Why perfectionists become depressed | Dr Keith Gaynor

hi everyone my name is Keith I work as a psychologist I work as a therapist and most of my time is spent working with people with anxiety and depression and they come in and we sit and we do some therapy for an hour or so and they move along and one of the things I've noticed over the years is that people can have extraordinary achievements they can do really really well they can be building up their lives and doing and achieving more and more and yet sometimes they don't feel it don't feel like those things or achievements don't feel like those things are good enough and one of the passions and one of the traits that seems to be coming out of it is that those people tend to be perfectionists that whatever they do isn't quite enough and whatever they achieve isn't good enough and so what we're going to talk about this evening is a little bit about why sometimes perfectionist can become depressed and why sometimes when were depressed we can become perfectionists and how this can actually really hurt us hurt us and try and find a few ways through so the agenda is very clear we're going to analyze why I'm a perfectionist we're going to feel guilty we're going to mull over the mistakes we're going to fix everything and then we're never going to make another mistake and once we can do this then we will have it all solved and although that seems ridiculous the funny thing is that's often the way each of us goes into every day whether it's meeting somebody or going to work or going into a meeting or trying to stand up and give it give a talk like this we want to do it perfectly and then we're going to pick out every mistake we made and we're going to go over every mistake we ever make and then we're just never going to ever make another mistake and if we do that then we'll feel alright about ourselves and of course that's not what happens we do make mistakes we do make little errors there are little glitches and if those little glitches really affect our self-esteem and really affect how we feel about ourselves then we're going to feel very low because those mistakes are going to happen so [Music] I suppose what we need to think about a little bit is why would we want to make mistakes because who would want to miss make mistakes or fail or be imperfect surely being perfect is a good thing that's what we should all be aspiring to who doesn't want to pass their exams or get their bonus or have nice parties or meets nice people or things to go really well and should we really strive for those things all the time shouldn't we get up and really push for those things every day and so perfectionism on the outside looks like a good thing it looks like it should help us and I think the other thing that's important to talk about here is that when I'm talk about perfectionism I'm not just talking a little personality quit trace a quirky little bit that some people are a little bit loose and some people a little bit more organized I'm talking about something that's actually a bit more clinical than that that's a bit more straight so there are lots of different personalities in the world some people are laid-back and to be some people in the audience who feel totally laid-back and those other people are a little bit more rigid some people are Spanish and some people are German and that's okay that there's just these different ways of being in the world but we can ask the question when does the trade perfectionism become a problem and that becomes a problem when it's excessive when it starts to have the opposite effect to what's intended and when we start to feel worse about ourselves even though we might be doing a loss and that's when we start to talk about clinical perfectionism a clinical perfectionism isn't a diagnosis and it's not a disease it's just a way of a talking about a personality Trace that when it's taken to excess starts to hurt us rather than to help us and one of the things we know from a lot of research is that people who have this extreme personality trace it's altering associated with increased risks of depression increased risks of anxiety of eating disorders and lots of other mental health problems that if we push ourselves to be perfect all the time the person who gets hurt is us and that often the thing that we to happen doesn't happen because we've become hurt so there's a wonderful book on this and there's a real wonderful expert that if you ever want to look her up and that's called that's the lady called rush Afrin and that's her book called overcoming perfectionism that's a very easy read it's very straightforward it's by 10 euro or so to buy I'm anyone who feels like that some of the things that come up today might apply to them then that's a really good place to start because there were lots of clinical stories in it lots of different people's stories in it and you kind of compare okay does that apply to me and to some of the ideas that Roz talks about in this would they be useful things for me to apply in my own life so they define perfectionism as the setting up of and striving for very demanding standards they're self imposed and relentlessly pursued despite this causing problems it involves basing one self worth almost exclusively on how well these high standards are met and so just take that last bit that our self worth is almost exclusively based on how we meet certain standards and then think about how fragile that self-worth will become and how easy it is not to meet those standards how easy it is for life just to throw something in the way or something's become more complicated than we thought it was and if those standards aren't met certainly we start stop feeling a sense of self-worth so this is a very busy slide so I'm gonna read it out but this is by a lady called Elena Miller who writes a blog about perfectionism and depression and her and her mental health so perfectionism has been that perfect frenemy who's tagged along with me my entire life on the surface she's helped me get the stuff done right but underneath she was always there at the worst moments to whisper cruel criticisms in my ear no matter