The divine timing!! I skipped 4 major exams of a semester because of the "I will score full marks if I study better next time" thought pattern. Now I am just crying and pulling all nighters studying this semester's subjects as well as the previous one's.
Been there, done that. My heart really goes out to you. Regardless of what your mind says, I don't think you're useless or stupid etc. I do think you made a mistake and as the video says, maybe slowing down will work for you. For me, I eventually powered through it with pure will power. Took a lot of sacrifice but it is A) very do-able even if your mind tried to convince you otherwise and B) Rewarding, even with the bare minimum grade. Take it one day, one lecture at a time and when it gets too hard, treat yourself and keep moving. You've got this!
I feel like my life has been a long string of people telling me not to be afraid of making mistakes and then life giving me every reason to be afraid of making mistakes
Heide Priebe has a really good video on this, it is regarding relationship dynaics but it has lessons to overcome it. Heidi is honestly up there with DrK when it comes ro lifesaver content like this
Perfect was definitely the norm in my household. From kindergarten on, I was told that I had to get straight As or I wouldn’t get into college. And until high school, an A- wasn’t good enough. Combine that with undiagnosed ADHD, and it’s a recipe for crippling levels of perfectionism. (Plus, I have trouble sticking with hobbies I enjoy if I’m not perfect at them immediately.)
Being scolded for A- was making me angry more than when I would get B or C. Like it's still A and it doesn't really matter even for graduation so why am I being scolded for something that trivial.
This. Sometimes I can't even evaluate my performance without external expectations getting in the way. Not when I've got that squirrelly part of the mind screaming at full volume "no, your opinion doesn't matter: they'll see everything you did wrong and they'll call you out on it and then the world will end!". --- But right now I'm building acceptance of the fact that I can't predict other people's reactions to my work. Often, if I think my worksmanship is shoddy, my clients will be happy with it. And if I think it's good, they'll criticise it harshly. This acceptance helps when I can pull it off. It helps me slow down and stay focused on the task at hand when something goes wrong, and to be a bit more objective when I evaluate my work. --- So, personal opinion: Reducing the amount that you care about other people's points of view might actually be a helpful _first_ step. It's just that not caring about external expectations is not the end goal of the journey. It's more like a crutch. A way to slow down, keep your cool, and seriously consider the perspective of the only person whose opinion you know for sure: yourself.
@oleg4966 I seriously did not consider the fact that caring for oneself and caring for others are not mutually exclusive. Not just in work but In general. Your comment has helped me immensely.
Yes. It usually takes a fairly extreme wake up call for us to even start letting go of this pressure. The negative impact it's having has to become quite extreme as the potential positive impact is never guaranteed.
I am a perfectionist and exactly what you said, top tier performance was expected to be the standard for me. I am burned out. You ended your video on that note „do this and you‘ll outperform anybody else.“ - no. I don‘t want to outperform. I don‘t want to perform at all. I want to exist and be happy. That‘s it.
That struck me too. The end result I want isn't to be outperforming everyone else, it's to not be exhausted. To be interested in what I'm doing and life in general again. As you say, to be happy. High performance only gets you so far before it isn't worth it anymore.
YEP, this is me as well. I realized watching this video that I already have both "high" boxes checked. I'm tired, boss. I've been performing since childhood, I just want to lay my burden down.
Same here, having both kinds of perfectionism sounds exhausting. I do want to perform in the sense that I want to achieve things that are positive for me and for other people, but not through outperforming and perfectionism but through following my interests, not being afraid to try things or make mistakes, growing my skills and knowledge about something for the long term
Co burnees; I've managed to slow down my perfectionistic/perform-or-worthless mindset by really doubling down on meditation and training myself to think differently. I've used "The power of now" from Eckhart Tolle (may have butchered the name) for the realisation, the nudge in the right direction and, most importantly, to learn what meditating by "acknowledging events and thoughts as they come and go" rather than attaching an opinion to that. It helped me greatly, not because it's a one-fix-for-everything type thing, because fuck those. It's more of a way to help you to start thinking differently and appreciating life as it happens around you differently. To put it into a metaphor, it only changes the lighting in the room while the room is still very much the same. I've also learned that happiness, positivity and love/care are habits more than anything. I appreciate way more little things than I ever used to do. And this is something I learned after nuking my negative mindset. I don't think everything would be applicable to everyone completely in the same way as it did for me. This is something I distilled through trial and error as well, which is what I'd encourage you to do as well. See what works. Ask people of similar mindsets what worked for them and see what advice sticks and what doesn't. Godspeed EDIT: Rather than godspeed, perhaps 'tranquilo tranquilo, rome wasnt build in a day' would be more applicable.
I have C-PTSD as a result of being raising in an emotionally and physically abusive, east asian household. Starting from when I was 7 years old, my mom would punish me very severely (I won't go into details) when the report cards came home every semester because I never got straight A's like she wanted. I gained a lot of performance anxiety and I learned to start locking myself in random rooms to try to avoid the punishment (my parents had keys for every door) and eventually, I'd just hide the report card. I wasn't given the resource to succeed yet I was expected to perform perfectly (no one wanted to help me). Outside of this, both my mom and dad would scold me and take over doing a task (think simple household chores) for me when I made a mistake and did not do things to their expectations. I was not given opportunities to make mistakes and to fail in a safe manner and I also learned that its not okay for me to be myself. When you observe that somehow, your actions are making other people suffer and even though you're not doing anything inherently wrong or intentionally hurtful, you ending giving up on trying to be yourself and instead, behave in a way that you know makes other people happy, at the cost of your own happiness. Probably the most critical aspect here is how I started to perform worse academically because I learned to associate failure with a very negative and scary consequence so it got so bad that I could not tolerate the negative feelings that came up when I made mistakes. I learned to cope with my mistakes through avoidance because when I would make a mistake while reading or working on homework, I'd basically throw whatever I was doing to the side and switch over to playing video games. Additionally, I would feel so much anxiety when family members were observing me while I was studying/doing homework that I'd immediately switched over to video games when they came in my room. This habit has plagued me my entire life because I screwed up college so badly where I took 9 years to get my bachelor's degree and I ended up switching majors out of what I originally wanted to study (my passion) due to my grades not being high enough. Imagine not being able to study or do homework because you're constantly trying to avoid the negative feelings that always come up when you make a mistake. Eventually the feeling of regret from past mistakes was what pushed me to completion through college but thats non-ideal. To me, my greatest failure is my performance in school and thats why I'm so scared to go back, even though I'm really passionate about the topic I originally wanted to study. I'm scared of making the same failures and I think I'd be crushed mentally and emotionally if I failed again because I've developed this identity around the idea that if I were to make the same mistake, it would indicate that I have not changed from the person that I was 12 years ago who screwed up their opportunities. Its hard. My therapist thinks I have a lot of grit for surviving and coming on top of my situation but this particular issue (of avoidance) is why I think I don't have grit.
I'm sorry you went through that, some people do not deserve to have kids. Maybe you should try studying online ? Doing your own research and finding online classes and courses. This is what I do because I prefer to go at my own rhythm without anybody being there to judge my progress or mistakes. Hopefully you get it figured out! Wish u the best
@@Sunshya Thanks for the kind comments. I've been self-learning under the guise of "its a hobby". The pressure isn't there, for good or bad. But, my family thinks I'm wasting my time when they observe me doing it. I end up just lying about it or just not doing the activity when family is around. Its really hard to explain the concept that someone can do something they enjoy to people who make judgments on whether or not an activity is a waste of time.
@@ClassyJohn I feel you, my mom thinks I am not really studying or learning just because I am not in a formal education system but I know deep down I am learning and that's what matters to me. Idk how old you are but I would suggest you to move out as soon as possible, that is what I'm trying to do as well...
@@ClassyJohnBro just do stuff that u want to do and how u want to do it or that which suits u. The next time ur parents threaten u with punishment or if anything related to perfectionism comes up by ur parents, just tell then the truth as to how u've always felt about their treatment towards u. Maybe when they actually hear they'll understand. The problem with our generation is that most of us don't really have parents that have been raised in a healthy environment, so they just put their children through unrealistic standards. Just keep grinding bro, and don't forget to forgive urself if failure comes knocking. Give urself a reward when u put effort.
That part about mentally checking out when being confronted with our mistakes is SO goddamn true. It’s probably the reason why I dread conversations with my boss and have so much anxiety if it’s after a fuckup I did. So many times when I messed up as a kid I would disassociate just to get the uncomfortable part over with
Setting personal standards seems like a whole topic to explain on its own. Its something I just can't fathom how to do. For a given task I struggle to find where to place the bar for my own personal satisfaction, so I usually just place it at an arbitrary point that I logically think I should be happy with achieving. But even if I meet my personal goal I just don't feel anything. Any feeling of satisfaction or achievement, if felt at all, is immediately fleeting. I always feel like I could just be doing more, and that feeling causes me to start falling short of the personal standards I set since there's no clear point where I'll feel good about myself. Growing up I was a "gifted kid" who never really struggled with school, but when I hit university I started failing classes and falling behind. At home was made to feel like none of my hobbies/interests mattered and were a waste of time, and nothing I did was ever good enough. I feel like these two factors are the main reasons for my issues being satisfied with my own effort. As an adult I still feel "gifted", like I have this unlimited potential. If I could just not feel empty every time I meet a personal goal, maybe I'd be able to do enough to feel like I'm not falling behind or stagnating.
I feel exactly the same! I resonate with his description of ECP and how you develop it, but I never struggled with grades growing up, so I didn't get it from being shamed for school. I was shamed for how I spent my time, for my hobbies. So I felt like I couldn't enjoy anything without hiding it, and like I had to leave my free time as open as possible for others to do whatever they wanted with me or tell me what they want from me, or else I wouldn't be "perfect." That didn't mix well with college. Because education isn't something to hide, so I couldn't enjoy it how I wanted to. Because I had to leave my time free for others when I wasn't hiding, so I never committed to homework how I needed to (I used to just do it all in class in public school). And I can't start anything stable to support myself with, like learning or practicing a skill on my own, because of these same reasons. I can follow commands perfectly fine on others' time, physically at school or at employment. I just feel incapable of thinking for myself, on my own time. I can't even begin to think of what I'd enjoy for myself, if I can't hide it, because the opinions of others will become involved at some point, and that's going to make me just want to escape it and hate it if I ever make mistakes that they know about or if they ever have anything bad to say. So nothing ever sticks. I wish I could just make the things I want to make, learn what I want, commit to a goal. But I always think of what I "should" want instead. It's frustrating.
I have a similar story as well. It ended up becoming that the way my voice my posture my thinking became orientated towards keeping other satisfied and not allowing any mistakes, but to the point I resent myself for not being able to find and hold my own ground again. It started to manifest within my body by rejecting it. It’s hard cause I want to keep peace with others but at the same time, I cannot feel any emotions or feelings towards it. It’s feels way too forced and not natural anymore. I feel like society makes it hard for me to change. I’m not sure how far down I let myself go but I want to move on and feel whole again. Even if I have to continue living with my parents who kinda conditioned me this way.
I feel similarly. It's a struggle, especially when the signals I receive from others are everywhere, and understanding how to balance the complexity of our circumstances with meeting our needs through collaboration is difficult..
