So, a few months ago, I picked up my older daughter,
who’s a junior at a local NESCAC school, and I was driving her to a family event.
And she spent almost the entire car ride
complaining about one of the classes she was taking.
She found it to be very difficult; she felt really stupid.
And she just really perseverated about the hard time she was having.
I’m listening to her because I’m a good mother –
I’m supposed to listen when my kids are unhappy –
and I’m thinking,
here I have a kid who’s at a really good school,
she’s thriving academically,
she has had the same boyfriend for over three years –
a guy that we actually really like –
she’s the president of her club soccer team,
she’s got a lot of friends,
she’s five foot eight, she’s blond, she’s blue eyed, she’s thin –
she’s just like me –
and yet, her whole persona was focused
on the one thing in her life that wasn’t going well.
And it reminded me of a patient I saw a few years ago.
A woman, maybe in her 40s, happily married to a man who had a very good job,
and so she could choose to be a stay-at-home mom.
She had, I think, three teenagers who were all thriving.
She volunteered in the kids’ school; she volunteered in the church.
She had lots of friends; she was very fit – she was a runner.
She didn’t drink alcohol socially.
As I’m listening to her, I’m thinking,
“Okay, there was never a course in graduate school
about what do you do if you are envious of one of your patients.
Because she, in fact, sounded like she had a really good life.
So finally, you know, I’m taking her whole bio-psycho-social history
and I said, “So, I’m a psychologist, I teach stress management,
why are you here?
And she says, “Because every time I open a drawer where I see clutter,
I feel like a failure.”
And that started my interest in perfectionism.
And why is it that we do tend to zero in
on the one or two things in our life that’s wrong,
rather than embracing the things in our life that’s right?
And I worry most about women – I’m female, I have two daughters, I have a sister –
I mostly treat women.
And the fact is, the research shows
that, on average, men worry about three things every day,
while women, on average, worry about twelve things every day.
So, if you’re a perfectionist, if you’re a woman,
you’re probably more likely to be stressed.
So, is there such thing as healthy perfectionism?
In fact there is. It’s called adaptive perfectionism.
And in fact, you can be a healthy perfectionist.
You can thrive at doing some things very well.
So, you can be a superb soccer player,
you can be a superb math student,
you can be a really good friend.
There’s all sort of ways to be an adaptive perfectionist,
that when you do something well, you’re happy,
but you also know how to dial down.
That you realize you don’t have to be perfect in every aspect of your life.
Which comes us to the maladaptive perfectionist,
who is somebody who can’t do that.
And in fact, every time a maladaptive perfectionist does something well,
next time, they have to do it even better.
So, a 95 on a physics exam is good, but next time, you have to get a 97.
You score two goals during a soccer game, next time you have to score four.
And maladaptive perfectionists actually don’t do so well.
Their GPA is lower than adaptive perfectionists.
Their alcohol and drug abuse is higher,
and they have a very high risk of depression.
It’s hard not to be a perfectionist.
I’m a psychologist – I fight this myself every day.
And I remember a number of years ago –
I live in a town, a suburb of Boston,
and most women in my town don’t work, they’re stay-at-home moms.
And so it’s lonely if you are a working mom.
So, a number of years ago I joined a bunco group.
I don’t know if you know what a bunco group is,
but it’s – literally, you roll dice.
It’s like Yahtzee.
And you can actually drink a fair amount of wine,
and it doesn’t matter
because you don’t need any talent or skill or insight to do well at bunco.
So, I joined bunco, and the way it works is they assign 12 women together,
and you meet at each person’s house once a month.
And I was assigned December, which is really unfair, but anyway –
So, the first month, I went to bunco – had a nice time.
But I noticed that the woman’s house was perfect.
There was furniture in every room.
There were pictures on the walls.
The drapes matched the furniture –
the house looked beautiful and I started to get anxious.
Second month I went, same thing.
The house was beautiful; everything was perfect.
The woman was clearly impeccable at home.
I complained to my next-door neighbor, who also works outside the home,
and I said, “I’m getting really nervous.
You know, we painted seven years ago,
and I don’t think we put the pictures back up yet.”
And she reassured me and she said,
“You know, doesn’t matter. People are creative in different ways.
In some women it’s really important to have their house look just so,
and Ali, your talents lie somewhere else.”
