Episode # 8 - Perfectionism, People Pleasing, and Your Health

In this episode, we talk about the health consequences that result from perfectionism and people pleasing.

You will learn how to fight the chronic stress that perfection and people pleasing cause, through developing Gratitude.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 8–Perfectionism, People Pleasing, and Your Health.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind. 

 

Hello, welcome to Episode 8, where we're going to talk about perfectionism and people pleasing. Fun, huh? Perfectionism. Let's start by defining it. Perfectionism is holding yourself to a nearly impossible standard in everything you do. And people pleasing is having an intense desire to be well liked, often resulting in overextending yourself for others and putting your own needs last. These personality traits are very common. Most of us would identify as either a perfectionist, a people pleaser, or both.

Why are we like this?

 

Joe Dispenza says we can inherit certain behavioral traits in our DNA. So we may see examples in our family of perfectionism or people pleasing. Plus, we have a culture that rewards pushing yourself to achieve or to try to be well liked by people. Perfectionism and people pleasing are often developed in childhood as kind of survival mechanisms.

 

So a child may perceive the environment as chaotic and have the idea that being perfect would make sure you're not adding to anyone's stress or getting in the way. So with me, for example, I grew up in a very religious culture and interpreted that I always needed to be more perfect. I had a feeling of judgment towards myself and others and always felt like there was more that I should do. 

 

Kids might also learn to people please. If there is a lot of conflict, they don't want to add to the conflict by being confrontive or saying no, so they do what they're asked. People pleasing is basically trying to get someone to feel a certain way or act a certain way because of how you act as an adult. 

 

Perfectionism and people pleasing are still good traits in our society. If an employee is a perfectionist, holding himself to the highest possible standard, working hard and trying to outperform, that could be great for his boss or company. People also reward people pleasers—people who sacrifice and put their own needs last. What a noble thing to do, right? But at what cost? Today we're going to talk about how pushing ourselves relentlessly and putting our own needs last not only affects how we show up with others and the results in our lives, but also how perfectionism and people pleasing affect our health. 

 

Okay, so let's talk a little more in depth about perfectionism. Many of us are taught to believe that happiness is this thing that's out there. And if we can just look a certain way, or have the latest things or do things just the right way, then we'll get that prize of happiness. But unfortunately, our brains often prevent this from happening. Because our brains adapt quickly. 

 

If we have something that does make us happy, usually it does not take long before our brains adapt to that level of happiness. And it's no longer satisfying. Plus our brains have a negativity bias. So that means our brain is always kind of looking for something negative. When we do have happiness, we don't really enjoy it because we're always a little bit worried that we might lose it. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

 

Often perfectionists will try to achieve things. And even if they are successful at achieving, they might still be critical of themselves and think they could have achieved it quicker or a little bit better. Or they could have improved. 

 

And what if a perfectionist fails? Most of us do not learn that if we fail, maybe it's because we set our expectations too high. No. What we make it mean is that there's something wrong with us and that we are not enough.  No matter what we achieve, the perfectionist has a way of always thinking things could have been better. 

 

This is why low self esteem often goes along with perfectionism and people pleasing. An LDS psychologist in an article I read said that perfectionism is the damaging belief that one's worth is inherently attached to always doing better, or being their absolute best.

 

So let's look at the idea of perfectionism in the model. So let's take a circumstance like getting second place in a dance competition. The thought is, you're not good enough, the feeling, unworthiness. 

 

When you feel unworthy, what do you do? If you have a normal brain, then what you'll do is look around for more evidence of how you're unworthy and surely you could find some examples from your past. So your action could be thinking about your past to prove that you're not worthy. There could also be more of an inaction. Some people who feel unworthy would just want to hide or maybe buffer to try to escape their life, like eating or drinking or buying something or getting on social media. We could maybe convince ourselves not to try again. We definitely, if we're feeling unworthy, wouldn't want to be practicing or trying to improve from that place of unworthiness. We would more want to hide or not try, because there's no point. 

 

Another normal thing that our brain does when it's feeling unworthy is to criticize harshly. We are usually our own worst critics. So shaming ourselves, we know, does trigger the reward centers of our brain. So there must be some evolutionary benefit to having shame and harshness and criticism. I think many of us believe that it's helpful to us, but when we really look at it, we can see that shaming ourselves and being critical to ourselves actually does the opposite, and does not help us with achieving our goals. So in the result line of this model, your brain proves the thought that you're unworthy by looking for evidence to prove it, and you prove your unworthiness by not practicing or not showing up the ways you want to. It's like you sometimes will fail ahead of time, making sure that you fail by not trying or not practicing or not working on things. And then you prove your brain right. The brain of a perfectionist is always in this state of urgency, intention. The demands they're putting on themselves exceed what they could ever possibly perform. So chronic stress is almost inevitable. 

 

Chronic stress on the body is one of the main contributors to disease and pain. Feelings of anxiety release stress hormones that increase your heart rate and send your nervous system into the fight or flight mode. So this is supposed to be something that your body uses for short-term situations. So if you were being chased by a tiger, it would be important to move all of that blood to your extremities, not worry about your digestion, increase your heart rate, increase your breathing rate— fight or flight. But many of us are living in a state of chronic stress, a state of constant unworthiness and never feeling like we're enough. 