00:12 🧠 Perfectionism often stems from high or unreachable standards set in childhood, which may come from parents or older siblings who were seen as "golden" achievers. 01:50 🧠 There are two types of perfectionism: personal standard (setting high standards for oneself) and external concern (seeking perfection for others' approval). The latter is often more damaging. 03:27 🧠 External concern perfectionism is associated with a part of the brain called the medial frontal gyrus, which redirects attention away from mistakes to protect from disappointment. 05:30 🧠 External concern perfectionism can lead to avoiding mistakes and not effectively learning from them, creating a cycle of self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy. 06:43 🧠 Personal standard perfectionism is associated with the anterior singulate cortex, leading to slowing down and focused attention on mistakes, resulting in improved performance over time. 08:02 🧠 It's easier to shift towards setting personal standards for oneself rather than trying to stop caring about what others think, which is deeply ingrained in perfectionistic individuals. 11:33 🧠 Two strategies to boost personal standard perfectionism: 1) When making a mistake, slow down and pay attention to the problem without trying to immediately fix it. 2) Develop personal standards by asking, "What would make me happy?" and holding that alongside external expectations. 14:15 🧠 By combining personal standards with the drive for external perfection, individuals can outperform those who only focus on one aspect, leading to higher levels of success and satisfaction.
Also want to say that the unrealistic standards can sometimes come from growing up in a lower-class family as well. I know a lot of families (including mine) that just tell their young kids, “this family relies on you to make money in the future, so we can get out of this situation. So make sure you have the best grades in school so that you can go to the best university and get the best job. Because our lives are literally depending on your success.”
I guess it was nice knowing I protected myself from this mindset when I was young. I was very rebellious and got bad grades for the sake of getting bad grades because my mom kept telling me to get straight As, then she begged me to at least not fail classes when I was on the verge of failing them. I always did things well when I put my mind to it, even if I wasn’t great at first I would keep trying, but now I lack the ability to follow through things I don’t like unless they align with my core values. Downside of the opposite mindset
Dude I relate with you so hard😂! I was also almost always rebellious(especially in my young years), but somehow perfectionism got "activated" in me, much later in my life(due to my parents. Almost nothing I did/wanted was good enough and jadajada). Now it's really confusing for me😵💫because I had also this: "If I put my mind to something, someday I will do well or very well at this thing." and now I'm opposite on this spectrum aka what this video describes🤣 Fuck me😂(But I'm trying to work on this and this video helped a lot. So thx Dr. K😁❤!)
Interesting, I was very rebellious too. But I did that by not caring what others thought. The thought of what grades I would come home with and how people would react to them barely came up. I only had my own standard and it was low(too low). I shot myself in the foot by being that way.
I think a lot of this may sometimes stems from parents hiding their challenges and difficult emotions from their children, because they "dont want to put that on the kids", which is well intentioned, and in many cases a reaction to their own disregulated parents, but the unfortunate consequence is that kids never see any model for how to overcome challenging internal problems, and a glossy kind of emotional "perfection" becames normalized at a very deep behavioral level.
"the kids never see any model for how to overcome challenging internal problems" gave me a third eye lol. makes too much sense for me, ty for writing this
What if you dont have this examples of perfectionism ? What if you didnt have parents that told you: you should do better etc.? What if you dont care about other peoples opinion and u know that everyone is different and you should not try to be like them? What if you strive for perfection but your own expectations for yourself doesnt hold up and you end up doing worst or nothing at the end and start to be lazy because you didnt accomplish the level that you wanted to be?
You, my friend, should find a therapist (if you can afford it ofc); also, there might be a disconnect between your conscious ‘intellectual’ understanding and your unconscious, more emotional experience
I really struggle with this. My social anxiety makes me think I have to act and be perfect in order to seem ‘normal’ or to fit in. It’s emotionally draining to be in your head 24/7
1:30 Albert Einstein asked: What am I good at? What do I love? what does the world need? How can I live of it/make money out of it? the best line of questions i've heard. but you have to find in yourself the motivation to go after it. dopamine is key.
Absolutely agree the curse of perfectionism is truly hell. I have 3x perfectionism of having tiger parents + narcissistic parent + having super high-achieving older brothers and sisters Golden Child. Eventually just like in 9:44 through a decade-long depressions I slid down to the deeper hell in low personal standard and stopped giving a shit about other people. And finally this year I crawled out of the hellhole of perfectionism and unlearning all these toxic "gifts" from my narcissistic parents (& siblings). Thank you Dr K for all you straight talk and wisdom ❤❤
I grew up with a golden elder brother, and a golden elder sister, and my parents were strict with very high expectations. Basically exactly as you described it. It's extremely difficult for me to actually like, sincerely believe that this isn't normal, or to imagine a way it could have been different. Every time I try it just feels like I'm making stuff up or lying to myself to give an excuse for failure or not being good enough. i hope this changes with time.
I love this in the context of improving as a writer. I've slowly been able to move into that "hi-hi" zone, integrating more deliberate practice, understanding my flaws, and also being aware of what the market is publishing today, and getting external feedback. It's the kind of self-coaching and high personal standards that have allowed to me respond productively to constructive feedback. You can't simply disregard what other people think and try to be a "true artist." We're creating things for other people to read, but we also want to adhere to our own vision. There's a place on the Venn diagram where those two things overlap. But ultimately, you have to be willing to do the work.
So I have both personal and external perfectionism since my parents always expected me to be top of my class and that mindset rubbed onto me as well. Sure, I definitely outperform 99% of people in academics, but that’s all you’ll get. Perfectionism ruins your perception of yourself and your work and leaves you never satisfied with anything.
I'm very late dx AuDHD who was labelled 'gifted' in school, also adopted, this feeling like I owed high performance. Instead of attaining high performance, I fucking sucked at every aspect of childhood, was bullied relentlessly by children and adults in school and internalised the struggles I had because I didn't know I needed supports and I sure didn't get any. I turn 40 in just over a week and it's taken me this long to get to where I should have been at 21. Maintaining high standards, while letting go of perfectionism is a journey I am on and that has helped me to move forward. So has being able to access disability supports. I'm 4 years into training do become a psychologist, working at the Uni, active in research and getting Pro-Am roles in musical theatre in my city.
Wow no wonder I've lost all motivation, I got the "stop caring what other people think" advice sooooo much It eventually felt pointless to even try at all, and it's only until very recently that I've graduated that I realize I never really have motivations of my own? Ofc I'm not a blank slate, but I instantly pull my needs and opinions back for the sake of helping others or letting others have a good time And that part of "Start choosing and asking on 'what would make you happy', it's insane how hard it is to answer! As an individual I clearly have a personality, a voice and yet... When asked 'what do you want to do?' it's impossible to say anything I'm slowly figuring out what it means to be myself and it's certainly helped shaped being the first time I failed to meet any expectations knowing that it doesn't affect the value of who I am or what I bring!
I like this a lot. It does seem like the reactive approach of "when you make a mistake, slow down and move towards your own standard" is only half of the picture. It's also useful to take this into consideration when taking affirmative steps. "I want to have a get together, but I'm worried what my friends will think if my plan doesn't thrill everyone". Slow down, observe that reaction, and look at what you want and your own standard of what seems fun. Maybe you'll realize you don't have a standard because you've always been solely focused on what everyone else wants. Try and bridge that divide.
9:11 this applies to social anxiety as well. I never could tell what deeply pissed me off about people constantly advising (demand me, even) to "stop caring what others think" im so glad i could tell it was terrible advice even tho i had no clue why
This is going back to a previous topic you’ve talked about but i had some ECP not because of parents or other people being strict and setting high standards, heck they were really lenient on me, bur because i was the gifted kid. A lot of praise I got was from doing really well so I wanted to keep doing well to receive praise. And maybe there was self gratification as well from doing good but i probably should’ve set my standards to B grades instead of As
Watching his videos makes me want to go to therapy, just because I find this fascinating that we do these things without really having a true understanding. He shows that the science through doing the work that you should of done ages ago; can have profound effect on you in ways you never thought of.
That actually makes so much sense why when I think about my past mistakes I feel all anxious and immediately try to think of something else and try not to "cringe" at what I said or did. Definitely low PSP for me.
oh wow, this makes a lot of sense! I couldn't relate to him saying EPS brain distracts you from thinking about your mistakes, because I think about my mistakes a lot. But by 'thinking' I actually mean just dwelling on them while experiencing paralyzing cringe. I don't slow down to really get to the root of social mistakes, I just tell myself to never do them again. And then I do it again, because the cringe blocked any kind of learning other than 'don't do things that trigger cringe'. So I guess my distraction IS the cringe.
The grid was very informative, I think I land on the high psp, low ecp and it’s always sounded good when I think about it but it hasn’t really worked out that way. I think I have a tendency to set too high of expectations for myself and when people praise me for doing something impressive but it doesn’t meet my own standard it might as well feel like a full failure
He’s not wrong I’m doing ok for myself and making small consistent progress but I would be interested in what I can do to maybe tap into that ecp to take the motivation to the next level, and have a probably more healthy balance
I wish you had talked about perfectionism in relation to rejection sensitivity. Ive recently struggled with this as this approach rendered me sucessful in a number of areas but at the cost of my own energy/happiness. Its hard to reconcile that when the outward responce i craved was validating to this destrutive practice.
This is sooooooo on point. I have high ECP and “What would I be happy with?”is something I never ask myself. And you’re so right about how parents never gave a shit about my opinions when I was a kid so I stopped thinking my opinions have any value. Love how you made that connection ❤ will def add personal standards and slow down my thinking when I make a mistake, thanks Dr K
This is a gem, thanks Dr. K, I know this is an area I've always struggled with because of the unreasonably high standards from my parents. I remember telling my dad I got a 99% on an exam and he immediately asked why I didn't get a 100, no "good job" or anything rip lol. As I'm going thru life I realize I'm holding myself up to standards from other people and I never really consider myself and my journey in my standard for success. Thanks for putting it into words I can relate to (Personal Standard Perfection) and I'm feeling verrrryy hopeful in overcoming this!
I can't believe how long I've been watching Dr. K's stuff, and yet on the regular I feel increasingly called out by each new video xD I can't wait for the book! The course was already fantastic!
100% to everything you said. When I was younger I quickly realized how 100% wasn't enough for my parents.. and then in my early 20s I created my own version of success for myself and "good enough". I tried to care less but couldn't. What I didn't realize is I literally did the lateral move and solidified my self concept, my beliefs (through different mental health work, attachment style, CBT, etc.) and I still do have an external perfection but not to a point where I go into freeze mode or numbing mode. Or if someone makes a comment about my success because their standards are unrealistic, I then don't care because I'm content with where I'm at and literally everyone around tells me how my standards are so high and I deliver and I do more than the average person - I'm also kinder to myself when I make mistakes or I don't achieve my goals, I'm more human about it but it's still there to push me in the butt, I can't unprogram that and part of me is grateful I did have that, though it could've gone very wrong had I not caught this and worked on it - and it is work, none of this is easy but it's worth it. Solid advice as usual Dr K!
Your intro sentence already made me tear up a bit - not to mention what the rest did. I am forever grateful for your content here that helps me and so many others. Thank you Dr. K!
My external perfectionism is trying to make personal projects that would look impressive on my portfolio. So, not only I'm trying to come up with the best idea to please others but these others are not any specific person but it could be any recruiter or developer who would look at what I made and go "huh that's trash, next". So I've been procrastinating all personal projects for the last 3 months!
This is exactly what I've been needing. As I was watching the video I began to ask myself if I fall more into PSP or ECP because I sometimes can feel both and now I know they're not mutually exclusive. I've always been someone who strives for more but with the recent career I've been taking on, the expectations have been crushing and I haven't been able to keep up. It's made me paralyzed and I've very little improvement since I've began which has thrown me off a lot since I pride myself in my adaptability to new environments. There has been moments where I've consciously slowed down, as I'm a musician, there's a rule that I was taught when learning a piece of music. Which is slow it down and break it down, but because of the crushing expectations, I've felt like I haven't had that luxury and so I throw strategy out the window and try to brute my way through to no avail. It's soooo hard to consciously slow down. Honestly, it takes so much will power and strength to go against the grain of my conditioning, but now I know that it's the only way forward.
As a person that's living an awesome life (I have really strong mental health and never had depression), I watch these kind of channels to help understand what friends and family are going through, as I often can't relate. This video was interesting in that it helped explain why I don't seem to care as much as other people on any kind of social pressures. I have internal perfection - spending my days getting things right for personal satisfaction. I gotta tell you guys, it feels amazing not caring what others think of you! It makes it easy very to talk to new people (no anxiety) and I also feel/act with more independence/confidence as a result of chasing and completing my own goals.
spot on, thank you for talking about this! growing up my mom was super hard on me about school and grades. forcing me to join extracurricular activities, getting upset when I couldn't achieve straight A's, constantly obsessing over my GPA, signing me up to volunteer without my consent. brainwashing me into thinking that college was the only way I could get a good job. now I'm left with a student loan that I haven't been able to pay back since I graduated in 2017. I wish I would have pursued my dreams of doing RUclips and fashion when I was younger instead of college. not EVERYONE is meant to go to college and I was one of them, but she refuses to believe that. I finally started doing RUclips this year and while it's never too late, I just have a lot of resentment towards my mom. meanwhile my younger brother had terrible grades, was constantly getting into trouble and she didn't care. she never forced him to do anything and he got away with so much.
My older sister was Valedictorian, state champion in her sport, and went to an IV League and now makes six figures. Not to mention she’s very sociable and people always love her. You can guess how things went for me in high school. (I played LoL and Rust)
Hey, as someone who is like you describe your sister: maybe she really wanted to do something like playing LoL but couldn't because of outside expectations too :/ It was like that for me, I only could start doing what I loved for myself in mi 27ish.
Thank you for this! I knew I had perfectionism but other people thought ADHD - now that I know about both kinds of perfectionism, it explains the "slowing down" AND "distracting" because I do both. Success with my artwork has suffered bc of it and I will try to make it a blessing. :D
Wisdom for anyone, at any stage of life! Grateful to you for sharing this in particular-perfect timing to’ve come across this today. Your ability to comprehend, break down and explain how to realistically approach what oftentimes feels unconquerable is quite a gift!!
Thank you for putting into words why my childhood was a living hell. Growing up middle class in a third world country can totally fuck with your standards of what a good upbringing is. The de/reprogramming I’ve had to do in the 9 years since leaving home hasn’t always been easy but so so so worth it. And amen to the adding standards for yourself, especially irrespective of what others might think. If said standards upset the toxic ppl who instilled perfectionism in the first place, that’s just the icing on the cake jaja.
i've also complex adhd and can currently only treat the compulsion and depression aspects after some longer family-biogragraphical history. Anyhow, i'm developed a very high personal standard and kinda stopped thinking about the others. And when it only needs to start thinking about other's opinions again, well, then i'll be an easy ride^^ i really hope, i can get into programming one day. i pursue that goal since I was 20, and i'm now close to becomming 29. Still i've nothing concrete to show for, but i can say, that i've learned python on my own and that i finally have a 300h savegame in (heavily modded) factorio and a 40h savegame in (heavily modded) oxygen not included. These are cognitive breakthroughs for me, to be able to just go forward that long without loosing due to meta-planning or over-sclaling issues. My working style is iterative there and there needs to be a way to harness that kind of beta-skills for my future work... i mean, seriously.. factorio is a game with a focus on how to solve complex to chaotic problems. And oxygen not included is another game with a focus on how to prioritize problems within a complex to chaotic environment. And sorry, apart from my games, i only have a 6 year old testimonial from the time i was succeeding in a voluntary social year while having worked there with difficult teen. Not really an IT thing, but at least a reference for beta-skills. And that i'm stubbornly aiming the same way, even despite my families history, and despite my own late diagnostics.. that has to mean something.. Btw, i'm kinda hype. i just applied for a training within a company which advertised themselves with giving out goodies n the other more important stuffs, retirement aids, sports, events, iterative means, inclusion. feels kinda nice. i hope i can give them the minimum requirements for that training. i've probably learned programming for like 500h by now, like 6 languages, but i still need to start over again, and to get into a structured, dedicated learning environment. ad hoc, there's literally nothing left in my brain, no joke.
I thought that my perfectionistic self came from within my idealistic nature and then my mother who tend to compare me to my cousins, sister, her colleagues' children or just any child who seems to move faster, the breadwinner supporting their family fully or they're more "smart" or they're "doing better in their career"... essentially just highlighting everything i'm not while she highlighted everything "good" about others I am not doing like them indirectly. and this happened when I was in primary and high school. It's super sad to realise this, but I can see why I struggle with making mistakes and offending people if I'm standing up for myself or calling someone's bullshit out. Thank you for making this video Dr. K. It's not entirely my fault nor it's something to point fingers at. It's a deeper problem in our society collectively and on a humanity scale.
Mind blowing…so you don’t give up the perfectionism trait and trying to stop being who you are, you are actually leveling up the complementary trait to match it and balance it out. It’s comforting to know that I’m not so wrong that I have to get rid of myself, I just need to keep adding to what I already have
Thank you for the video, it was very insightful! A small feedback here: the beeps for the swearing are kinda distracting. If you want to keep them, I'd just go with silence. It's my personal preference, but I just think it looks better in many videos.
For the past year I've been working on why I keep shutting down, getting off track and never doing what I want to do with my life.. I freaking love you man.
I fit in both categories, and I can tell you it actually works best. The problem I usually fall into is that I slow down so much in trying to do better and learning from my mistakes that I end up not making any progress, because failure is not an option
I think a lot of people are so used to telling themselves and others that they don't care, because caring would be shameful, that they will think they are Low ECP and High PSP when they are the opposite or low in both. Anyways, I think the advice is useful, gonna experiment with that in the future.
holy shit this makes so much sense, last week i finally tried to get my shit together, i spent 5 days cramming all my homework to get it done in time and i finally did it, that was the most productive i've ever been all year and then a few days later i fucked up and missed my presentation and i just mentally checked out, i stopped doing my assignments and just went back to procrastinating and now im struggling to finish my assignments again
i genuinely believe i used to have ecp from that perfection = normal assumption from my parents. i completely shut down when i wasn’t meeting expectations, but i ended up caring more about myself and holding myself to patient and reasonable standards as a coping mechanism because i lacked that from them. with help from an older sister who had already figured it out, the video was a callout but one that i’ve already figured out 🥰 this one actually read me for filth though
Honestly this video was amazing because it allowed me to see so much more clearly why certain aspects of my life have gotten easier when I began to embrace standards that I came up with on my own - like being okay with dropping balls while juggling because it was an experiment on my own neuroplasticity, or (thanks mostly to certain mentors) deciding that I was going to start owning my mistakes at work by speaking up about them as early and as loud as I could so that they would become a shield instead of a weapon against me. I'm thriving at my job and had an entire department created based on my problem solving skills purely because I figured out a different way to see my own performance. I've learned to embrace mistakes in my hobbies because it's something new and part of a learning process that only benefits me. Maybe just knowing this could start to do that in other aspects of my life, like my health and relationships and home organization. Sorry for the brain dump, but wow.
Your explanation is like deja vu to me, especially when you're talking about ECP at the beginning. Because in the mean time i usually doing self-reflection about my life, like talking to myself. And your explanation is exactly like my self-reflection session a few weeks ago (including how you explaining with your hands, those very much like how i move my hands during self-reflection session, that's why watching your video is like deja vu to me). And thank you so much for explaining this further btw, especially about this ECP thing. Good to see that i'm not the only one experiencing this, there is explanation about what i was experiencing. This actually a root cause to several mental health problems that I had. Glad to finally recognized it.
When I made mistakes as a child, my parents (mostly my dad) made it seem like I could never erase any "black marks" against me. Anything that made my parents mad was FOREVER. I remember realizing that black marks only accumulated, there was no way to remove them. Didn't matter what good things you did, that accumulation of black marks only got bigger, never smaller. The best you could do was try to be perfect and prevent things from getting worse. (I do have a high PSP as well as a high ECP, and at this point, like so many others here, I just feel burnt out.)
I've been perfectionist with few things... but it's truly damaging when you internally feel like your younger self used to do more stuff like you do now, and you try to do the same as you do but fail to do so or you perceive as so. It has made me think over time i'm worsening and I'll end up unable to do anything at some point and it scares me ;-;
I know others have felt this way, but the timing on this is incredible! I have only one question though: Dr. K talked about how to improve Personal Standard Perfectionism, but how does one increase External Concern Perfectionism?
i used to read a book by an austrian writer and he had an interesting turn on perfection. sorry for my weak english in such topics, but it goes like this: there is different main reasons behind perfectionism. the one is to have those very high standards for the sake of the standards, for an idealistic motive. then there is the very high standards you think you must meet you think you must meet to be worth something (as you explain in the beginning of the video) but the other, and i think this is at least as common, is, that you lack self confidence, selfesteem and cannot deal with critic. which means your goal is only to appear perfect to your environment, while you dont care at all about the high standards of the reults, of for example a script you write or whatever is your job. you may even know you didnt do your best, but its good enough to not be critisized, it looks perfect to others and so you are fine with it because they wont critisize you and you dont have to defend yourself. because you never knew or learned how to defend yourself or stand in for your own values and ideas. so at the end behind that kind of "perfection" is a big insecurity and weakness and low confidence and selfesteem. what do you think? is that so?
This summed up how and why my life has changed so much. I didn't even realise I shifted from caring about what others think to caring about what others and I myself think of my work
For the longest time, I've beat myself up for not achieving the best results. One could say it's perfectionism. The thing, however, is that I never had tiger parents nor a golden sibling to compare to. Everyone was always very supportive. Therefore, perfectionism gets thrown out the window by my therapist but, what if you can also be perfectionist because of a narrative you create yourself? You do great and become recognized, over and over, then that creates a persona for you, a standard you measure yourself up against. Then, later in life, challenges make you fall below that and you feel like crap. Can being over praised also cause harm like negative reinforcement? As per this description, the fact that no one demanded too much from me alone seems to discard perfectionism, but what if you create the standards yourself?
This has really beem helping me in my graduate program these past few weeks with research and classes. I've been doing much better in both and feeling secure in myself. My therapist has noticed too ❤
For once I watch a HG video where I already agree with and have applied what's said as I've discovered it myself. The people around me do not have unrealistic expectations in me and if they do it's their problem, not mine. But I do want to make them happy because it makes me feel good. I'm the one who put high expectations on myself because I know I can do it and when I find that I can't, I slow down and discover why, in which case it's just all good, no bad feelings. In hindsight it makes sense that I failed because I was clearly proven wrong by failing and the next step is figuring out what to do next to improve. I believe in my ability to learn from my mistakes. Now if only applying this to emotional/relationship mistakes was equally as easy to manage.
Great, so I feel exactly like a High PCP/Low ECP guy and I'm actually doing okay. And I am just regularly disappointed by failing my own, waaaay too high standards, and also upset by everyone else failing my quite low standards for them. And that is apparently too difficult to fix, because I actually had a lovely parents who knew what they were doing. What a slightly inconveniencing and mildly disappointing privilege.
this is literally what I figured out I was doing in my exams that were going bad, either nail it completely or fail it completely, slowing down and allowing myself to try the best I can do in that currently super panic'd situation and I ended up bein pretty proud even with Cs because I was able to try and not fail the exam completely. we can't appreciate failure, we can't appreciate perfection in performance but figuring out that performing average can feel so damn good is probably the huge first step. I don't think having to maximize performance in every aspect of life is something to strive for.
I'm a perfectonist but neither of these apply to me. Whenever l make a mistake l just start obsessing over it and use it as an excuse to devaluate/beat myself up no matter if l manage to fix it or not.
Dr. K, could you make a video on performing under pressure? I am a track/cross country runner and even though I have pushed myself so hard that I have thrown up at practice (I don't recommend doing this but it is just to show that I am able to be very strong mentally), I always underperform in races because I get too nervous and/or doubt myself. I want to be someone who is aggressive and determined in races and fearlessly pushes myself to the absolute max every time in races but even though I have the capacity to push myself this hard, I am limited by my anxiety and doubts. I also often find myself adjusting my goals right before/during a race or giving up ("I'll do better next time, it's okay if I only do _") instead of feeling fired up, deternined, and excited like some of my teammates.
I was surprised to hear you go at it from the angle of that PSP is better to have than ECP! It does make sense, but being someone who scores high on both of those, I feel like there's another dimension to this which can completely flip the chart around. This is just my thinking based on my own experience but the degree of self-criticism that tends to tag along with perfectionism is a huge burden. I can perform really well because of the high standard I have of myself and what I feel is expected of me by others, but it's too often really that the pressure of performing well makes me completely burn out and/or just be unable to do anything. I do really well in tests generally since I went back into education but the slightest trip-up can cause absolutely everything to crash and burn. Even outside of the judgement of others this happens and is sometimes actually worse. I can't engage with things I enjoy because the more I practice the better I get, and the better I get, the more critical I am of myself, less forgiving, just overall getting lost in self-scrutiny to the point where I'm afraid to even begin doing anything even if no one else will ever know or care or would even potentially be positive about it :( High self criticism has been ruining my life and if I had lower standards towards myself (if now I'm at 100% I'd like to go down to 70 or as low as 50%) then it would be a lot easier to do anything
I have personal standard perfectionism, and I do the same thing as the ecp, and avoid and distract myself because I can’t tolerate the pain of being unable to achieve these standards that I want and I know are possible, but have difficulty with planning and obstacles, and don’t know how to execute a plan to solve problems… It’s become so overwhelming that now even small problems/obstacles feel unsolvable. The avoidance is the only way I know how to stay sane. 💔❤️
I get this a lot in the games I play. I'm often really hard on myself for not doing well but end up doing the best or at least top 3 every time. My own and external standards force me to try really hard all the time but even get 70% of that, often ends up being better than most people it seems. I guess the push towards 100% is what it's more about, opposed to the achieving 100%
Haha yes, for a long time I have thought that being perfect is just "normal", while being less than perfect is "defective". Pretty interesting watch this was. Gonna try it out.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎵 *Perfectionism often stems from high or unreachable standards set during upbringing, leading to a fear of falling short.* 01:50 🧠 *There are two types of perfectionism: personal standard perfectionism and external concern perfectionism, with the latter being more damaging.* 04:08 🧠 *External concern perfectionism, when high, causes the brain to distract from mistakes rather than address them, hindering personal growth.* 06:43 🧠 *Personal standard perfectionism activates a different part of the brain, leading individuals to slow down, address mistakes, and improve over time.* 10:23 📊 *Individuals with high personal standard perfectionism and some concern for external validation tend to perform the best in life.* 11:19 🔄 *Rather than trying to stop caring about what others think, it's more effective to cultivate personal standards alongside external concerns, leading to better outcomes.* 12:02 🚦 *When making mistakes, slowing down and paying attention to the problem can help disable the brain's tendency to distract, facilitating growth.* 13:24 💡 *Developing personal standards involves asking what would make oneself happy rather than solely focusing on external expectations.* Made with HARPA AI
Good to know ! Definitely didn't expect that high ECP would be a "blessing" as long as you set some personal standards. Thank you for the useful content :D
Thanks for the video, Dr K. I think I have both high PSP and ECP (which have taken me to the point of obtaining a PhD from a top institution, so it’s not all bad) but I still find myself struggling *immensely* with procrastination borne out of abject terror at making a mistake - even when other people wouldn’t notice or care! It’s the personal version of “perfection is passable, everything else is failure”. I find it hard to feel strong pride in anything I’ve done or achieved, or motivation to get my work out into the world, even if I’m confident in my abilities; the positive feeling quickly becomes tainted by the sense that I’m being arrogant or conceited. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Hey, one thought I had was that this could be an internalized thought from the external world. Dr.k has talked about samaskaras before, might be worth considering but ofc I'm not an expert. Also never being proud of yourself and also being successful post-grad academically correlates in my mind (anecdote).
@@quinndtxd Thanks for the suggestion - I’ve done some research into samskara before but never in this connection. I wonder whether it isn’t a born from internal forces reshaping external standards into new and strict internal standards. As for the correlation, it seems plausible to me. Being academically successful requires passing through some important stages of intellectual development. To pick three: (1) realising just how little you know and (2) just how hard creating new knowledge is and how much of that work gets ignored anyway, as well as (3) adopting the habit of always asking how you might be wrong, interrogating your assumptions and reasoning. These are all healthy and necessary, but attaining these can, as a consequence, leave one with the feeling that you’re never going to be good enough because (1) you’ll never know enough, (2) whatever you do manage will be small and insignificant, and (3) you can’t guarantee you’re not getting it wrong anyway. Thinking about it now in light of that, the lack of pride comes from failing to meet the expectations that one’s work should always be (1) based on perfect understanding, (2) significant and well-received, and (3) flawlessly executed. These are, of course, impossible standards. (It’s perhaps also interesting to note how our formal education makes this kind of perfection seem possible in academic work: you can always study all the material for the exam, the sense of importance is socially built-in to the system, and getting 100% is possible in principle.)
Another PhD student here. I feel you. I have high standards from my parents (though they would argue that they never asked for perfection, but they definitely did, just not academically and most of it was implicit), I have high standards from society and just a fear of not being competitive academically, and I have high internal standards for myself. I don't think this advice is very helpful since its basically where I am at, though after experiencing burnout I have been falling into the "I don't care" box but I am probably just lying to myself. I would love for him to give more specific advice for already high achieving perfectionists, the golden child who can't mess up because they have already come so far and their reputation as the golden child is probably the basis for most of their identity.
Honestly I'm not too sure if there's causation at work in this study. Correlation definitely, but it's just as if not more likely that the people who rank high at both external and internal expectations perform best because of some other factor - possibly one that also has led to them ranking high in both types of perfectionism. Like for example very successful AND very supportive parents who taught their kids how to be successful without pressuring them into performing. If kids love and admire their successful parents, they most likely grow up wishing to make them proud as well as be like them - aka internal and external perfectionism. Also, successful and supportive parents are more likely to send their kids to private schools, expensive universities etc without simultaneously limiting their ability to perform by traumatizing them.
Right. I don’t think this video speaks to the whole issue of perfectionism. And if it does, it makes a lot of assumptions about where it comes from and where it leads. Also remember the dynamic between neuroticism and conscientiousness? If you’re a perfectionist in the neurotic sense but not very conscientious its crippling. If you’re a perfectionist but you’re working at a task that requires perfection, you have very clear goals and the ability to execute them, perfectionism is helpful
I feel like I'm high external and personnal at the same time but not in a good way. I care a lot about parents being proud of me and they have ask a lot from me since I'm the first child. I also have a lot of personnal expectations (probably for feeling better since I feel super trash) and I often put myself in impossible expectations for me or others. When I'm accomplishing something, I always have to say "yeah but you could setup higher goals/that was not impressive". When I make a mistake, it is so hurtful that I completely avoid the situation and often ended up doing nothing / giving up at the first mistake. In conclusion I found it funny cause I feel like I'm in the "best group" but with the worst consequences and now I kinda don't give a fuck about anything but mistakes still makes me feel awful every time (not doing anything too)
agreed. the biggest curse of being in this box is being on the failing side of it. you know you're so close to breaking through and you feel like you're just a hair away from greatness, but it feels like it's always just outside of your reach. sometimes I'm really grateful, cause I realize what an amazing skill it is to have this level of mindfulness, but other times it's just fucking agonizing, lol
@@liruneko89754 Always feeling that "if you just started, that if you tried hard, you would be so great" but at the same time not believing it and ended up doing nothing. And even if you start, the first problem will throw away all your motivation and you will stop everything. Life like this is awful : not able to study, put efforts for relationship, just taking care of your hygien is fucking hard I need to fight with myself just to brush my teeth. And people are saying "duh just get motivated or get some discipline" but I have no energy for that, the energy for fighting with myself I used it years ago, now I kinda feel burned out and impossible to fight this procrastination and everything in general
I "decided" to become a perfectionist not because my parents expected me to be perfect, but because my father was a disaster and addicted to alcohol, so I wanted to become the opposite to him and do my best in every possible area
What do you do if your *own* standards are so high that you not only let yourself (and others) down, but you have sled into depression and just not doing anything because you can't do it right, as you no longer have the time nor energy? It literally interfered with me just keeping a planner as a kid, if my writing isn't neat enough (which takes a long time), I wouldn't even want to look at it, so over time I just stopped using it every semester and still haven't outgrown it in adulthood, even though I know damn well I'm the only one who cares about that.
So I think I am on the hi-hi column, but the problem is that it takes just sooo long to complete stuff because of the high standards. When Im done its great, but the journey there is so time consuming and painful. What to do about it?
I have PSP and STILL think my perfectionism is making things bad. I really don't care about what other people think about me or my mistakes, the issue is about my performance, the standard I set up for myself, like my own expectations and maybe "me disappointing myself", idk how to explain it. Hope someone can relate to this as well...
What’s the definition of ‘best outcomes’ here? Because it sounds like it’s moving everyone into the burnout quadrant. I’m torn because I love the evidence about slowing down vs shutting down after a mistake, totally agree with that. Sounds like step 2 is developing personal values or standards not personal perfectionism, which I’m also on board with.
The divine timing!! I skipped 4 major exams of a semester because of the "I will score full marks if I study better next time" thought pattern. Now I am just crying and pulling all nighters studying this semester's subjects as well as the previous one's.
Been there, done that. My heart really goes out to you. Regardless of what your mind says, I don't think you're useless or stupid etc. I do think you made a mistake and as the video says, maybe slowing down will work for you. For me, I eventually powered through it with pure will power. Took a lot of sacrifice but it is A) very do-able even if your mind tried to convince you otherwise and B) Rewarding, even with the bare minimum grade. Take it one day, one lecture at a time and when it gets too hard, treat yourself and keep moving. You've got this!
This sounds so relatable
I too did this same mistake .It caused irreversible damage to my career.
Good luck with your exams.
Good luck to you! I’m doing this also & trying to sort out realistic & healthy expectations. You can do it, whatever you do. It will be ok 👍❤️
I did the same for years and ended up finishing a 4 year course in 7.😭
There was other stuff there too, but perfectionism was certainly one of it.
I feel like my life has been a long string of people telling me not to be afraid of making mistakes and then life giving me every reason to be afraid of making mistakes
Heide Priebe has a really good video on this, it is regarding relationship dynaics but it has lessons to overcome it. Heidi is honestly up there with DrK when it comes ro lifesaver content like this
Perfect was definitely the norm in my household. From kindergarten on, I was told that I had to get straight As or I wouldn’t get into college. And until high school, an A- wasn’t good enough.
Combine that with undiagnosed ADHD, and it’s a recipe for crippling levels of perfectionism. (Plus, I have trouble sticking with hobbies I enjoy if I’m not perfect at them immediately.)
Man, this felt like it was written by me. The part about "never finishing anything I'm not immediately perfect at first" is so fuckin real
Being scolded for A- was making me angry more than when I would get B or C. Like it's still A and it doesn't really matter even for graduation so why am I being scolded for something that trivial.
@@joepopelasFax 🔥
@@dusathemaid I feel exactly the same, God damn it
I think i wrote this 😅🫠
"Just start caring about yourself" is just as hard as "Just stop caring about others"
This. Sometimes I can't even evaluate my performance without external expectations getting in the way.
Not when I've got that squirrelly part of the mind screaming at full volume "no, your opinion doesn't matter: they'll see everything you did wrong and they'll call you out on it and then the world will end!".
---
But right now I'm building acceptance of the fact that I can't predict other people's reactions to my work.
Often, if I think my worksmanship is shoddy, my clients will be happy with it.
And if I think it's good, they'll criticise it harshly.
This acceptance helps when I can pull it off. It helps me slow down and stay focused on the task at hand when something goes wrong, and to be a bit more objective when I evaluate my work.
---
So, personal opinion:
Reducing the amount that you care about other people's points of view might actually be a helpful _first_ step.
It's just that not caring about external expectations is not the end goal of the journey.
It's more like a crutch. A way to slow down, keep your cool, and seriously consider the perspective of the only person whose opinion you know for sure: yourself.
@oleg4966 I seriously did not consider the fact that caring for oneself and caring for others are not mutually exclusive. Not just in work but In general. Your comment has helped me immensely.
Yes. It usually takes a fairly extreme wake up call for us to even start letting go of this pressure. The negative impact it's having has to become quite extreme as the potential positive impact is never guaranteed.
Agreed.
Idk, depends on the person. Sometimes you only care about other people that you forget to care about yourself or the other way around.
I am a perfectionist and exactly what you said, top tier performance was expected to be the standard for me. I am burned out. You ended your video on that note „do this and you‘ll outperform anybody else.“ - no. I don‘t want to outperform. I don‘t want to perform at all. I want to exist and be happy. That‘s it.
That struck me too. The end result I want isn't to be outperforming everyone else, it's to not be exhausted. To be interested in what I'm doing and life in general again. As you say, to be happy. High performance only gets you so far before it isn't worth it anymore.
YEP, this is me as well. I realized watching this video that I already have both "high" boxes checked. I'm tired, boss. I've been performing since childhood, I just want to lay my burden down.
Same here, having both kinds of perfectionism sounds exhausting. I do want to perform in the sense that I want to achieve things that are positive for me and for other people, but not through outperforming and perfectionism but through following my interests, not being afraid to try things or make mistakes, growing my skills and knowledge about something for the long term
So maybe your standard is too high or you forgot that you have to include your own mental health in your standard
Co burnees; I've managed to slow down my perfectionistic/perform-or-worthless mindset by really doubling down on meditation and training myself to think differently. I've used "The power of now" from Eckhart Tolle (may have butchered the name) for the realisation, the nudge in the right direction and, most importantly, to learn what meditating by "acknowledging events and thoughts as they come and go" rather than attaching an opinion to that. It helped me greatly, not because it's a one-fix-for-everything type thing, because fuck those. It's more of a way to help you to start thinking differently and appreciating life as it happens around you differently. To put it into a metaphor, it only changes the lighting in the room while the room is still very much the same.
I've also learned that happiness, positivity and love/care are habits more than anything. I appreciate way more little things than I ever used to do. And this is something I learned after nuking my negative mindset. I don't think everything would be applicable to everyone completely in the same way as it did for me. This is something I distilled through trial and error as well, which is what I'd encourage you to do as well. See what works. Ask people of similar mindsets what worked for them and see what advice sticks and what doesn't. Godspeed
EDIT: Rather than godspeed, perhaps 'tranquilo tranquilo, rome wasnt build in a day' would be more applicable.
I have C-PTSD as a result of being raising in an emotionally and physically abusive, east asian household. Starting from when I was 7 years old, my mom would punish me very severely (I won't go into details) when the report cards came home every semester because I never got straight A's like she wanted. I gained a lot of performance anxiety and I learned to start locking myself in random rooms to try to avoid the punishment (my parents had keys for every door) and eventually, I'd just hide the report card. I wasn't given the resource to succeed yet I was expected to perform perfectly (no one wanted to help me). Outside of this, both my mom and dad would scold me and take over doing a task (think simple household chores) for me when I made a mistake and did not do things to their expectations. I was not given opportunities to make mistakes and to fail in a safe manner and I also learned that its not okay for me to be myself. When you observe that somehow, your actions are making other people suffer and even though you're not doing anything inherently wrong or intentionally hurtful, you ending giving up on trying to be yourself and instead, behave in a way that you know makes other people happy, at the cost of your own happiness.
Probably the most critical aspect here is how I started to perform worse academically because I learned to associate failure with a very negative and scary consequence so it got so bad that I could not tolerate the negative feelings that came up when I made mistakes. I learned to cope with my mistakes through avoidance because when I would make a mistake while reading or working on homework, I'd basically throw whatever I was doing to the side and switch over to playing video games. Additionally, I would feel so much anxiety when family members were observing me while I was studying/doing homework that I'd immediately switched over to video games when they came in my room. This habit has plagued me my entire life because I screwed up college so badly where I took 9 years to get my bachelor's degree and I ended up switching majors out of what I originally wanted to study (my passion) due to my grades not being high enough. Imagine not being able to study or do homework because you're constantly trying to avoid the negative feelings that always come up when you make a mistake. Eventually the feeling of regret from past mistakes was what pushed me to completion through college but thats non-ideal.
To me, my greatest failure is my performance in school and thats why I'm so scared to go back, even though I'm really passionate about the topic I originally wanted to study. I'm scared of making the same failures and I think I'd be crushed mentally and emotionally if I failed again because I've developed this identity around the idea that if I were to make the same mistake, it would indicate that I have not changed from the person that I was 12 years ago who screwed up their opportunities. Its hard. My therapist thinks I have a lot of grit for surviving and coming on top of my situation but this particular issue (of avoidance) is why I think I don't have grit.
I'm sorry you went through that, some people do not deserve to have kids. Maybe you should try studying online ? Doing your own research and finding online classes and courses. This is what I do because I prefer to go at my own rhythm without anybody being there to judge my progress or mistakes. Hopefully you get it figured out! Wish u the best
Man, switch out east asian household for white-washed hispanic, and you're pretty much describing me...
@@Sunshya Thanks for the kind comments. I've been self-learning under the guise of "its a hobby". The pressure isn't there, for good or bad. But, my family thinks I'm wasting my time when they observe me doing it. I end up just lying about it or just not doing the activity when family is around. Its really hard to explain the concept that someone can do something they enjoy to people who make judgments on whether or not an activity is a waste of time.
@@ClassyJohn I feel you, my mom thinks I am not really studying or learning just because I am not in a formal education system but I know deep down I am learning and that's what matters to me. Idk how old you are but I would suggest you to move out as soon as possible, that is what I'm trying to do as well...
@@ClassyJohnBro just do stuff that u want to do and how u want to do it or that which suits u.
The next time ur parents threaten u with punishment or if anything related to perfectionism comes up by ur parents, just tell then the truth as to how u've always felt about their treatment towards u. Maybe when they actually hear they'll understand.
The problem with our generation is that most of us don't really have parents that have been raised in a healthy environment, so they just put their children through unrealistic standards.
Just keep grinding bro, and don't forget to forgive urself if failure comes knocking. Give urself a reward when u put effort.
That part about mentally checking out when being confronted with our mistakes is SO goddamn true. It’s probably the reason why I dread conversations with my boss and have so much anxiety if it’s after a fuckup I did. So many times when I messed up as a kid I would disassociate just to get the uncomfortable part over with
Setting personal standards seems like a whole topic to explain on its own. Its something I just can't fathom how to do. For a given task I struggle to find where to place the bar for my own personal satisfaction, so I usually just place it at an arbitrary point that I logically think I should be happy with achieving. But even if I meet my personal goal I just don't feel anything. Any feeling of satisfaction or achievement, if felt at all, is immediately fleeting. I always feel like I could just be doing more, and that feeling causes me to start falling short of the personal standards I set since there's no clear point where I'll feel good about myself.
Growing up I was a "gifted kid" who never really struggled with school, but when I hit university I started failing classes and falling behind. At home was made to feel like none of my hobbies/interests mattered and were a waste of time, and nothing I did was ever good enough. I feel like these two factors are the main reasons for my issues being satisfied with my own effort. As an adult I still feel "gifted", like I have this unlimited potential. If I could just not feel empty every time I meet a personal goal, maybe I'd be able to do enough to feel like I'm not falling behind or stagnating.
I feel exactly the same! I resonate with his description of ECP and how you develop it, but I never struggled with grades growing up, so I didn't get it from being shamed for school. I was shamed for how I spent my time, for my hobbies. So I felt like I couldn't enjoy anything without hiding it, and like I had to leave my free time as open as possible for others to do whatever they wanted with me or tell me what they want from me, or else I wouldn't be "perfect."
That didn't mix well with college. Because education isn't something to hide, so I couldn't enjoy it how I wanted to. Because I had to leave my time free for others when I wasn't hiding, so I never committed to homework how I needed to (I used to just do it all in class in public school). And I can't start anything stable to support myself with, like learning or practicing a skill on my own, because of these same reasons. I can follow commands perfectly fine on others' time, physically at school or at employment. I just feel incapable of thinking for myself, on my own time.
I can't even begin to think of what I'd enjoy for myself, if I can't hide it, because the opinions of others will become involved at some point, and that's going to make me just want to escape it and hate it if I ever make mistakes that they know about or if they ever have anything bad to say. So nothing ever sticks. I wish I could just make the things I want to make, learn what I want, commit to a goal. But I always think of what I "should" want instead. It's frustrating.
Both your description are something I deeply resonate with. I would really like to learn more about setting your own standard
I have a similar story as well. It ended up becoming that the way my voice my posture my thinking became orientated towards keeping other satisfied and not allowing any mistakes, but to the point I resent myself for not being able to find and hold my own ground again. It started to manifest within my body by rejecting it. It’s hard cause I want to keep peace with others but at the same time, I cannot feel any emotions or feelings towards it. It’s feels way too forced and not natural anymore. I feel like society makes it hard for me to change. I’m not sure how far down I let myself go but I want to move on and feel whole again. Even if I have to continue living with my parents who kinda conditioned me this way.
I feel similarly. It's a struggle, especially when the signals I receive from others are everywhere, and understanding how to balance the complexity of our circumstances with meeting our needs through collaboration is difficult..
00:12 🧠 Perfectionism often stems from high or unreachable standards set in childhood, which may come from parents or older siblings who were seen as "golden" achievers.
01:50 🧠 There are two types of perfectionism: personal standard (setting high standards for oneself) and external concern (seeking perfection for others' approval). The latter is often more damaging.
03:27 🧠 External concern perfectionism is associated with a part of the brain called the medial frontal gyrus, which redirects attention away from mistakes to protect from disappointment.
05:30 🧠 External concern perfectionism can lead to avoiding mistakes and not effectively learning from them, creating a cycle of self-criticism and feelings of inadequacy.
06:43 🧠 Personal standard perfectionism is associated with the anterior singulate cortex, leading to slowing down and focused attention on mistakes, resulting in improved performance over time.
08:02 🧠 It's easier to shift towards setting personal standards for oneself rather than trying to stop caring about what others think, which is deeply ingrained in perfectionistic individuals.
11:33 🧠 Two strategies to boost personal standard perfectionism: 1) When making a mistake, slow down and pay attention to the problem without trying to immediately fix it. 2) Develop personal standards by asking, "What would make me happy?" and holding that alongside external expectations.
14:15 🧠 By combining personal standards with the drive for external perfection, individuals can outperform those who only focus on one aspect, leading to higher levels of success and satisfaction.
Thank you legend
Thank u
Thank u
Thanks
Ty
Also want to say that the unrealistic standards can sometimes come from growing up in a lower-class family as well. I know a lot of families (including mine) that just tell their young kids, “this family relies on you to make money in the future, so we can get out of this situation. So make sure you have the best grades in school so that you can go to the best university and get the best job. Because our lives are literally depending on your success.”
I guess it was nice knowing I protected myself from this mindset when I was young. I was very rebellious and got bad grades for the sake of getting bad grades because my mom kept telling me to get straight As, then she begged me to at least not fail classes when I was on the verge of failing them. I always did things well when I put my mind to it, even if I wasn’t great at first I would keep trying, but now I lack the ability to follow through things I don’t like unless they align with my core values. Downside of the opposite mindset
But r u now trying to improve from it?
Dude I relate with you so hard😂! I was also almost always rebellious(especially in my young years), but somehow perfectionism got "activated" in me, much later in my life(due to my parents. Almost nothing I did/wanted was good enough and jadajada). Now it's really confusing for me😵💫because I had also this: "If I put my mind to something, someday I will do well or very well at this thing." and now I'm opposite on this spectrum aka what this video describes🤣
Fuck me😂(But I'm trying to work on this and this video helped a lot. So thx Dr. K😁❤!)
Interesting, I was very rebellious too. But I did that by not caring what others thought. The thought of what grades I would come home with and how people would react to them barely came up. I only had my own standard and it was low(too low). I shot myself in the foot by being that way.
You might be interested in PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance/Persistent Drive for Autonomy) in relation to ADHD
@@razzytackthanks for sharing. found it interesting
I think a lot of this may sometimes stems from parents hiding their challenges and difficult emotions from their children, because they "dont want to put that on the kids", which is well intentioned, and in many cases a reaction to their own disregulated parents, but the unfortunate consequence is that kids never see any model for how to overcome challenging internal problems, and a glossy kind of emotional "perfection" becames normalized at a very deep behavioral level.
"the kids never see any model for how to overcome challenging internal problems" gave me a third eye lol. makes too much sense for me, ty for writing this
What if you dont have this examples of perfectionism ? What if you didnt have parents that told you: you should do better etc.? What if you dont care about other peoples opinion and u know that everyone is different and you should not try to be like them? What if you strive for perfection but your own expectations for yourself doesnt hold up and you end up doing worst or nothing at the end and start to be lazy because you didnt accomplish the level that you wanted to be?
You, my friend, should find a therapist (if you can afford it ofc); also, there might be a disconnect between your conscious ‘intellectual’ understanding and your unconscious, more emotional experience
This is 100% my problem. If I can't do things "right" it just feels like, why bother?
This, I don't understand how this wasn't covered. Is this a secret form of ECP or the evil version of PSP?
omg i never thought someone would sum up my struggles so perfectly
Wow, this is literally me
I really struggle with this. My social anxiety makes me think I have to act and be perfect in order to seem ‘normal’ or to fit in. It’s emotionally draining to be in your head 24/7
1:30 Albert Einstein asked: What am I good at? What do I love? what does the world need? How can I live of it/make money out of it? the best line of questions i've heard. but you have to find in yourself the motivation to go after it. dopamine is key.
Absolutely agree the curse of perfectionism is truly hell. I have 3x perfectionism of having tiger parents + narcissistic parent + having super high-achieving older brothers and sisters Golden Child.
Eventually just like in 9:44 through a decade-long depressions I slid down to the deeper hell in low personal standard and stopped giving a shit about other people. And finally this year I crawled out of the hellhole of perfectionism and unlearning all these toxic "gifts" from my narcissistic parents (& siblings). Thank you Dr K for all you straight talk and wisdom ❤❤
I grew up with a golden elder brother, and a golden elder sister, and my parents were strict with very high expectations. Basically exactly as you described it.
It's extremely difficult for me to actually like, sincerely believe that this isn't normal, or to imagine a way it could have been different.
Every time I try it just feels like I'm making stuff up or lying to myself to give an excuse for failure or not being good enough.
i hope this changes with time.
Having a friend who's just glad to be around you with no pressure helps with that feeling :) I hope you can feel peaceful one day!
5:24 “it didn’t really hurt, cause it hurt too much” 📣📣📣
I love this in the context of improving as a writer. I've slowly been able to move into that "hi-hi" zone, integrating more deliberate practice, understanding my flaws, and also being aware of what the market is publishing today, and getting external feedback. It's the kind of self-coaching and high personal standards that have allowed to me respond productively to constructive feedback. You can't simply disregard what other people think and try to be a "true artist." We're creating things for other people to read, but we also want to adhere to our own vision. There's a place on the Venn diagram where those two things overlap. But ultimately, you have to be willing to do the work.
It quite the struggle and probably the source of my infinite writers block
So I have both personal and external perfectionism since my parents always expected me to be top of my class and that mindset rubbed onto me as well. Sure, I definitely outperform 99% of people in academics, but that’s all you’ll get. Perfectionism ruins your perception of yourself and your work and leaves you never satisfied with anything.
I'm very late dx AuDHD who was labelled 'gifted' in school, also adopted, this feeling like I owed high performance.
Instead of attaining high performance, I fucking sucked at every aspect of childhood, was bullied relentlessly by children and adults in school and internalised the struggles I had because I didn't know I needed supports and I sure didn't get any.
I turn 40 in just over a week and it's taken me this long to get to where I should have been at 21.
Maintaining high standards, while letting go of perfectionism is a journey I am on and that has helped me to move forward. So has being able to access disability supports.
I'm 4 years into training do become a psychologist, working at the Uni, active in research and getting Pro-Am roles in musical theatre in my city.
Wow no wonder I've lost all motivation, I got the "stop caring what other people think" advice sooooo much
It eventually felt pointless to even try at all, and it's only until very recently that I've graduated that I realize I never really have motivations of my own?
Ofc I'm not a blank slate, but I instantly pull my needs and opinions back for the sake of helping others or letting others have a good time
And that part of "Start choosing and asking on 'what would make you happy', it's insane how hard it is to answer! As an individual I clearly have a personality, a voice and yet... When asked 'what do you want to do?' it's impossible to say anything
I'm slowly figuring out what it means to be myself and it's certainly helped shaped being the first time I failed to meet any expectations knowing that it doesn't affect the value of who I am or what I bring!
I like this a lot. It does seem like the reactive approach of "when you make a mistake, slow down and move towards your own standard" is only half of the picture. It's also useful to take this into consideration when taking affirmative steps. "I want to have a get together, but I'm worried what my friends will think if my plan doesn't thrill everyone". Slow down, observe that reaction, and look at what you want and your own standard of what seems fun. Maybe you'll realize you don't have a standard because you've always been solely focused on what everyone else wants. Try and bridge that divide.
9:11 this applies to social anxiety as well. I never could tell what deeply pissed me off about people constantly advising (demand me, even) to "stop caring what others think"
im so glad i could tell it was terrible advice even tho i had no clue why
This is going back to a previous topic you’ve talked about but i had some ECP not because of parents or other people being strict and setting high standards, heck they were really lenient on me, bur because i was the gifted kid. A lot of praise I got was from doing really well so I wanted to keep doing well to receive praise. And maybe there was self gratification as well from doing good but i probably should’ve set my standards to B grades instead of As
Watching his videos makes me want to go to therapy, just because I find this fascinating that we do these things without really having a true understanding. He shows that the science through doing the work that you should of done ages ago; can have profound effect on you in ways you never thought of.
That actually makes so much sense why when I think about my past mistakes I feel all anxious and immediately try to think of something else and try not to "cringe" at what I said or did. Definitely low PSP for me.
oh wow, this makes a lot of sense! I couldn't relate to him saying EPS brain distracts you from thinking about your mistakes, because I think about my mistakes a lot. But by 'thinking' I actually mean just dwelling on them while experiencing paralyzing cringe. I don't slow down to really get to the root of social mistakes, I just tell myself to never do them again. And then I do it again, because the cringe blocked any kind of learning other than 'don't do things that trigger cringe'. So I guess my distraction IS the cringe.
The grid was very informative, I think I land on the high psp, low ecp and it’s always sounded good when I think about it but it hasn’t really worked out that way. I think I have a tendency to set too high of expectations for myself and when people praise me for doing something impressive but it doesn’t meet my own standard it might as well feel like a full failure
He’s not wrong I’m doing ok for myself and making small consistent progress but I would be interested in what I can do to maybe tap into that ecp to take the motivation to the next level, and have a probably more healthy balance
I wish you had talked about perfectionism in relation to rejection sensitivity. Ive recently struggled with this as this approach rendered me sucessful in a number of areas but at the cost of my own energy/happiness. Its hard to reconcile that when the outward responce i craved was validating to this destrutive practice.
This is sooooooo on point. I have high ECP and “What would I be happy with?”is something I never ask myself. And you’re so right about how parents never gave a shit about my opinions when I was a kid so I stopped thinking my opinions have any value. Love how you made that connection ❤ will def add personal standards and slow down my thinking when I make a mistake, thanks Dr K
This is a gem, thanks Dr. K, I know this is an area I've always struggled with because of the unreasonably high standards from my parents. I remember telling my dad I got a 99% on an exam and he immediately asked why I didn't get a 100, no "good job" or anything rip lol. As I'm going thru life I realize I'm holding myself up to standards from other people and I never really consider myself and my journey in my standard for success. Thanks for putting it into words I can relate to (Personal Standard Perfection) and I'm feeling verrrryy hopeful in overcoming this!
I can't believe how long I've been watching Dr. K's stuff, and yet on the regular I feel increasingly called out by each new video xD I can't wait for the book! The course was already fantastic!
100% to everything you said. When I was younger I quickly realized how 100% wasn't enough for my parents.. and then in my early 20s I created my own version of success for myself and "good enough". I tried to care less but couldn't. What I didn't realize is I literally did the lateral move and solidified my self concept, my beliefs (through different mental health work, attachment style, CBT, etc.) and I still do have an external perfection but not to a point where I go into freeze mode or numbing mode. Or if someone makes a comment about my success because their standards are unrealistic, I then don't care because I'm content with where I'm at and literally everyone around tells me how my standards are so high and I deliver and I do more than the average person - I'm also kinder to myself when I make mistakes or I don't achieve my goals, I'm more human about it but it's still there to push me in the butt, I can't unprogram that and part of me is grateful I did have that, though it could've gone very wrong had I not caught this and worked on it - and it is work, none of this is easy but it's worth it. Solid advice as usual Dr K!
I've started shifting into the lower right corner, I noticed, trying to mimic and compare myself to my friend. Glad I found this.
Gosh…where has this channel been all my life?!
Your intro sentence already made me tear up a bit - not to mention what the rest did.
I am forever grateful for your content here that helps me and so many others. Thank you Dr. K!
My external perfectionism is trying to make personal projects that would look impressive on my portfolio. So, not only I'm trying to come up with the best idea to please others but these others are not any specific person but it could be any recruiter or developer who would look at what I made and go "huh that's trash, next". So I've been procrastinating all personal projects for the last 3 months!
HealthyGamerGG, RUclips Channel of the Year 2023. 🎉🎉🎉😊😊😊❤❤❤🙋♂️🙋♀️🖖🙆♂️🙆♀️ 🧗♂️
Can you do one about inferiority complex
This is exactly what I've been needing. As I was watching the video I began to ask myself if I fall more into PSP or ECP because I sometimes can feel both and now I know they're not mutually exclusive. I've always been someone who strives for more but with the recent career I've been taking on, the expectations have been crushing and I haven't been able to keep up. It's made me paralyzed and I've very little improvement since I've began which has thrown me off a lot since I pride myself in my adaptability to new environments.
There has been moments where I've consciously slowed down, as I'm a musician, there's a rule that I was taught when learning a piece of music. Which is slow it down and break it down, but because of the crushing expectations, I've felt like I haven't had that luxury and so I throw strategy out the window and try to brute my way through to no avail. It's soooo hard to consciously slow down. Honestly, it takes so much will power and strength to go against the grain of my conditioning, but now I know that it's the only way forward.
As a person that's living an awesome life (I have really strong mental health and never had depression), I watch these kind of channels to help understand what friends and family are going through, as I often can't relate.
This video was interesting in that it helped explain why I don't seem to care as much as other people on any kind of social pressures. I have internal perfection - spending my days getting things right for personal satisfaction. I gotta tell you guys, it feels amazing not caring what others think of you! It makes it easy very to talk to new people (no anxiety) and I also feel/act with more independence/confidence as a result of chasing and completing my own goals.
Can you rub it in a little more 😂
@@electron6825 Sorry, not sorry haha! 😄
The best explantion of perfectionism I've seen! When you decribed this! Its 100% my parents. Thank you so much for explanation and solution! 🙏
spot on, thank you for talking about this! growing up my mom was super hard on me about school and grades. forcing me to join extracurricular activities, getting upset when I couldn't achieve straight A's, constantly obsessing over my GPA, signing me up to volunteer without my consent. brainwashing me into thinking that college was the only way I could get a good job. now I'm left with a student loan that I haven't been able to pay back since I graduated in 2017. I wish I would have pursued my dreams of doing RUclips and fashion when I was younger instead of college. not EVERYONE is meant to go to college and I was one of them, but she refuses to believe that. I finally started doing RUclips this year and while it's never too late, I just have a lot of resentment towards my mom. meanwhile my younger brother had terrible grades, was constantly getting into trouble and she didn't care. she never forced him to do anything and he got away with so much.
My older sister was Valedictorian, state champion in her sport, and went to an IV League and now makes six figures. Not to mention she’s very sociable and people always love her.
You can guess how things went for me in high school.
(I played LoL and Rust)
Hey, as someone who is like you describe your sister: maybe she really wanted to do something like playing LoL but couldn't because of outside expectations too :/ It was like that for me, I only could start doing what I loved for myself in mi 27ish.
It's Ivy League btw
@@randomisedrandomness idk man maybe she went to an intravenous school
Thank you for this! I knew I had perfectionism but other people thought ADHD - now that I know about both kinds of perfectionism, it explains the "slowing down" AND "distracting" because I do both. Success with my artwork has suffered bc of it and I will try to make it a blessing. :D
Wisdom for anyone, at any stage of life! Grateful to you for sharing this in particular-perfect timing to’ve come across this today. Your ability to comprehend, break down and explain how to realistically approach what oftentimes feels unconquerable is quite a gift!!
Thank you for putting into words why my childhood was a living hell. Growing up middle class in a third world country can totally fuck with your standards of what a good upbringing is.
The de/reprogramming I’ve had to do in the 9 years since leaving home hasn’t always been easy but so so so worth it. And amen to the adding standards for yourself, especially irrespective of what others might think. If said standards upset the toxic ppl who instilled perfectionism in the first place, that’s just the icing on the cake jaja.
i've also complex adhd and can currently only treat the compulsion and depression aspects after some longer family-biogragraphical history.
Anyhow, i'm developed a very high personal standard and kinda stopped thinking about the others. And when it only needs to start thinking about other's opinions again, well, then i'll be an easy ride^^
i really hope, i can get into programming one day. i pursue that goal since I was 20, and i'm now close to becomming 29. Still i've nothing concrete to show for, but i can say, that i've learned python on my own and that i finally have a 300h savegame in (heavily modded) factorio and a 40h savegame in (heavily modded) oxygen not included.
These are cognitive breakthroughs for me, to be able to just go forward that long without loosing due to meta-planning or over-sclaling issues. My working style is iterative there and there needs to be a way to harness that kind of beta-skills for my future work... i mean, seriously.. factorio is a game with a focus on how to solve complex to chaotic problems. And oxygen not included is another game with a focus on how to prioritize problems within a complex to chaotic environment. And sorry, apart from my games, i only have a 6 year old testimonial from the time i was succeeding in a voluntary social year while having worked there with difficult teen. Not really an IT thing, but at least a reference for beta-skills.
And that i'm stubbornly aiming the same way, even despite my families history, and despite my own late diagnostics.. that has to mean something..
Btw, i'm kinda hype. i just applied for a training within a company which advertised themselves with giving out goodies n the other more important stuffs, retirement aids, sports, events, iterative means, inclusion. feels kinda nice. i hope i can give them the minimum requirements for that training. i've probably learned programming for like 500h by now, like 6 languages, but i still need to start over again, and to get into a structured, dedicated learning environment. ad hoc, there's literally nothing left in my brain, no joke.
I thought that my perfectionistic self came from within my idealistic nature and then my mother who tend to compare me to my cousins, sister, her colleagues' children or just any child who seems to move faster, the breadwinner supporting their family fully or they're more "smart" or they're "doing better in their career"... essentially just highlighting everything i'm not while she highlighted everything "good" about others I am not doing like them indirectly. and this happened when I was in primary and high school. It's super sad to realise this, but I can see why I struggle with making mistakes and offending people if I'm standing up for myself or calling someone's bullshit out. Thank you for making this video Dr. K. It's not entirely my fault nor it's something to point fingers at. It's a deeper problem in our society collectively and on a humanity scale.
Mind blowing…so you don’t give up the perfectionism trait and trying to stop being who you are, you are actually leveling up the complementary trait to match it and balance it out. It’s comforting to know that I’m not so wrong that I have to get rid of myself, I just need to keep adding to what I already have
Thank you for the video, it was very insightful!
A small feedback here: the beeps for the swearing are kinda distracting. If you want to keep them, I'd just go with silence.
It's my personal preference, but I just think it looks better in many videos.
I wish more mental health professionals were as brilliant and down to earth as you.
For the past year I've been working on why I keep shutting down, getting off track and never doing what I want to do with my life.. I freaking love you man.
Glad i found this channel. this has been eye opening.
I fit in both categories, and I can tell you it actually works best. The problem I usually fall into is that I slow down so much in trying to do better and learning from my mistakes that I end up not making any progress, because failure is not an option
I think a lot of people are so used to telling themselves and others that they don't care, because caring would be shameful, that they will think they are Low ECP and High PSP when they are the opposite or low in both. Anyways, I think the advice is useful, gonna experiment with that in the future.
holy shit this makes so much sense, last week i finally tried to get my shit together, i spent 5 days cramming all my homework to get it done in time and i finally did it, that was the most productive i've ever been all year and then a few days later i fucked up and missed my presentation and i just mentally checked out, i stopped doing my assignments and just went back to procrastinating and now im struggling to finish my assignments again
i genuinely believe i used to have ecp from that perfection = normal assumption from my parents. i completely shut down when i wasn’t meeting expectations, but i ended up caring more about myself and holding myself to patient and reasonable standards as a coping mechanism because i lacked that from them. with help from an older sister who had already figured it out, the video was a callout but one that i’ve already figured out 🥰 this one actually read me for filth though
Honestly this video was amazing because it allowed me to see so much more clearly why certain aspects of my life have gotten easier when I began to embrace standards that I came up with on my own - like being okay with dropping balls while juggling because it was an experiment on my own neuroplasticity, or (thanks mostly to certain mentors) deciding that I was going to start owning my mistakes at work by speaking up about them as early and as loud as I could so that they would become a shield instead of a weapon against me. I'm thriving at my job and had an entire department created based on my problem solving skills purely because I figured out a different way to see my own performance. I've learned to embrace mistakes in my hobbies because it's something new and part of a learning process that only benefits me. Maybe just knowing this could start to do that in other aspects of my life, like my health and relationships and home organization. Sorry for the brain dump, but wow.
Your explanation is like deja vu to me, especially when you're talking about ECP at the beginning. Because in the mean time i usually doing self-reflection about my life, like talking to myself. And your explanation is exactly like my self-reflection session a few weeks ago (including how you explaining with your hands, those very much like how i move my hands during self-reflection session, that's why watching your video is like deja vu to me). And thank you so much for explaining this further btw, especially about this ECP thing. Good to see that i'm not the only one experiencing this, there is explanation about what i was experiencing. This actually a root cause to several mental health problems that I had. Glad to finally recognized it.
Not really related to this vid but i started on adhd meds and its like turning a light switch on been watching your channel for ages keep it up!
When I made mistakes as a child, my parents (mostly my dad) made it seem like I could never erase any "black marks" against me. Anything that made my parents mad was FOREVER. I remember realizing that black marks only accumulated, there was no way to remove them. Didn't matter what good things you did, that accumulation of black marks only got bigger, never smaller. The best you could do was try to be perfect and prevent things from getting worse. (I do have a high PSP as well as a high ECP, and at this point, like so many others here, I just feel burnt out.)
I've been perfectionist with few things... but it's truly damaging when you internally feel like your younger self used to do more stuff like you do now, and you try to do the same as you do but fail to do so or you perceive as so. It has made me think over time i'm worsening and I'll end up unable to do anything at some point and it scares me ;-;
I know others have felt this way, but the timing on this is incredible! I have only one question though: Dr. K talked about how to improve Personal Standard Perfectionism, but how does one increase External Concern Perfectionism?
i used to read a book by an austrian writer and he had an interesting turn on perfection. sorry for my weak english in such topics, but it goes like this: there is different main reasons behind perfectionism. the one is to have those very high standards for the sake of the standards, for an idealistic motive. then there is the very high standards you think you must meet you think you must meet to be worth something (as you explain in the beginning of the video) but the other, and i think this is at least as common, is, that you lack self confidence, selfesteem and cannot deal with critic. which means your goal is only to appear perfect to your environment, while you dont care at all about the high standards of the reults, of for example a script you write or whatever is your job. you may even know you didnt do your best, but its good enough to not be critisized, it looks perfect to others and so you are fine with it because they wont critisize you and you dont have to defend yourself. because you never knew or learned how to defend yourself or stand in for your own values and ideas. so at the end behind that kind of "perfection" is a big insecurity and weakness and low confidence and selfesteem. what do you think? is that so?
This summed up how and why my life has changed so much. I didn't even realise I shifted from caring about what others think to caring about what others and I myself think of my work
This was very insightful 😢 thank you
Mr. K is on a roll. The previous video was an epiphany, now this one feels like a shot through my soul.
Can you give more examples of how to “slow down” in various parts of life? Like different applications of where we apply our perfectionism.
For the longest time, I've beat myself up for not achieving the best results. One could say it's perfectionism.
The thing, however, is that I never had tiger parents nor a golden sibling to compare to. Everyone was always very supportive. Therefore, perfectionism gets thrown out the window by my therapist but, what if you can also be perfectionist because of a narrative you create yourself? You do great and become recognized, over and over, then that creates a persona for you, a standard you measure yourself up against. Then, later in life, challenges make you fall below that and you feel like crap. Can being over praised also cause harm like negative reinforcement?
As per this description, the fact that no one demanded too much from me alone seems to discard perfectionism, but what if you create the standards yourself?
I'm with you on this
This has really beem helping me in my graduate program these past few weeks with research and classes. I've been doing much better in both and feeling secure in myself. My therapist has noticed too ❤
For once I watch a HG video where I already agree with and have applied what's said as I've discovered it myself. The people around me do not have unrealistic expectations in me and if they do it's their problem, not mine. But I do want to make them happy because it makes me feel good. I'm the one who put high expectations on myself because I know I can do it and when I find that I can't, I slow down and discover why, in which case it's just all good, no bad feelings. In hindsight it makes sense that I failed because I was clearly proven wrong by failing and the next step is figuring out what to do next to improve. I believe in my ability to learn from my mistakes. Now if only applying this to emotional/relationship mistakes was equally as easy to manage.
Great, so I feel exactly like a High PCP/Low ECP guy and I'm actually doing okay.
And I am just regularly disappointed by failing my own, waaaay too high standards, and also upset by everyone else failing my quite low standards for them.
And that is apparently too difficult to fix, because I actually had a lovely parents who knew what they were doing.
What a slightly inconveniencing and mildly disappointing privilege.
this is literally what I figured out I was doing in my exams that were going bad, either nail it completely or fail it completely, slowing down and allowing myself to try the best I can do in that currently super panic'd situation and I ended up bein pretty proud even with Cs because I was able to try and not fail the exam completely. we can't appreciate failure, we can't appreciate perfection in performance but figuring out that performing average can feel so damn good is probably the huge first step. I don't think having to maximize performance in every aspect of life is something to strive for.
I'm a perfectonist but neither of these apply to me. Whenever l make a mistake l just start obsessing over it and use it as an excuse to devaluate/beat myself up no matter if l manage to fix it or not.
Dr. K, could you make a video on performing under pressure? I am a track/cross country runner and even though I have pushed myself so hard that I have thrown up at practice (I don't recommend doing this but it is just to show that I am able to be very strong mentally), I always underperform in races because I get too nervous and/or doubt myself. I want to be someone who is aggressive and determined in races and fearlessly pushes myself to the absolute max every time in races but even though I have the capacity to push myself this hard, I am limited by my anxiety and doubts. I also often find myself adjusting my goals right before/during a race or giving up ("I'll do better next time, it's okay if I only do _") instead of feeling fired up, deternined, and excited like some of my teammates.
Thank you so much. I'm an external perfectionist, and people always tell me to just not care. Like, gee, never thought of that...
never been this early and it already feels like a callout, here we go
I was surprised to hear you go at it from the angle of that PSP is better to have than ECP! It does make sense, but being someone who scores high on both of those, I feel like there's another dimension to this which can completely flip the chart around. This is just my thinking based on my own experience but the degree of self-criticism that tends to tag along with perfectionism is a huge burden.
I can perform really well because of the high standard I have of myself and what I feel is expected of me by others, but it's too often really that the pressure of performing well makes me completely burn out and/or just be unable to do anything. I do really well in tests generally since I went back into education but the slightest trip-up can cause absolutely everything to crash and burn.
Even outside of the judgement of others this happens and is sometimes actually worse. I can't engage with things I enjoy because the more I practice the better I get, and the better I get, the more critical I am of myself, less forgiving, just overall getting lost in self-scrutiny to the point where I'm afraid to even begin doing anything even if no one else will ever know or care or would even potentially be positive about it :( High self criticism has been ruining my life and if I had lower standards towards myself (if now I'm at 100% I'd like to go down to 70 or as low as 50%) then it would be a lot easier to do anything
Thank you. Genuinely, thank you.
I have personal standard perfectionism, and I do the same thing as the ecp, and avoid and distract myself because I can’t tolerate the pain of being unable to achieve these standards that I want and I know are possible, but have difficulty with planning and obstacles, and don’t know how to execute a plan to solve problems… It’s become so overwhelming that now even small problems/obstacles feel unsolvable. The avoidance is the only way I know how to stay sane. 💔❤️
I get this a lot in the games I play. I'm often really hard on myself for not doing well but end up doing the best or at least top 3 every time. My own and external standards force me to try really hard all the time but even get 70% of that, often ends up being better than most people it seems. I guess the push towards 100% is what it's more about, opposed to the achieving 100%
Haha yes, for a long time I have thought that being perfect is just "normal", while being less than perfect is "defective".
Pretty interesting watch this was. Gonna try it out.
thanks so much for releasing consistent videos. your influence is unmatched!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🎵 *Perfectionism often stems from high or unreachable standards set during upbringing, leading to a fear of falling short.*
01:50 🧠 *There are two types of perfectionism: personal standard perfectionism and external concern perfectionism, with the latter being more damaging.*
04:08 🧠 *External concern perfectionism, when high, causes the brain to distract from mistakes rather than address them, hindering personal growth.*
06:43 🧠 *Personal standard perfectionism activates a different part of the brain, leading individuals to slow down, address mistakes, and improve over time.*
10:23 📊 *Individuals with high personal standard perfectionism and some concern for external validation tend to perform the best in life.*
11:19 🔄 *Rather than trying to stop caring about what others think, it's more effective to cultivate personal standards alongside external concerns, leading to better outcomes.*
12:02 🚦 *When making mistakes, slowing down and paying attention to the problem can help disable the brain's tendency to distract, facilitating growth.*
13:24 💡 *Developing personal standards involves asking what would make oneself happy rather than solely focusing on external expectations.*
Made with HARPA AI
Good to know ! Definitely didn't expect that high ECP would be a "blessing" as long as you set some personal standards. Thank you for the useful content :D
Why are you so accurate!😭
Thanks for the video, Dr K. I think I have both high PSP and ECP (which have taken me to the point of obtaining a PhD from a top institution, so it’s not all bad) but I still find myself struggling *immensely* with procrastination borne out of abject terror at making a mistake - even when other people wouldn’t notice or care! It’s the personal version of “perfection is passable, everything else is failure”. I find it hard to feel strong pride in anything I’ve done or achieved, or motivation to get my work out into the world, even if I’m confident in my abilities; the positive feeling quickly becomes tainted by the sense that I’m being arrogant or conceited. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Hey, one thought I had was that this could be an internalized thought from the external world. Dr.k has talked about samaskaras before, might be worth considering but ofc I'm not an expert.
Also never being proud of yourself and also being successful post-grad academically correlates in my mind (anecdote).
@@quinndtxd Thanks for the suggestion - I’ve done some research into samskara before but never in this connection. I wonder whether it isn’t a born from internal forces reshaping external standards into new and strict internal standards.
As for the correlation, it seems plausible to me. Being academically successful requires passing through some important stages of intellectual development. To pick three: (1) realising just how little you know and (2) just how hard creating new knowledge is and how much of that work gets ignored anyway, as well as (3) adopting the habit of always asking how you might be wrong, interrogating your assumptions and reasoning.
These are all healthy and necessary, but attaining these can, as a consequence, leave one with the feeling that you’re never going to be good enough because (1) you’ll never know enough, (2) whatever you do manage will be small and insignificant, and (3) you can’t guarantee you’re not getting it wrong anyway.
Thinking about it now in light of that, the lack of pride comes from failing to meet the expectations that one’s work should always be (1) based on perfect understanding, (2) significant and well-received, and (3) flawlessly executed. These are, of course, impossible standards.
(It’s perhaps also interesting to note how our formal education makes this kind of perfection seem possible in academic work: you can always study all the material for the exam, the sense of importance is socially built-in to the system, and getting 100% is possible in principle.)
Another PhD student here. I feel you. I have high standards from my parents (though they would argue that they never asked for perfection, but they definitely did, just not academically and most of it was implicit), I have high standards from society and just a fear of not being competitive academically, and I have high internal standards for myself. I don't think this advice is very helpful since its basically where I am at, though after experiencing burnout I have been falling into the "I don't care" box but I am probably just lying to myself. I would love for him to give more specific advice for already high achieving perfectionists, the golden child who can't mess up because they have already come so far and their reputation as the golden child is probably the basis for most of their identity.
Honestly I'm not too sure if there's causation at work in this study. Correlation definitely, but it's just as if not more likely that the people who rank high at both external and internal expectations perform best because of some other factor - possibly one that also has led to them ranking high in both types of perfectionism. Like for example very successful AND very supportive parents who taught their kids how to be successful without pressuring them into performing. If kids love and admire their successful parents, they most likely grow up wishing to make them proud as well as be like them - aka internal and external perfectionism. Also, successful and supportive parents are more likely to send their kids to private schools, expensive universities etc without simultaneously limiting their ability to perform by traumatizing them.
Right. I don’t think this video speaks to the whole issue of perfectionism. And if it does, it makes a lot of assumptions about where it comes from and where it leads.
Also remember the dynamic between neuroticism and conscientiousness? If you’re a perfectionist in the neurotic sense but not very conscientious its crippling. If you’re a perfectionist but you’re working at a task that requires perfection, you have very clear goals and the ability to execute them, perfectionism is helpful
I feel like I'm high external and personnal at the same time but not in a good way.
I care a lot about parents being proud of me and they have ask a lot from me since I'm the first child.
I also have a lot of personnal expectations (probably for feeling better since I feel super trash) and I often put myself in impossible expectations for me or others.
When I'm accomplishing something, I always have to say "yeah but you could setup higher goals/that was not impressive".
When I make a mistake, it is so hurtful that I completely avoid the situation and often ended up doing nothing / giving up at the first mistake.
In conclusion I found it funny cause I feel like I'm in the "best group" but with the worst consequences and now I kinda don't give a fuck about anything but mistakes still makes me feel awful every time (not doing anything too)
agreed. the biggest curse of being in this box is being on the failing side of it. you know you're so close to breaking through and you feel like you're just a hair away from greatness, but it feels like it's always just outside of your reach. sometimes I'm really grateful, cause I realize what an amazing skill it is to have this level of mindfulness, but other times it's just fucking agonizing, lol
@@liruneko89754 Always feeling that "if you just started, that if you tried hard, you would be so great" but at the same time not believing it and ended up doing nothing. And even if you start, the first problem will throw away all your motivation and you will stop everything. Life like this is awful : not able to study, put efforts for relationship, just taking care of your hygien is fucking hard I need to fight with myself just to brush my teeth. And people are saying "duh just get motivated or get some discipline" but I have no energy for that, the energy for fighting with myself I used it years ago, now I kinda feel burned out and impossible to fight this procrastination and everything in general
I "decided" to become a perfectionist not because my parents expected me to be perfect, but because my father was a disaster and addicted to alcohol, so I wanted to become the opposite to him and do my best in every possible area
What do you do if your *own* standards are so high that you not only let yourself (and others) down, but you have sled into depression and just not doing anything because you can't do it right, as you no longer have the time nor energy? It literally interfered with me just keeping a planner as a kid, if my writing isn't neat enough (which takes a long time), I wouldn't even want to look at it, so over time I just stopped using it every semester and still haven't outgrown it in adulthood, even though I know damn well I'm the only one who cares about that.
So I think I am on the hi-hi column, but the problem is that it takes just sooo long to complete stuff because of the high standards. When Im done its great, but the journey there is so time consuming and painful. What to do about it?
I have PSP and STILL think my perfectionism is making things bad. I really don't care about what other people think about me or my mistakes, the issue is about my performance, the standard I set up for myself, like my own expectations and maybe "me disappointing myself", idk how to explain it. Hope someone can relate to this as well...
I relate to this, it's why this video was a little confusing for me
This came at exactly the right time. Thank you for using your expertise to help others.
This is actually amazing; for the anxious performer in me this feels like a holy grail
Dr k, you are a goldmine...❤
For me “a- is not enough” mentality of my father led me into not caring about anything in life. I now have to fight with procrastination every day(
What’s the definition of ‘best outcomes’ here? Because it sounds like it’s moving everyone into the burnout quadrant. I’m torn because I love the evidence about slowing down vs shutting down after a mistake, totally agree with that. Sounds like step 2 is developing personal values or standards not personal perfectionism, which I’m also on board with.
This was an awesome video! Thank you for sharing this!