how hard I worked or how well I'd done for Elena perfectionism helped her get straight A's all the way school helped her get into Harvard helped her graduate Medical School helped me go from a skinny 13-year old with no athletic ability ability to a Division one college water polo player she's helped me excel at pretty much anything I've put my mind to which is also there to tell me that each of these accomplishments wasn't sufficient that I should try harder do more be better that I achieved something when I had achieved something difficult I was enjoying my success she was there - whisper in my ear not good enough set yourselves your sights higher or Jamie Varon also talked about perfectionism in his blog perfectionism is not about perfecting what you do it's about keeping the fear that you will never be able to do it and so you spin and you keep spinning perfectionism is about being frozen because you never want to find out that you're really not the best at something you circle the drain and repeat all behaviors and you control what you know you can control because the idea of risking being wrong or incorrect or imperfect makes your heart race in a terrible way perfectionism exists in the silent way you berate yourself for not being able to do certain things it's this insidious belief that all will be perfect and fine if only you could be perfect and fine I'll repeat that again it's the belief that all will be perfect and fine if only you could be perfect and fine perfectionism means you overthink conversations before and after you have them you plan your words you beat yourself up if you say something that upsets another person you kind of get close to people because people are unpredictable no predictability means you can't be perfect and so you contain what you can't control when you come so something that seems positive and seems nice and seems like we should all be looking for it in fact has the opposite effect on us it attacks us and our sense of who we are it attacks how we feel good about ourselves it attacks our own sense of self-worth and so sometimes then the more we strive for something actually the more were hurting ourselves with it so when we look at the common effects of perfectionism emotionally we find perfectors off of worry a lot and a lot of low mood physically they can feel very tired and have poor sleep and muscle tension cognitively they can end up ruminating that means worrying and going over and over in their minds they can end up catastrophizing so making things they're making things seem huge and awful they increases levels of self-criticism and it lowers people's self-esteem and in terms their behavior is often repeated checking taking too much time to do a task being over thorough and then either that or total procrastination and avoidance not doing the thing at all and when you see those sort of symptoms you can see how easy that will be to map on to depression that how close we are to talking about the things that happen to us when we're depressed the mood we feel the thoughts we have and the things that we do so paradoxically you often see perfectionism and people who have achieved a lot but we see it everywhere but there is this paradox the better somebody does the worse that they feel about themselves it's they set a goal and they guess it and they feel bad because they should have done it quicker faster better in a different sort of way somehow some other way and I'd often see that in people recovering from depression they will have gone and achieved something that they really wanted to so they've got back to work have gone back to seeing friends and immediately beat themselves up because they should have not had to be here in the first place so they should have been able to do it sooner or I shouldn't have taken them to goes to do it or should have been something else that somehow that Heist perfect standard they says ruins the thing that's perfectly good so let's see if this works if it's not any imperfection is intentional and it's a learning aid that's why there's like two little arrows down the bottom for no reason let's see if this works so we're going to talk through is how perfectionism develops and then how it keeps operating in ourselves and so perfectionism often starts with low self esteem and you wouldn't imagine that necessarily people are working really hard and striving really hard that it's coming out of actually feeling really know themselves a party that's because the person feels low that they worked so hard to try and cover up the gaps to try and paper over that feeling and that leads then to very rigid standards and high expectations I must be this I should always be dust I should always achieve this I should never let myself down I should never not do this I should always be nice to my friends I should never lose my temper I should never get cranky with anyone I should always be smiling should always be the best friend always be the best wife I should always be the best husband and then what happens is that person that person with those very rigid standards for low self-esteem has a task they have to go do something so I've come to a lecture on a Wednesday night I have to give a lecture and always day night or they have to go out into the world and do something and if once you do a task only three things can happen you can complete the task so you temporarily meet the standards you've gone you've told us you can not complete the task so for some reason it doesn't work out so you don't meet the standards or you can avoid the task altogether and not be there so this is remaining up to a day's work you can go and do a day's work you can go and do a day's work that doesn't quite work out you can stay at home in bed those your three possible options same with school the same with the relationship the same meeting friends the same with college the same with anything we do we do it we don't do it or we avoid it what happens with people who are perfectionists is if they do it that go only do the thing that they set out to do they meet the standards they immediately go well I should have been able to do that anyway that's dead