This is what my client Andi told me this week. Like so many others, she is very grateful that she will be able to get together with family and friends for the holidays this year. Last year had its own set of stressors, but it had fewer frictions that naturally occur during holiday get-togethers. Whether it’s friends or family, there are always people who rub us the wrong way.
What triggered Andi was when her mother suggested how Andi could do things just a little bit better. These suggestions were particularly distressing when it came to her parenting. Just this week, when her mother was over for dinner and her son was having a meltdown, her mother said, “When you did that, I would put you right in your room!.” At that moment, Andi felt like putting her mom in her room, not her son. Instead, she snapped at her mom, telling her she did not want to hear it. Her mom looked hurt. Andi felt even worse, thinking she was not a good enough mom or daughter.
Andi’s goal for therapy was to be more patient, loving, and compassionate with her mother at Christmas. These are beautiful goals, but they are not realistic. The gap between how we think we should feel and act and how we do, causes more stress, shame, and blame. We cannot just will ourselves not feel triggered by friends and relatives. But we can learn to respond to our triggers differently.
Expect and Accept you will get triggered. It helps to realize that it is normal to get activated. When we expect this to happen, we position ourselves to respond to our triggers differently.
Learn to relax rather than react to your triggers. When we get triggered, our bodies contract, and we tense up. By practicing labeling our feelings and training ourselves to relax our bodies, we become much less reactive.
Rehearse ahead of time. A powerful tool we use in cognitive behavioral therapy is called imaginal exposure. By picturing upsetting situations, we can generate similar feelings and sensations when they are happening in real-time. By practicing relaxation during an imaginal exposure, you are much more likely to remember to use them at your next get-together.
Listen to this imaginal practice at least one time before your next planned gathering. Be patient, loving, and compassionate towards yourself! Becoming less reactive takes time.
One of my personal traits that I’m not particularly proud of is impatience. Yesterday when I went online to the DMV website to find out why I hadn’t received my car registration renewal in the mail, the web form wouldn’t take the information I entered, and I couldn’t find a number to call or make an appointment. This shouldn’t be so difficult. ARGGGGH!
I can become impatient with people I love too. When I sent my husband to the store to get some coconut milk and he brought back coconut cream, I got really annoyed at him. He happily turned around and went back to the store, but I didn’t like waiting. Can’t I trust him to manage a simple task? GRRRRRRRR!
And I can be just as impatient with myself as I can be with the world. When I’m working on a task, I often don’t think I am getting enough done. Even as I am writing this newsletter, I catch myself measuring my progress against an imaginary timeline. I’ve been working on this for an hour, shouldn’t I be done by now? GROAN!
My impatience, like everyone’s impatience, is characterized by the assumption that things SHOULD be going better, smoother, more efficiently, than they are. It’s a standard of performance we expect that is not being met. Judging everything with this perfectionistic mindset, we contract, causing ourselves and others to suffer. We really shouldn’t be so impatient, should we? Sometimes I get so impatient with my impatience!
The antidote to impatience is hardly more judgments and criticism. What we need is compassion, understanding and acceptance. This meditation is specifically designed to help us stay present with our feelings of impatience. When we welcome, rather than resist this painful emotion, transformation happens.
A 30-day cognitive workout to help you cultivate self-acceptance, resilience, and the “mental muscle” needed to thrive in an imperfect world!
Do you hold yourself—and others—to unrealistically high standards? Are you afraid of making mistakes? Do you live for to-do lists and deadlines, and yearn for flawlessness? You aren’t alone. In our competitive, high-pressure world, it’s natural to strive for excellence. But over time, these perfectionistic tendencies can feed the internal anxious “chatter” known as your “monkey mind.” So, how can you quiet the monkey and stop feeling like you need to be perfect all the time?
In this illustrated guide, psychologist and anxiety expert Jennifer Shannon will show you how to break free from the monkey mindset that drives your perfectionism and set realistic goals; unleash creativity, joy, and productivity; and foster self-compassion and compassion for others. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, leading to a fuller and more meaningful life.
Our monkey minds are hardwired for survival. They depend on the approval of others and the need to fit in and be accepted by the “tribe.” But monkey minds can also get in the way of reaching our full potential. If you’re ready to welcome imperfection and start taking risks, give this workout a try!
“I’m a procrastinator,” Andi said. “I put off exercise, house cleaning, paying bills, everything! I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just lazy, I guess.”
I’d seen a lot of procrastinators in my practice, and I’d yet to see one who was genuinely lazy. I had a different guess about Andi.
Going Deep, Uncovering Perfectionism
I began our session by asking Andi to imagine opening her mailbox and seeing a credit card bill. What feeling came up for her? She said it made her feel anxious. I then asked her what thoughts went with this anxiety. She identified thoughts like, I’ve been spending way too much money, and This bill’s probably overdue and I’ll have late charges.
Thoughts like these would seem to act as motivation for Andi to pay the bill before things got worse. But she wasn’t doing that. There had to be some deeper cognition that was stopping her from paying her bills, which were piling up. I asked her, “If it’s true that you’ve accrued late charges and you’ve been spending too much, what would that mean about you?”