But I got more and more nervous,
and as December got closer and closer, I got more anxious –
with all my inner perfectionism –
and I think I took two days off from work to vacuum –
and I really wanted my house to look just so.
And time came, opened the door, women walked in.
And a woman walked into my front hall
and looked up and said, “I can’t believe you have white walls.”
And for the next two and a half hours,
I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I have white walls.”
You know, I didn’t know you’re not supposed to have white walls.
But after about two and a half hours, I thought, “Wait a minute,
what a witch.
Who walks into your house and criticizes the color of your walls?”
And I could feel all my inner perfectionism crumbling,
and I realized it really didn’t matter what color walls my house had.
And so I quit bunco,
and still, to this day, hang out with the same women, every month.
We call it girls’ night out, drink wine, talk about our feelings.
And we don’t care about what color walls we have.
And so you can let go of perfectionistic tendencies.
But what are the triggers for perfectionism?
Body image, number one.
Body image is such a big deal.
And it’s very scary to me; I’m a psychologist, I was trained –
you look out for depression, look out for suicidality –
those are the things you worry about as a psychologist.
Not so.
Anorexia is actually the most lethal of all psychiatric disorders.
And in fact, anorexia kills 12 times more adolescent girls
than other diseases.
41% of first graders
are afraid of getting fat.
82% of fourth grade girls wish they were thinner.
The BMI of Miss America, when the pageant started, was 22.
The BMI now is 16.9
A woman with a BMI of 16.9 probably can’t get pregnant
because she’s so thin.
So, body image, eating disorders – they’re very scary.
In one five year period, in this country,
the prevalance of bulimia went up five-fold.
Perfection is an issue.
The average model in this country is five eleven and weighs 117 pounds.
The average woman in this country is five four and weighs 140 pounds.
Which means that no matter what we do or how perfectionistic we are,
we are never going to look like a model.
What are the other triggers? Grades.
You know, is the A good enough? Is the A plus good enough?
I had a patient once who was in grad school,
and she was working part-time,
and she was really pushing herself to do well in school,
but she didn’t have the time to do the quality of work that she wanted
because she was also working.
And she kept on getting As and she couldn’t figure out why she was getting As
when she actually thought her work was really subpar.
Until one day her professor had all the students
do peer-editing of their papers, and so she read her classmates’ papers,
and she realized why she was getting As.
And yet, she continued to do well, but at least she realized
that her perfectionism was driving her to far exceed her professor’s expectations
of what a student needed to do.
Social goals, social media –
I have a 15-year-old who spends half her life
looking at Snapchat and Instagram.
Most of my patients look at Facebook.
And the problem is: people don’t post bad things.
People don’t post unflattering pictures of themselves.
I see a lot of pregnant women in my practice,
and they say, “All you see on Facebook is these blissful pregnant women.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, people are not going to post pictures of themselves vomiting;
people only post good stuff.”
But what they also post is parties and social events
that you may not get invited to.
And it causes hurt feelings and it really affects our feeling of inclusion.
Athletic goals – I had a patient a couple of years ago
who was a student at a different NESCAC school.
She had been recruited to that school to play a sport.
And she came to see me because she was so stressed out
that her performance in that sport wasn’t enough for her.
And she also realized that she couldn’t experience college life.
She wasn’t able to attend her classes, she wasn’t able to go to social events,
she wasn’t able to drink, she wasn’t able to do anything
because she was pushing herself so hard to excel at that sport.
And she ended up leaving college simply because of that.
Finally, family issues –
It’s so easy to look at other people
and think they come from a perfect family.
Again, that’s what we see on social media.
I can tell you, I’m a psychologist.
If you’re a psychologist, you’re nosy, you hear about these things,
you see patients who seem to have perfect families.
There’s no such thing.
There’s alcoholism, there’s abuse, there’s infidelity, there’s gambling.
There was a family in our town that I truly thought was the perfect family.
I didn’t know them well,
but I knew them enough; I saw them socially.
Both parents had big jobs; they made a lot of money
and they went on beautiful trips.
Both parents were very physically attractive.
They had three kids who were all extremely attractive, all very athletic,
all very intelligent, all extremely popular.
And so, everyone’s image –
I remember actually once being at a party,
and when this family walked in, everyone sort of deflated.
Because, like, the perfect family was there
and no one else was going to look good in comparison.
Well, around that time, I was writing a book on perfectionism,
and I sent out a notice saying I need people to be interviewed for my book.
