Perfectionism can harm your health. 5 tips to loosen its grip on your psyche

By Andrea Kane, CNN

Editor’s note: The podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the medical science behind some of life’s mysteries big and small. You can listen to episodes here.

(CNN) — The start of the year can be exhausting: After running yourself ragged over the holidays — hosting the perfect party, finding the right gifts or staging the ideal holiday mise-en-scène — popular culture prods you to do even more. Enter the New Year’s resolution, those self-imposed marching orders to improve yourself and, often, your health.

But sometimes the solution to better health — whether mental, emotional or physical — may be doing less and learning to let go, even just a bit.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, author and a self-described perfectionist, finds doing less doesn’t come naturally. And she is hardly alone.

“I would say most of my clients come in with perfectionism at the center of the overlapping Venn diagram of their challenges,” Hendriksen told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his Chasing Life podcast recently.

“But nobody ever says, ‘Ellen, I’m a perfectionist. I need everything to be perfect,’” she said. “Instead, what they say is, ‘I feel like I’m failing.’ ‘I feel like I’m falling behind.’ ‘I should be so much farther ahead than I am now.’ ‘I have a million things on my plate and I’m not doing any of them well.’ And ultimately, I think that’s because perfectionism is a little bit of a misnomer; that instead of striving to be perfect, it’s really about never feeling good enough.”

You can listen to the full episode of the podcast here.

Perfectionism “can look like striving for excellence for the sake of excellence, for setting high standards, working hard, caring deeply,” Hendriksen said, noting those are positive attributes. It is a huge asset for many professions — say, for a pilot or brain surgeon — but it can tip over into unhealthy behavior.

Hendriksen should know. She said she wrote her most recent book, “How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics And Perfectionists,” for herself.

“There is a saying for self-help book authors, which is, ‘Write the book you need.’ So I did write it for me. But as a clinical psychologist at an anxiety specialty center, I also wrote the book for everybody else like me.”

Perfectionism is at the heart of many medical and mental health challenges, Hendriksen said. “And it also is a really central component of eating disorders, of a lot of kinds of depression, of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).” She said it even “reaches its tendrils” into conditions you wouldn’t ordinarily think of, such as migraines, erectile dysfunction and panic attacks.

“For me, it manifested physically,” she said. “I developed a GI (gastrointestinal) illness. I went through like five rounds of physical therapy. I had an overuse injury from typing too much. I woke up one morning, and I couldn’t turn my head to the right because my muscles were too tight.”

Hendriksen said perfectionism has several sources: It can be genetic, come from the family environment or stem from Western culture, where capitalism, consumerism and social media dominate. The pandemic, she said, made it worse.

“Perfectionism is essentially the result of being in an economic system that is hell-bent on exceeding human thresholds,” she said, citing the work of psychologist and perfectionism researcher Dr. Thomas Curran. And studies show that the rate of perfectionism is going up, especially among young people.

Hendriksen said you don’t have to lower your standards or be less driven to loosen the vice grip of perfectionism on your psyche. Here are her five tips to ease up on yourself.

You’re not your achievements

There is value to you beyond your accomplishments.

“We all identify with our performance,” Hendriksen said in an email. “Of course we’re proud of good grades, an excellent job review, hitting our workout goals, or even turning out a killer new chocolate chip cookie recipe.”

It’s natural to feel bad or disappointed when falling short of your goals. “But at the end of the day, we are not defined solely by our performance,” she said.

Conflating performance with self-worth, Hendriksen said, is called overevaluation, which can lead to fluctuating self-esteem “that results when every performance becomes a referendum on our worth.”

She wants to remind people they’re so much more than their outcomes. “We are our relationships, our interests, our values, our enjoyment of life,” she pointed out.

Tone down your inner critic

Take your critical brain less seriously, Hendriksen said.

“Those of us who aim high, work hard, and care deeply take things seriously. We take our commitments seriously, our responsibilities seriously. But that means we also take our own thoughts very seriously,” she said. “When we think ‘I’m not good enough,’ or ‘I’m falling short,’ we assume those thoughts are true. We treat them as fact. But actually, they’re just thoughts.”

Hendriksen said that some people are simply wired to be self-critical. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take every thought seriously and literally. Take the stance of listening to your self-critical thoughts as you would listen to the music playing in the background at a coffee shop,” she advised. “It’s there. You can hear it. But you don’t have to get wrapped up in it or let it yank you around.”

Make self-compassion easier

Self-compassion is often described as “talking to yourself like a good friend,” Hendriksen said. “But you don’t have to feed yourself a steady stream of self-compassionate hype.”

She said self-compassion can be one word or a phrase: “‘Easy,’ ‘Gentle,’ ‘You’re OK,’” she said. “Even easier? Self-compassion can be actions: three deep breaths, asking for help, taking a break, taking time to savor your coffee in the morning or read a novel before bed.”

It can also be permission not to do all the things you expect of yourself, Hendriksen said. “Self-compassion can be permission to skip the gym because what you really need is an extra hour of sleep,” she said. “All in all, self-compassion is turning toward your pain and suffering with care and understanding and asking, ‘What do I need? What would work for this situation?’”

Let your inner sloth out

Dare to be unproductive, Hendriksen said.

“Self-improvement feels good. But resist the urge to be endlessly productive with your leisure time,” she said. “You don’t have to build a skill, learn something new, or do something ‘good for you’ all the time.”

Also, do things you like, not because you should do them. “If your heart sings when reading non-fiction history, absolutely read history. If you love running, please run,” she said. “But if you think you ‘should’ read history or ‘it would be good’ to go running, allow yourself to reflect. Improvement and personal development are important, but so are pleasure, enjoyment, connection and expression.”

So, go ahead and indulge in so-called unproductive pursuits: “Read a rom com, watch a gross-out comedy, spend an hour doing nothing but singing to your cat,” she advised. “If you love it (assuming it’s safe and respectful), you’re doing it right.”

Do good work for the right reasons

Keep your high standards, but focus on the work, not yourself, Hendriksen said.

“Imperfection is having a moment in our culture, which provides much-needed relief from ever-escalating standards,” she said.

But the advice around imperfection tends toward “stop when things are good enough,” or “you need to lower your standards,” Hendriksen noted, which can feel fraught and risky for many.

“Of course, we’re not going to settle for subpar or mediocre outcomes because that would mean that we ourselves are subpar or mediocre,” she said. “So keep your high standards. But focus on the work, not yourself. Take the stance of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble and ask, ‘What would make this thing better?’ ‘What would make the work better?’

“Keep your focus squarely on the work. Don’t extrapolate it into a referendum on your character.”

We hope these five tips help you ease up on perfectionistic tendencies. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week on the Chasing Life podcast to examine the purpose of boredom.

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CNN Audio’s Grace Walker contributed to this report.