easy everyone can do that that's no you know why am I getting excited about that that's should there's no use in that everyone does the day's work they immediately under - it's immediately not good enough the immediately happens this thing they've said I'd to do now it doesn't matter or whatever reason they don't meet us so they don't get to come to the lecture on the Wednesday the traffic gets stuck they get tires it's been a long day that don't make it or they get anxious about us and get anxious about the pressure those standards and decide actually I won't to us and avoid and at all three scenarios the same thing happens they criticize themselves so no matter what they do whether they meet the standard don't meet the standard or avoid the standard they end up beating themselves up so I do it I don't do it or I avoid it and I still feel bad and that obviously has one effect it pushes their self-esteem down and that's that that's the crux the heart of the person works the more they achieve the harder they push out is their self-esteem goes down and so for lots of people the harder you work your self-esteem goes up but when people are perfectionists when those standards are too high or to riches their self-esteem goes down and they feel worse so it's a bit of a strange paradox it's not necessarily what people expect it's not necessarily what intuitively comes to mind I'm sure we can ask some questions and talk about it a little bit afterwards but this is what happens we're perfectionist and why it's so easy then to become depressed because the harder they're working the more they're doing the worse they feel about themselves so for instance someone says I should always you know do whatever whatever my job is I should always meet my targets something comes up they meet the target and immediately there's knock at them that's a minimum I should do everyone gets their target what's the point or they don't meet the target or they procrastinating they avoid meeting the manager all together whatever happens it always comes back to self-criticism they're beating themselves up at the end of it or they have the standard I should always be a good mum lots of people have this standard who would want to be a bad mom so we often have the standard I should always be a good mom but the problem there is the rigidity of it always because actually which of us is always going to be anything which of us is always gonna be the perfect moment or the perfect husband or the perfect father and so this person who wants to be the perfect mom brings their toddler to the supermarket and the toddler is going to do what the toddler is going to do it's gonna kick and scream and pull the shelves down and want the sweets and certainly this person who wants to be the perfect mom feels really exposed because they can't be perfect and have this toddler and so they choose to do something they comfort the child but then they knock themselves because I showed us the minimum of any parent can do that or they're aren't able to comfort the child they aren't able to get control of this toddler and then they beat themselves off for being a terrible moment you know not able to mind my own child or I won't go to the supermarket at all and we'll just you know make do with baked beans until Sunday so we don't have to deal with the issue and again it comes back to criticizing themselves I'm feeling worse about themselves so what we're going to spend the rest of the talk doing is what that's those are just some examples and some kind of pictures of how perfectionism works and out maps on to the depression we're gonna do for the rest is talk about what can we do about us because actually lots of kind of sensible practical things we can do about this and if we have a tendency towards criticizing ourselves or if you have a tendency towards low self-esteem actually we don't have to stay doing that there's lots of stuff we can change and so what we're going to look at is looking at some of those rules some of those high standards and expectations we're going to look at that where we undermine ourselves and undermine our achievements we're going to look at avoidance and we're going to look at self-criticism and we can make small changes to all of those things that's in our power and if we do those things actually the perfectionism comes down a little bit and the self-criticism comes down a little bit and our mood picks up a little bit and we start to feel a bit better about ourselves so we're thinking about rigid standards and expectations so I'm just going to take some water before I get us all to my throat and then we really would be in trouble so lots of therapy and lots of psychologists and lots of things that people will have come across what their goals are good we need goals and that's definitely true if we don't have any goals then we will be a bit aimless and it's easy to get stuck but goals aren't sometimes goals aren't simple sometimes they're competing what if I want to be a good parent but I also want to be a good employee lots of people get caught with this I want to work hard but I also want to be with my family and you know I can't be in two places at once I want to be a good friend but I also want to get my exams well my friends are out having a party and my Jam's are based in the library I can't do both and so often our goals compete and it's not easy if our goals are rigid to do both we get pulled in too many directions sometimes our goals aren't within our control we can't manage the whole world is in our control so we may have a goal of being better at something or wanting to achieve something but actually maybe that isn't ours to control we can try we can put our best foot forward we can put you know you can try moving down on down the road but maybe we can't actually control the whole world for this thing to actually happen and so what we find is that goals aren't a bad thing in themselves but if they become rigid then they do become a bad thing so if somebody says I should always be this then they're in trouble because we can't always be anything we can't always be nice we can't always be kind we can't always