Perfectionist Thought Patterns & Unattainable Health Goals

“I probably am a perfectionist in some ways but I don’t always identify with that word. And I think that’s true for many people as well, where they think about perfectionism as color coded folders and having a clean house, and all the things. Perfectionism is fundamentally a fear of failure, so it’s a fear of not being good enough. So whatever you’re doing is not good enough and you have to put in extra effort.” - Mollie West Duffy, The mindbodygreen Podcast Episode 417

Similar to Mollie, perfectionist isn’t a word I would have used to describe myself. Our society focuses on perfectionists being people who want everything just so. But on a deeper level, there is a whole network of thought processes and feelings related to perfectionism. About a year ago, I became aware of this and how these thought processes were effecting my health. I had started to dig into the brain-health connection and what thought patterns are associated with chronic health issues. This started with Annie Hopper’s Dynamic Neural Retraining System course. A common theme that kept coming up was perfectionism. In Hopper’s system she calls out these “pathways of the past” which are neural pathways or thought processes that keep the brain stuck in a limbic system trauma loop (and our sympathetic or stress nervous system, constantly turned on). Here is pathways of the past #23:

Perfectionist tendencies:

Do you find yourself aiming for perfection; using words like could’ve, should’ve, would’ve?

My answer on the pathways of the path quiz: I often did this. Almost a year later my therapist pointed out in one of our initial sessions, “You say “should have” a lot.” Oh no, caught again. 

I had been aware for awhile that when I have a symptom pop up or am in a health flare up my mind would automatically go to - what did I do wrong to cause this? But I never really thought of it as perfectionism - I was just trying to feel better, to “solve” my health problems and in order to do that, I needed to analyze every little thing I did that lead me to have today’s symptoms, right? 

So for awhile I was aware that overanalyzing and negative self talk were not helping my health, but the deeper layer that started to emerge still kind of blew my mind when it surfaced - the real narrative underneath it all was that if I could just figure out what it meant to “do everything right” then one day I’d be completely “healed and healthy” where I wake up every day with no issues, no anxiety and also have enough energy to do everything, always! Unknowingly, my health goal was actually “perfect health.” How does one achieve this unattainable goal? Overanalyze everything so that I could figure out what I should and should not do, then follow what I had figured out perfectly and then you have perfect health! Oof, this was not good news and you can bet I took this to therapy the next week.

So let’s step back for a minute - what is perfectionism? Shouldn’t we be trying to live a healthy lifestyle and feel our best? Are you saying just eat all the pizza, drink all the beer and stay up till 4am every night, because it really doesn’t matter? 

Who could explain the basis of perfectionism better than Brene Brown in her latest book Atlas of the Heart:

“Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfection. Perfection is an unattainable goal… Perfectionism is additive, because when we invariably do experience shame, judgement, and blame, we often believe it’s because we weren’t perfect enough. So rather than questioning the faulty logic of perfectionism, we become even more entrenched in our quest to live, look, and do everything just right… Perfectionism actually increases the odds that we’ll experience these painful emotions and often leads to self blame.” 

Check check - my perfectionist behaviors in relation to my health flare ups just lead me to analyze what I did “wrong” and blame myself for these symptoms. Until recently, I never questioned the thought process, I just continued to search harder for the answers or missing piece. Eileen Laird, host of the Phoenix Helix Podcast, further explains this cycle in Episode #161 Perfectionism & Autoimmune Disease: “People can feel like failures for having autoimmune disease, for not being able to cure themselves, for not being able to prevent every flare. To feel some type of personal responsibility wrapped up in that loss of control feeling.” Perfectionism was indeed giving me a false sense of control - this idea that if I could just perfectly control it all I could cure myself.

I feel like it’s pretty common knowledge that negative self talk or negative thoughts can harm our health. But I wasn’t sitting around trash talking myself, so I wasn’t guilty of this right? I was instead being diligent, a good practitioner to myself, trying to solve my health problems and more determined than ever! Oh right, and in this process I was trying to achieve perfect health and until I could do that I was indeed blaming myself for what I was doing wrong or associating my symptoms with something (even if it was yet to be discovered) that was in my control. And what I discovered, is that this process was actually detrimental to my health. In the words of Dr Judy Tsafrir on the Phoenix Helix Podcast Perfectionism & Autoimmune Disease: “It can be that the demand for perfection can damage their feelings of self worth and feeling of lovability and result in harsh self criticism and create a level of stress and negativity that actually undermines their health and hurts their relationships… Perfectionists are often fixated upon the outcome and achievement and hyper focused on what went wrong.”