 

Joe Dispenza says our cells become addicted to the adrenaline that the stress provides. So our brain will seek out examples of stress if we're feeling a little depleted. And there are always examples to be found in our environment. So the feedback loop continues. But these cells that are constantly in a state of arousal begin to break down. Often when we're in chronic stress, we're not sleeping well. And without that restful sleep, the cells can't repair or regenerate. There's been links with the hormone cortisol, which is part of the stress response as well, that has been shown to increase inflammation. And when the same neural networks are activated over and over, it's just like a road that has a lot of increased traffic.  The cells begin to suffer overuse, and with more demand, the cells are produced more quickly and more cheaply. And this is what causes aging to our cells and ultimately, to our bodies.

 

Proteins are the key to anti aging. Skin, muscle, bone, and hair cells are all made of proteins. So the more overused the proteins, the less effective they are at their job.

When disease or pain occurs, perfectionists are more likely to try to take a pill and just push on with their high drive and push for success and needing to succeed. They can sometimes drive themselves to the point of complete exhaustion or illness. 

 

If you look at the emotions related to perfectionism, with David Hawkins’ map of consciousness, you'll see that the vibrations of shame, fear, worry, desire and greed are all below 200. Meaning these emotions that perfectionists tend to feel primarily are destructive. Their vibrational energy that's low means that you'll seek to draw energy from other people around you, or from yourself and your own body in the form of disease or illness. When perfectionists have pain or disease, they tend to have feelings of anxiety that amplify the pain. 

 

At the same time, when stressed, the body's less able to access the natural pain-relieving chemicals that the body produces;  things like feeling joy, relaxing, spontaneity, acceptance of the present moment, and gratitude are emotions that naturally cause the brain to release chemicals that inhibit pain. But these emotions are particularly hard for perfectionists to feel. 

 

So it's no wonder that perfectionism is linked to chronic pain. Many of us think that if we're not constantly pushing ourselves or expecting more, then we'll end up not accomplishing anything. Our brains like to go to the worst-case scenario when we think about changing beliefs. If I'm not relentlessly harsh on myself, then I'll just be sitting on the couch eating potato chips the rest of my life. I'll just be lazy and I'll never achieve anything. Really, do we have to go to the extreme opposite?

 

Remember, in the model of perfectionism, the result is not satisfaction with achievements. If anything, the feeling of unworthiness and stress from unmet expectation is more likely to result in us buffering or trying to escape our life. That would be more likely when we would try to sit on the couch and eat potato chips—when we're feeling unworthy. But if we know that we're inherently 100% worthy, that no matter what we accomplish in this life, or don't, we're still 100% worthy of love, just by being a human. And then if we can come from a loving place, we actually are more likely to want to set goals to make an impact, to make a change, because we're coming from this 100% place of worthiness. It becomes more fun. 

 

Why not see what I can accomplish from this place of abundance because I know that I can help people and I can do things I'm passionate about? And that's when you can really create results. So being hard on yourself and demanding perfection is never helpful to your emotional or physical health. Think if you have any tendencies towards perfectionism, and question whether holding yourself to this unachievable standard serves you. 

 

A couple of strategies that I've learned from the Life Coach School regarding perfectionism, is to get okay with producing B- work. So this was a really hard one for me. In fact, I did not even realize that until a couple of months ago, when someone corrected me, I'd heard this term and I always called it B+ work. My brain just naturally was like B-, I don't think so. But I'm okay with the B+ work maybe. But at this point, I think I'm okay with B- work, because I'd much rather produce things and have them out there and take the risk and be vulnerable than to stew in my perfectionism and never produce anything. Because it's never going to be perfect. When I have that mindset, I'm so much more productive because I don't think things have to be perfect before I can produce them. But believe me, it still feels vulnerable. 

 

The other thing, though, that I think has really helped me with perfectionism is to practice making decisions. So, we are often faced with lots of decisions, and it's something that I never felt like I was good at or that I could do. I practice the thought that there are no wrong decisions. I give myself a certain amount of time, and then I make the decision. And I don't look back. This helps me get out of feeling stuck in perfectionism, where I feel that place of overwhelm and confusion.

 

Now on to people pleasing. What is people pleasing and how does it affect our health? Not only am I a recovering perfectionist, but I'm still kind of working on people pleasing as well. I definitely grew up as a people pleaser. And it was just within the last few years that I realized that it's something that I even can change, and that I want to change. Because really, it's not doing me any good in my life. Do you think you might be a people pleaser? Here are some examples of people pleasing from Curable: 

You avoid conflict at all costs. 

You would rather pretend to agree with someone then cause contention.

You're very uncomfortable with the thought of someone not liking you. Even if you don't like that person. 

You're afraid of letting people down or disappointing them.

You take on more than you can handle because you have a hard time saying no. You're very attentive to the feelings and emotions of those around you, but don't draw attention to or acknowledge your own feelings. 