be good we can't always be hard-working we can't always be a good neighbor we can't always be a good father can't always be a good husband we can try to be that thing most of the time we can do our best to be that thing but we're human beings as well we will not be that thing all the time I should never never get angry I should never get cross I should never get obsessed I should never I should never actually well this is also impossible we're human beings we're going to get angry we're gonna get cross I should never stay in bed we're gonna stay in bed why should never make mistakes we're gonna make mistakes and so if we have rigid rules for ourselves then we're setting ourselves up for criticism and we're setting ourselves up for failure and often people have very strong beliefs about failure I can't fail we shouldn't fail if I failed it's because I haven't worked hard enough haven't prepared hard enough I haven't done and so perfectionism stems from a dysfunctional dissatisfaction with where you are and who you are and because of that nothing is ever good enough when I have X then I'll be happy when you get it you just want something else everyone needs to hold themselves the same standards I do but they don't and yet frustrated and if you don't park in the yellow box well there's lots of other people who will park in the yellow box and if you get annoyed at them you're gonna spend a lot of time annoyed you can see I spend a lot of time in traffic trying to get across town I can do whatever I set my mind to you can but at what cost I need to be perfect to be loved well then we're in real trouble because none of us is going to be perfect we're gonna be human we can be good we can be good enough but we can't be perfect so this is something that people may have come across before where is the law of diminishing returns so the people who know this best are professional sports people they have this absolutely perfectly down and it's about their body because their body is their business now what happens is the more effort we put in the more outcome we get for the first hour for the second hour for the third hour but after that the more effort we put in the less outcome we get and the more we put in the less and the less and the less so if you go to the gym I don't know how you know when you get on the treadmill the first kilometer you begin grace second kilometer still don't fine third kilometer a little bit less a little bit less a little bit less if you're studying you're trying to concentrate the first half hour is great everything's going in you're remembering everything second half hour still good still remembering stuff third fourth fifth we go all the way down same with being social the same with any that we're trying to do as we put more effort in we achieve stuff initially and then stuff goes down Adele Adele oh we're professional sports people our brilliance is they know when to stop they know when to take a break and the physio comes on and they get the ice packs and they go in the shower is they know that they have all the recuperation routine built in they know exactly what to do there's a whole team of people who rush on to look after them but we're normal people so we don't have that team of people that says stop you've done enough now go to the chairs actually we have to do that ourselves we have to know okay I've done enough now that was good effort I'm gonna stop I'm gonna look after myself I'm gonna do the thing that I need now I've done the piece don't this much of the goal I've tried to achieve it this much now actually I'm gonna look after myself a little bit and though we balance the hard work that we do with self-care and looking after ourselves and there's a little bit of us that says no no I'll just work harder I'll just do more for what happens is we actually achieve less and less and less woods we go past that point so stop so when we're thinking about our standards or goals what if we engage in flexible standards what would they be like or reprioritize if our standards were kind of flexible and open I'd like to be a good person most of the time but it's ok if I lose my temper I'd like to work hard but every now and again I'm going to be lazy I'm gonna toss off I'd like to achieve the things I want in my life but I know I can't control how everything comes and the speeder that it's going to come at there I have goals but I'm also looking for recovery and recuperation and balance there's things I want but there's also that I need to look after myself in order to get them so I might want to do well and work but I know there's gonna be ups and downs I might want to be a good enough parent but lots my kids behavior and development is not in my control there's so many factors in life that I can't control them all I can only control my little bit and try to do my best or that my little bit and that thing's not working is part of living and there that's an uncomfortable truth but it is a truth that not everything we set our minds to will actually come to fruition and if that hits us very hard on this level of self-esteem then that hurts too much but if we can say well ok that's part of life that's how life works there's opt-ins and dance to it then we can get up again and go and do the next thing so we're talking about rules next I want to talk about is then when we do achieve something and when people then often under- ourselves worst of all so is there any of my achievements that I run down now this is to an irish audience so that means 100% of you run down every one of your achievements 100% of the time I know what it is about growing up in Ireland I don't know if it's part of the Leaving Cert but we are not allowed take a compliment or praise ever that there's a joke I don't know if it's true joke but some Polish people haven't lived in Ireland for a while went home and they misunderstood English and they're from the English they learned in Dublin and so someone would say something and they say pennies tanks as if that's how we actually that's a nice your pennies Thanks that was a good talk Penny's thanks that actually we are not able just to say thank you I like