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adaptive perfectionists play to win; they’re more likely to enjoy the process because their efforts are fueled by optimism and reward seeking. Maladaptive perfectionists, on the other hand, play to not lose; they’re more likely to experience stress and worry because their efforts are fueled by fear.
when you build a life you want, it still feels hard a lot of the time. The difference is that the difficulty feels, to say the least, worth it.
perfectionism develops more easily in families with extremely critical parents and that an authoritarian parenting style may lead children to adopt a perfectionist orientation during the course of their lives.
When I talk with people who are intersecting with the suicide spectrum, it’s not that they want to die; it’s that they want to experience relief from the pain they’re in.
When you punish someone, that person doesn’t learn how to change; they learn how to avoid the source of the punishment. If you are the source of your own punishment (through critical self-talk, for example), then you learn to avoid yourself by numbing out. Numbing out looks like overeating, overspending, overworking, getting caught up in drama, substance misuse, mindlessly watching TV or scrolling social media, and so forth.
Messy perfectionists blame themselves for failing to follow through and blame the world for being too bureaucratic.
Focusing on productivity becomes dysfunctional when you’re striving towards goals you don’t care about or in a manner that violates your integrity. Focusing on productivity also causes problems when you use “time” on the x axis and “task completion” on the y axis as the exclusive barometer of your productivity.
Restored procrastinator perfectionists learn to take action not because they feel assured that everything will work out in their favor but because they understand that being ready and being in control are two different things. Understanding that you have little to no control over the world around you is liberating; it opens you to step into your life now instead of waiting until you have more control.
I’m not saying that stabilizing your sleep is a panacea, but it is an immediate and efficacious way to promote mental wellness and enable other efficacious mental health interventions to be more easily accessed and received.
If pleasure is an afterthought for you, you are in danger.
Certainty Certainty isn’t real. Therapists continually witness certainty being upended. Sometimes everything a person thinks is true about their life changes in the span of ten months, ten hours, or even ten seconds. When you’re connected to yourself and you’re present, you don’t need certainty.