For years and years I had no idea that underlying my chronic health issues were perfectionist tendencies and self blame. Here I thought I was just trying to do all the right things to achieve better health. For years I told myself - and I still know it’s true - that my health would be way worse if I didn’t take such good care of myself. But somewhere along the way, since my healthy lifestyle didn’t “fix” all my health problems and I didn’t have a concrete diagnosis that explained all my symptoms, I was now in a place with an unhealthy obsession focused on what I was doing wrong to create my symptoms. And furthermore, these symptoms were getting in the way of this unattainable goal of perfect health. First step in breaking a bad cycle: acknowledge it. Check. Second step: catch yourself when these thoughts come up. I’m still working on this and on retraining my brain out of these pathways. I now try to approach it with self compassion and to acknowledge that my brain created this narrative in order to protect itself. It was a survival mechanism in an attempt to protect me from further health issues, but that mechanism had turned into something maladaptive and harmful. In combatting my perfectionist attitude I’m proud to admit: I’m still a work in progress and probably always will be.

No one told me to feel this way, part of it was maladaptive brain response but part was also the current wellness industry. We’re flooded with messages that tell us to just do XYZ to feel better and if you don’t, then it’s your fault you are not feeling better. As my colleague (who I’m a bit of a fan girl of) Russell Brown Lac wrote:

“One of the central failing of the current Wellness Industry is that it is simultaneously positioning health as an attainable destination, while also implicitly suggesting that self-improvement never has an end point. The sales pitch is that if you do enough - if you put in enough work, buy enough, Goop enough - you will arrive at a place where the healing is done; you will crest to the mountaintop where the angels sing and your body has no pain,  your beauty is maximized and your mind is finally, ultimately, happy. But here is always as asterisk at the bottom that says: ‘actually, there is no end to it, you’re never done, you could always do more, oh and by the way… we’re all going to die.’ This 3 card monte is why most people have such a troubled relationship with health; why most people think they are failing at wellness; that it’s now one more thing they are getting wrong, and are actually using their attempts at self-improvement as fuel for self-loathing.”

Yes to all of this - if on your health and healing journey there is a focus on an end goal and in order to get there you are constantly putting yourself down for not doing enough or being enough, this isn’t healing or healthy. We want people to feel empowered in wellness, but what emerged from that has been a narrative that focuses on control, buying the solution and unattainable goals. 

So now I eat pizza and stay up late partying because it really was just all in my head and a product of my negative self talk? Well, no. Perfectionism says our health is all within our control and a lack of perfect health is our failing. But the opposite - maybe health nihilism - would say that nothing we do effects our health or matters. Which is also not true. The truth is somewhere in between - our lifestyle and choices do effect our health and how we feel, but they aren’t the only factor. So then, from an emotional health and thought pattern point of view, what is the goal? What are the healthy thought processes when you don’t have 100% control of your health and there is no such thing as a perfect health pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Here’s what I keep coming back to and remind myself when struggling with these questions and perfectionist thoughts: 

  • Focus on the present, don’t shame yourself for the past. Ask yourself - what does my body need today? And within your ability, honor that. As my therapist says, create “flexible commitments.” Maybe instead of a run you need to rest. Maybe instead of going to bed super early, you need to stay out and connect with your community. Maybe instead of going to that event, you need to stay home and cry. And maybe instead of doing your breath work, you just need to space out and watch tv today.

  • Have a tool box that you can turn to to help ease your symptoms and support your health. When things are feeling off, return to this toolbox to help get back on track instead of overanalyzing how you got there. Examples in my toolbox include: breath work, sauna, acupuncture, spending time in nature, certain meals, etc.

  • When the perfectionist mindset does pop up, treat it with compassion and not self criticism or blame. Remind yourself that no matter what the outcome, that each day you are doing the best that you can.

  • Get a practitioner or health team you really trust to help you navigate your health challenges so that you aren’t trying to figure it out on your own. These should be people that really listen to your concerns and validate them, but also help you figure out what you best need right now so that you can stay out of your head about it. Letting go and handing over this job to someone else when you’re used to doing it yourself is not easy.

  • If you do have symptoms or a flare up, maybe there is some usable information there to integrate in the future. But that information is only helpful if you can approach it with self compassion, not self blame. If it’s an obvious trigger and not something you had to spend days overanalyzing to figure out. This is also where an outside perspective from a practitioner will be helpful.

  • As Hallmark card cheesy as this sounds - health and healing are a journey not a destination. It’s not a problem to fix, it’s a lifelong commitment to nourishing your physical, emotional and spiritual health as we go through the ups and downs of life. And at different points in life, this process will look differently. So honor wherever you are in this process today.

  • And most importantly, realize that no one feels fucking fantastic all the time, no matter what social media tells you.

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