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “It would mean I’m STUPID!”
Feeling stupid, less than others, or not up to a task is painfully crippling. If every time Andi sat down to pay bills, she ran the risk of feeling that way, it’s no wonder she put it off.
“I don’t think you’re lazy,” I told her. “I think you’re a perfectionist.”
Andi looked at me like I was crazy. “No way,” she said, “Perfect people get things done!”
Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Pain
Andi’s misconception about perfectionism is a common one. As I’ve learned from my practice and my professional life, the central tenet of perfectionism is to stick with what you’re great at and avoid altogether the tasks that make you anxious. It’s a great short-term strategy. So long as Andi was distracted by social media, cooking, or doing anything that was fun or easy for her, she was not worrying about her bills. But in the long run, Andi’s procrastination was making her feel worse about herself and interfering with solving her budgeting problem. It was clearly a failed strategy.
As a cognitive behavioral therapist, I approach problems like procrastination as more than a behavior problem; it’s a thoughts and feelings problem too. Once my clients connect the dots, they are ready to imagine a new picture for themselves.
Three Strategic Steps
The first strategic change I asked Andi to make was in her thinking. Her present perfectionistic assumption—that overspending and paying bills late meant she was stupid—needed an upgrade to something more realistic. After all, lots of people have difficulty in this area. A non-perfectionistic mindset—or what I call an expansive mindset—is, If I spend too much and have late charges, it means I am human. When we view or shortcomings as part of our fallible human nature, we decrease our sense of shame and are better able to take effective action to address a problem.
The second change of strategy was regarding Andi’s behavior. Every time she tried to sit down to pay her bills, she felt overwhelmed. Rather than expecting herself to settle all her overdue bills in one big session, I suggested she break them down into manageable pieces. When we limit ourselves to a short time frame, after which we will stop even if we haven’t finished, we are way more likely to begin the task. To practice, I had Andi set the timer for ten minutes and start to pay her bills, right in session.
Thinking and behaving in any new way is bound to cause feelings of discomfort, and facing up to her unpaid bills, without getting rid of them was painful for Andi; she felt ashamed. In response, I asked Andi to employ a third strategic change: to pat herself on her back and repeat her expansive mindset out loud. She felt silly, but I reminded her that what is really silly is berating ourselves. When we do something that is hard, we need to be encouraged. With self-compassion, we can get so much more done!
Less Than Perfect, More Productive
Andi wasn’t a lazy person, and she wasn’t stupid either. But like so many other perfectionists, she had fallen into the trap of seeing herself that way. These harsh self-judgments won’t die easily, but with practice, anyone, including you, can beat procrastination with these three strategic steps:
1. Change Your Mindset from perfectionist to expansive
2. Break Tasks Downinto manageable pieces
3. Give Yourself Praise instead of punishment
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This article first appeared on the Blog @ NewHarbinger.com
Two days ago, I was checking my e-mail and one of the subject lines jumped off my screen. Interview Request From NBC News. It was the real deal, Fernando Hurtado, a reporter for NBC was doing a story on the anxiety many people are experiencing when returning to “normal” post lockdown life. My first reaction was excitement. Yes, I thought, I want to do this! But as I began writing a reply, my perfectionism started to take hold. In an interview with this big news organization, I have to appear confident, I have to say all the right things, and I can’t make any mistakes! Now I felt so anxious that I was wasn’t sure that I wanted to do the interview.
True Values Defined
Then I remembered to check in with my values. I asked myself, Why would I want to do this interview? To prove myself? Impress other people? But those didn’t ring true. The motive I had for doing the interview was to share what I know about anxiety, and help people get back to normal, to live life more fully. Knowing my real motivation gave me confidence, and perspective on how to proceed. I spent about an hour outlining my thoughts, and because I also value my own time and mental health, I made a point to stop and not give in to the urge to over prepare.
The next morning was the interview and I felt anxious. My heart was beating fast, my stomach felt nervous. But I knew these feelings were not a sign that something was wrong. They were telling me that I was on the right path, taking a risk and putting myself out there, moving in the direction of my values.
Grading My Effort
After I finished the interview, I slipped into another perfectionist habit, ruminating over what I could have done better. I had just taken a step forward, but instead of feeling pride, I felt embarrassed. But I caught myself and reminded myself that I didn’t over prepare, I spoke my truth, and any mistakes I made just mean I’m human. Yay! I thought, I get an A plus! Then I literally kissed my own hand!
The icing on the cake was that when I finally saw the piece, I knew that people will actually find it helpful. Which makes me feel grateful and proud.
We could all us an extra boost of can-do! Here, experts share easy ways to do hard things and increase your joy, resilience, and well-being. Read more here.
This article first appeared in the May 24, 2021 issue of Women’s World Magazine!
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We could all us an extra boost of can-do! Here, experts share easy ways to do hard things and increase your joy, resilience, and well-being. Read more 
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