I wasn’t doing the interviewing,
my writer was, and so I could keep confidentiality.
So fast forward about a year, and I was reading the galleys of my book,
and I read a story, and it was this woman, who said,
“I know in my town, I have this image that we are the perfect family.”
She says, “But I’m not in love with my husband anymore,
and I intend to leave him as soon as my last kid graduates from high school.
And my older son is addicted to marijuana.
And one of my other kids was just arrested for shoplifting.
So, we’re not perfect.”
So, be careful about what you see; be careful how you judge people
because, in fact, people may not be as perfect as they look.
So, what can you do about perfectionism?
One are physical strategies.
Believe it or not, exercise is an incredibly effective way
to treat anxiety and depression, which feed into perfectionism.
So, when you’re feeling badly about yourself because you’re not perfect,
go for a walk, go for a run, go for a swim,
go for a walk with a friend.
Exercise is very powerful.
A study just came out, in fact, showing that meditation, specifically,
reduces the symptoms of maladaptive perfectionism.
So download an app, meditate, do some form of relaxation,
and it really will help your degree of perfectionism.
When we talk about body image –
you know, there’s this issue in America now – people are embarrassed to eat.
So, we teach our patients what’s called the 80-20 plan.
So, if 80% of what you eat is the good stuff –
you know, the whole grains, the fruits, the vegetables, the nuts, the berries,
the good stuff – the other 20% can be what you want.
Because what my patients do is they don’t have anything sweet for five days,
and then they eat a bag of cookies.
And it’s a whole lot better for you to have a cookie a couple times a day
and make that your 20%, than to do it every five days.
Cognitive strategies: What can you do? How can you think in a different way?
You are your own worst enemy;
nobody is as mean to you as your own mind.
Just once, write down everything you think about yourself and see how nice it is.
Because we’re not.
When we look in the mirror,
we criticize ourselves; we put ourselves down.
When I was a kid, my father used to say I was lazy,
and I probably spent most of my adult life
trying to get that voice out of my head.
Think about the voices you hear in your head;
those are the ones that we need to rechallenge.
One of my patients asked me, last year,
“Is it a good thing or a bad thing to compare yourself to other people?”
And my answer was, “It’s a great thing to compare down.”
Comparing yourself to other people who aren’t doing as well as you
is really good for you.
But that’s not what we do.
We always compare up.
We look at people who are smarter than us, who are thinner than us,
have happier families than us, have more money than us,
who travel more than we do, who have more friends than we do.
But do me a favor – start comparing down.
Because if you compare down, you’ll be healthier.
Gratitude: There’s been a ton of research on gratitude.
There’s actually a textbook on gratitude.
Simply acknowledging the good things in your life.
Research shows that if you get a notebook, put it by your bed,
and at night, before you go to bed,
just write down a few things in your life you’re grateful for,
your whole outlook will improve.
You’ll be less depressed and less anxious.
It’s really stunning.
Recognize hidden issues.
There’s no such thing as a perfect person.
I can tell you this:
I see people who are considered to be perfect people as patients –
that’s a lot of Ps.
There’s no such thing as a perfect person.
Everybody has issues; they just show it in different ways.
People hide their issues in different ways,
but everybody has issues.
A number of years ago, I was traveling with a group
doing these big women’s health conferences –
you know, two or three thousand women would come to each conference.
And these women were of all shapes and sizes, all races, all identities,
they were big cities and small cities.
And one of the things that was happening was one of the sponsors
was doing a sort of beautification – a campaign for real beauty.
They wanted women to recognize their beauty, not in a traditional way.
And so what they did, amongst the whole exhibit hall,
was they had these huge mirrors,
and attached to each mirror was a pen, a Sharpie,
and then there was a little sign on each mirror, and it said,
“Look at your reflection and write down something beautiful that you see.”
And at the end of each day, I would walk around
and look at what was written on these mirrors.
And it was amazing.
Now, remember the women who came were not rich, they were not beautiful –
these were typical American women
of all shapes and sizes, all races, all everything.
And I would walk around and it would be:
“I have beautiful eyes,”
“I have gorgeous hair,”
“I love my curves,”
“I have such a strong spirit,”
“I am so resilient,”
“I’m such a good friend,”
“I’m a wonderful mother,”
“I’m a great daughter.”
So, do me a favor, the next time you look in a mirror
think of something beautiful about yourself.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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