 

I know that I've been people pleasing when I find myself thinking that people should act a certain way or treat me a certain way because of what I've done for them. Many of these people pleasing behaviors are developed in childhood and stay unexamined. But people pleasing is really not a nice thing. It's a form of manipulation. So, for example, if you say that you'll bake cookies for the school, even though you don't really want to, but you want people to think that you're a good mom or a good person, so you agree to do it, but then you end up feeling resentful, and angry, and maybe you even blame other people, but it's really your own fault. You could have said no, or you could have asked how else you could contribute. Maybe you'd be happy to buy cookies, instead of making them, but as a people pleaser, you would just agree to do it and then suffer the negative feelings yourself later. 

 

Whenever we do something to try to get people to think about us a certain way, there are two major problems. The first one is we cannot control other people. Very literally, you might have a little bit of influence with your own children. But other adult humans are going to act how they're going to act. And we really cannot control them. In fact, trying to control other people is one of the greatest sources of negativity. The second problem with people pleasing is that even if people do like the fake version of you that you're acting like, then they aren't really even liking the real you. It sounds so logical, pointing it out like that. And I swear I've seen it on TV and movies a million times where someone acts like a person that they're not in order to get people to like them. And then they realize they have to be this phony version of themselves, and it's unsustainable. They can't keep up the facade.

 

Like people pleasing, the inability to say no leads to stress. Research is now discovering the relationship of traits like people pleasing and chronic pain. And especially people pleasing seems to be linked to mysterious ailments where no physical explanations can be found. Think about what your body could be trying to signal to you with mysterious pain. Remember, you can use pain as a message from your body to check in and clean up your thinking. 

 

Dr. John Sarno explains in The Divided Mind about a concept called TMS, tension myositis syndrome. He says that perfectionists and people pleasers who he calls “goodests,” basically people who have a high conscience and want to do good and want to be perceived as doing good. So people who are perfectionists and people pleasers are more susceptible to suppression of unconscious feelings and for manifestations of pain. 

 

Remember, when we talk about unconscious feelings, 95% of our 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day are subconscious. They're just programs that our brain runs automatically without us having to think. Some of our subconscious thoughts are in the form of rage that wouldn't be acceptable for us to express in society. And that's why we repress them. 

 

This rage comes from basically our inner child. If you think about a child that's inside of us, this timeless part of us in our subconscious, that wants to be treated as such:  wants to be taken care of, and wants love and doesn't want to have responsibility or to have to follow rules. When we have feelings like this from our inner child, and the potential of rage, our subconscious mind acts to control some of these negative feelings so that they aren't expressed by distracting the brain. And it does this by sending less blood flow to certain areas of the body so that it causes pain.

 

So here's a real life example, you could feel resentful of the loss of freedom and sleep that you have when you have a new baby. The subconscious brain knows that acting on these thoughts would be unacceptable. Of course you love your new baby. So the brain creates a diversion to keep you from realizing these thoughts consciously. The brain sends less blood flow to an area of bone or muscle or joint or nerve, resulting in pain. Preferably, it's one where there might be some corresponding structural damage, or a site of an old injury, having less blood flow, and this creation of pain distracts from these potentially dangerous emotions, by keeping you focused on relieving the pain. 

 

One sign you have TMS is that when your pain is relieved in one area, shortly afterwards you develop a new pain or symptom in another area. He calls this the symptom imperative. I saw this a lot in physical therapy, where someone would come in after having a shoulder surgery on one side. And after they recovered a few months later they were back for their other shoulder or for their back pain or for the knee pain that just started. We were basically chasing the pain or fighting the pain. 

 

Dr. Sarno tells about thousands of cases of people who have had their symptoms resolved just by realizing and identifying with these perfectionistic or people pleasing tendencies and telling their brain not to continue to create the diversion, basically telling their brain they know what it's doing. And that all that pain is just from mild oxygen deprivation. And by confronting the brain about it. And this pattern, it's almost like a Pavlovian response that the brain has to react to create this pain. And it can be reversed with time and practice. 

 

So what do you notice in yourself with these disruptions? Do you identify with perfectionism or people pleasing, or both? The first step as always, is just to acknowledge it.  Observe it, like Eckhart totally would say, become the watcher of your brain. You don't want to be judgmental. This is just to watch and observe. Question your beliefs. See if the result in your life and your relationships is what you want them to be. 

 

Now, what is an emotion that we can practice that has shown health benefits? It's gratitude. In eleven-thousand different studies, they've shown that developing a grateful mindset improves not only mood and sense of well being, but also health in the form of decreased heart attacks and strokes. Just as we can look for examples of imperfections around us and find them, we can also look for things that bring us joy, and things we have gratitude for. We can train our brains to look for and find examples of things that bring us joy or make us happy. By going off autopilot and retraining our brain, we can find joy in the present moment. And we can have the ability to focus on the happiness that's already there.

 

I challenge you to write down three things that you are grateful for each day. Or make a list of things that bring you joy, and try to incorporate as many of these in your life as you can.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.