That famed moment where an interviewee is asked what their biggest weakness is and they respond confidently saying that it's their “perfectionism” is revered in pop culture but far from being a laughing matter. One of the most common and well-studied maladaptive ways we can see in the world is called the unrelenting standards schema. A schema is a deep set pattern of thoughts and behavior which when they’re maladaptive can bring with them turmoil for our mental health.
Having unreachable standards for yourself so often leads to this feeling of not being enough when you can reach this extremely high expectation. This can manifest in a variety of ways from making you hesitant to do things for fear of not doing them perfectly to hurting your self-esteem even though by many standards you're doing very well.
So often holding yourself to this unreachable standard can lead to burnout and a near inability to incorporate proper work life boundaries. Being caught in this marathon it's hard to say you've done enough, I've done a good job, or it's time to take a break but oftentimes overworking yourself will manifest in the body be it with anxiety, attention, and/or depressive symptomology.
Some of the most gratifying work I've done in the therapy room has been helping people identify how these unrelenting standards make what we call their demanding critic which is like a voice inside your head that judges and holds you to a really high standard. The first step is often identifying when the critic is speaking and not your healthier side and how that feels in your body and then learning more about this inner critic and where they came from to in the long run accept it as part of you and grow a healthy and sustainable relationship with this voice so that it's a friend and not a foe. It's very different to say you're the worst cook in the world how could you have burnt that pizza it is to say OK next time we'll have to remember to get that out of the oven sooner.
I think the biggest question we can ask ourselves is what is truly my definition of success and what do I really think is going to make me happy? Taking a step back from this definition of success and looking at where this comes from and how achievable it really is can be extremely gratifying. So often we can be caught in societies expectations for what success will mean to us be it money, looks, or having a perfect social media profile and an idea that having these things will make us happy but that's so often not the case.
Living a life with the demanding critic at the steering wheel like this is far from ideal because it's often riddled with anxiety and depression as well as a lack of intentionality with what you want out of life. The cost of this demanding critic calling the shots throughout a life time is unfathomable and a big reason why it’s so gratifying to heal this part of you.
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