this jumper - thank you this was okay we're not able to take a compliment or enjoy praise or acknowledge your own hard work if someone says that was good I'm really pleased with this I hope I recognize that something we do is good even if it's not unique even if it's not perfect and so we can be a good parent even though hopefully everyone on our street is also a good parents and the psychologist I work in the corridor that only made up the psychologists and I hope they're you know I hope I'm a good a psychologist but I hope everyone else in that corridor is a good psychologist as well I don't say anything your husband or saying anything that we do that we can just be good at it or so sort of good or sorted called some at the time and then we don't have to run ourselves down because it's not a perfect unique achievement so what do you think my chances are actually changing Ireland's so that we could take a compliment if somebody said something Isis we're thinking you're thinking zero yeah so it's actually okay just to own these things now what we do there's a positive feeling that comes from it when someone says you look nice just saying thank you I think that was good I'm really pleased with it you know that I did this thing and it's okay I don't have to climb Everest before a you know take a positive comment on board and I don't have to run down everything I do just because someone else has also done it as well because in reality most of the things that we do in our lives some of the other 8 of billion people in the world our hosts are doing is we don't have these perfect unique achievements so then we think about avoidance and one of the things that so but I've worked in Ireland for the last five years and I've worked in the UK for five years before that and part of that I was working in Oxfordshire for the NHS and if you work in the NHS and Oxfordshire you get lots of students from Oxford University who could come through that service and so they're all super super bright people but one of the things that was cropping up is that perfectionism was a big deal and depression was a big deal there and you would meet these people were amazingly high IQs and all that but they would not have handed in a paper since you know for six months or they would have skipped all their exams so they're gonna get zero so and what that was about was the fear of getting a B was so high that I actually just got frozen I would get an F okay get zero because they couldn't get a hundred they couldn't get an again maybe this is the good thing about coming from dobin it's kind of orderly well would you not be happy with 41 you know just do it and know that I would know was the answer and that that's what happens in perfectionism that we can't just do enough I just do a bit of it we have to have it all or we end up with nothing and so we get a lot of people for whom procrastination and avoidance is a huge issue because if it can't be perfect then it becomes nothing like that they get frozen and they can't put in half a paper or do half a day's work or half an achievement that's been all and so this often means that the person won't start or won't take on the task or won't do a bit of the task or won't work incrementally or won't to gradually build something up over time because they can't be perfect at it day one the first time they do it and so the anxiety associated with maybe failing is so strong that they're unable to do even the simple stuff and of course we all have a risk of failing that's you know when we start something off if we go to the gym there's a fair chance we're not necessarily going to become and Olympic marathon runners overnight it's not listen you may fail and that avoidance that fear of failing no stopping us doing anything reinforces our low mood reinforces our negative beliefs about ourselves and stops any sort of ability to progress and create any momentum and our persons at low self-esteem gets reinforced as well look a month has gone by and I still haven't tackled this thing two months have gone by and I still haven't started this thing three months have gone by still haven't started this thing how bad am I so we often there's lots of ways to avoid some ways we just don't to us sometimes we get very busy with other tasks so I should be doing this but the office is very messy I'm just gonna clean everything and then I'll do this thing I would do it but I have this cold I would do us but actually man is much better than me at doing us and so I might just leave it to her to do it I would do it but actually it's someone else's issue or not my fault or something I shouldn't have to do in the first place or someone I don't want to tackle and it becomes a reason why I'm not gonna take it on or I can't do it because I'm too upset and that can often happen where we get overwhelmed by the issue so much that we're not able to tackle the thing that's in front of us and so one of the things about tackling things for the first time or beginning things or taking on things that were not very good us yes is that we will feel anxious we can't not feel anxious doing it everything from the very first day so it's October so all that the kids start at school about a month ago all little four and five year olds going in the gays the first day you know leaving their moms and dads they all feel terrified first day of school first day of secondary school first day of work first day of everything we feel frightened and that's okay that's a very normal part of being alive but we still have to take that first step we still have to go and do the thing so we have to do the task anyway even if we're worried that we might fail at us now what we try and do is gradually and incrementally chip away at us whatever the thing we're trying to do is just a little bit at a time that's cliche that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step we don't achieve it with the first step we don't achieve it with the second step we don't achieve it with the third step we just have to push for each piece one after another after another and there's a lot of anxiety a lot of fear as we're putting in those small little