. I mean, I work so hard writing a book, but when you submit it, all you've done is cross the final T. And you don't. You can't look back at the bigger picture to see this massive thing that you've achieved. But because the last thing you did was simply dot the T. Right, Cross the T. That's the last thing you did. So it doesn't feel like you deserve to have, like, a moment of relief. It was such a small thing. And I guess that's the same, you know, if you finish a film and you just say the last line, and the whole effort that's taken to produce that thing kind of evaporates because all you did is just say the last line and then you're done. And. And that's. I think, one of the most difficult things about perfectionism is it is because it keeps us looking in the forward direction. Like, what's next?
- [54:18]
Thomas Curran
Yeah.
- [54:19]
Unknown
Then in the moment, it's really hard to appreciate that what we've achieved is something incredible. And that's good. That goes for all of us, every single one of us has done incredible things. And if all we're focused on is that final full stop, then we're never gonna appreciate the success of the the challenge is to really try to reflect on the entire, you know, what we have done, what we have achieved, and be able to look backwards as well as forwards and find us a sense of satisfaction in actually, you know, we've achieved great things and there's something to be proud world and can and almost sort of contented about that. Yeah.
- [54:56]
Thomas Curran
Thank you so, so much. This was such a great conversation and the book is so good. It's an amazing piece of work.
- [55:04]
Unknown
Oh, thank you, Grenou. I really appreciate that.
- [55:10]
Gwyneth Paltrow
Thanks for tuning in to today's conversation with Thomas Curran. His book the Perfection Trap is out now. I hope you'll check it out. Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow rate and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts.