When it comes to expectations, my preference is to aim low and then be happy when I meet or exceed them. I know that approach doesn’t work for everyone, so I wanted to explore when it may or may not work. I think it might help to break the expectation/doing/result process into steps. This process …
The Anxious Perfectionist by Clarissa W. Ong and Michael P. Twohig uses an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) approach to help readers who struggle with perfectionism. I’m a big fan of ACT, and I think it makes a great approach for perfectionism. The book begins by exploring what perfectionism is, including the differences between adaptive …
There are plenty of people on social media and other online spaces who are talking about their apparently perfect, blissful, über-organized routines that other people should be living up to if they’re to have any hope of being happy. I’ve always been organized, and now it’s something rely on to compensate for some of the …
Does Being Organized Make Life Easier or Create More Work? Read More »
The ACT Workbook for Perfectionism by Jennifer Kemp aims to boost self-compassion and improve psychological flexibility using acceptance and commitment therapy. The author is a therapist who has dealt with perfectionism herself, and she incorporates her own experiences to provide examples of the concepts being covered. She had tried cognitive behavioural therapy and didn’t find …
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week’s term is obsessive compulsive personality disorder. When people say that someone is “a little OCD,” chances are, what they’re referring to has little, if anything, to do with obsessive compulsive disorder. What they’re talking about is actually far more …
What Is… Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) Read More »
Being perfect is an ideal that some people may strive for or feel that they are required to attain, but how realistic is the notion of perfection? One of the biggest problems with perfect is that a lot of things in this world are subjective. When it comes to things that are subjective, everyone has …
The Problem With Perfect… Is That It Doesn’t Exist Read More »
Failure isn’t fun. There’s just no two ways about that. But what does that failure mean> I think that, particularly when mental illness is involved, it’s easy to leap from “I failed at [X]” to “I’m a failure.” But taking a step back, they’re not really the same thing. Fear of failure Fear of failure …
When You Fail, Are You a Failure at a Task? Or as a Person? Read More »
The Gifts of Imperfection is the third book that I’ve read by Brené Brown. I was not disappointed. This book offers a set of guideposts toward Wholehearted living, which involves “engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness.” The guideposts include cultivating self-compassion, cultivating a resilient spirit, cultivating calm and stillness, and finding meaningful …
Book Review: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown Read More »
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week’s term is perfectionism. Perfectionism involves self-defeating thoughts and behaviours associated with unrealistic expectations of flawlessness. This causes significant levels of stress and feelings of failure, and it contributes to the use of maladaptive coping mechanisms. It can involve a …