steps but it's the only way that anything has ever been achieved and so the last bit then we want to talk a little about it is self-criticism what you know what's depression we'll really recognize they all want to perfectionism will really recognize and that people are very self-critical they are hard on themselves in a way they would never be hard on another person they are aggressive in their own heads and the way they'd never be aggressive to a neighbor or a stranger or a family member they are hard on themselves and often it's because people are perfectionists have the belief that self-criticism is useful it's a good thing to do so it drives me forward I need to get a higher standard so come on let's do but get this done I want I don't get it done well that's stupid too and ultimately that self-criticism leads to a lowering of self-esteem as no standard is high enough and the criticism then becomes relentless as you never meet it all you're left with is criticism and criticism and criticism criticism and that repeated criticism is very hard even if it's only your own mind that's saying it or maybe especially because it's your own mind that's saying it and so our confidence goes down and our ability to tackle the things that we're trying to tackle in life goes down with it well I'll talk a little bit and just for a minute or two there's two different types of confidence they talk about one is swing confidence and one is core confidence and swing confidence is where when things are going well we feel brilliant we're on top of the world we can do everything but then as if things start to go badly it swings and we feel terrible and awful and that's often the type of confidence that perfectionist self but then when there's flying and they're getting the marks and everything is being achieved brilliance on top of the world and as soon as it adds away I'm the worst and it goes core confidence is where you know we're pretty good anyway even if it's not your day even if it's not going right even if the thing you put your mind to isn't happening you're still okay I'm still pretty solid at this I'm having a bad day this isn't working for me but I know I'm still fundamentally okay and that's it's easy to develop the swing confidence and it's harder to develop the core confidence and like when a key bits of that is that we don't criticize ourselves every day that isn't a good day we actually try and build ourselves up I said okay I'm not having a good day but I am doing my best despite of being a tough day and that kind of self-talk is really really important so self-criticism is easy to develop and it's often come from genuine criticism are there places in our lives where people have been critical of us and it's very easy for coaches or teachers or parents to have been critical of us and often they have been critical of us for with the best intentions at heart they we get gold stars for good work well we either don't get the gold star or we got something worse for bad work and from again we talk about the kids going into primary Oh so whatever Junior infants down they'll be getting gold stars and knots or gold stars they're getting smiley faces and angry faces all the way up we get medals for achievement we don't actually get medals for efforts and so we're trained very early through school and through parenting that you get stuff for achieving but in life actually the thing you most need is effort and the ability to keep an effort going over time and that that's how achievements is attained not through any kind of magic ability and so we are given medals for achievement but achievement isn't a methodology for happiness we need more than just achieving stuff to be happy we have to actually be happy in ourselves and that's the bit that we need to train actually I'm happy being me whether it's a good talker about talk whether it's a good day or a bad day that I'm okay no perfect know where faults but okay and learning how to be okay is really important and it's the thing that we should be trying to teach all our kids but hopefully teach ourselves as we go along as well so there's the potential here for a very positive cycle and that's where you'd build up a resilient self-esteem self-esteem that's there when it's going well but also there when it's not going well that on a bad day or a bad week that actually I am pretty good I'm okay there we have flexible expectations so we recognize that the world isn't always going to be straightforward and the thing that we want isn't always easily achieved and that I can set my goals but sometimes I have to adjust we can recognize that sometimes we're going to meet our target and the thing we want and now when we do it's really important to praise ourselves and that was well done I did well they're good for me but sometimes we're not gonna meet that target to no fault of our own just stuff happens and that that that's part of living too and really importantly not to avoid taking it on but to work incrementally one little chunk at a time will no bite at a time and as all these things happen owning the positive events and stepping back from the negative ones only the stuff that we do well I'm not taking to heart this job that doesn't work out and so if we can work with this this what I think will come into the last slide I thought that was the last slide I think this is it if it worked like this we can build a robust self-esteem able to protect our mood from things that might happen to us and that life will throw obstacles or able to manage it better it's not a life without obstacles but they don't have to hurt us on a core level when they come along and then we can be happy with the things that we achieve because when you speak to people people are achieving all the time they're just not achieving to this impossible standard that they have in their own mind and so if we can actually be happy with the things we can achieve then we can genuinely be happy ok thanks very much

Channel: Aware

Views: 388,706

Keywords: depression, perfectionist, psychology

Id: NpVfwjFX3Tg

Length: 41min 39sec (2499 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2017