Why Perfectionism Is Making You So Stressed as an HSP & the Simple Shift That Can Restore a Sense of Calm

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to address perfectionism instead of judging yourself for it.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover what it looks like when perfectionism starts running your life as an HSP, how to tell the difference between perfectionism and wanting to do things well, and the simple mindset shift that can bring you back to calm. This is an addition of Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom.

Have you ever wanted to do something so well that you couldn’t do it at all? Have you ever wanted to avoid failure so badly that you couldn’t see your own success? Have you ever thought that being good enough at one thing was not enough? You have to be good at everything. Perfectionism can be sneaky, especially for highly sensitive people who often care deeply and notice subtle details and want to do things right.

Here are some signs that you may be falling into the trap of perfectionism. You overthink simple tasks, you spend more time planning or revising than actually doing afraid that it won’t be good enough. You are paralyzed by decisions. You delay action because you’re trying to find the perfect option and fear that you might make the wrong one.

You beat yourself up for small mistakes. A minor missteps, spirals into harsh self-judgment or rumination, or you feel like nothing is ever really ever done and there’s always one more tweak or one more fix. Or one more thing that’s not quite right, or you think that your worth is tied to your performance.

You feel anxious unless you’re excelling or you feel ashamed if something feels just average or you procrastinate on important tasks. So you avoid starting because you’re afraid you can’t do it perfectly, and so it feels safer to just put it off. Or you avoid trying new things, you’d rather not attempt something than risk failing or doing it imperfectly, or you push yourself past your limits.

You sacrifice your rest, your boundaries, or your own wellbeing in pursuit of getting it just right. Doing something to the nth degree at the expense of everything else, or you struggle to delegate or collaborate. You may believe that no one else will do it correctly, so you take it all on for yourself or you downplay your successes.

So even when something goes well, you focus on what could have been better. These are all signs that you’re stepping into the trap of perfectionism, and sometimes perfectionism looks like you have high standards, which is a good thing. But if you fall into this trap, this is this mindset that will just not rest unless everything is absolutely perfect, then it can create a lot of stress and a lot of paralysis and a lot of disconnection from your authentic self.

What happens if your authentic self wants to go to dinner and you’re like no, I have to get this perfect. And you just keep on plowing forward and ignoring your body. Bodies can be ignored for a while, but after a while, they they break down. Relationships can be ignored for a while, but after a while they break down.

So perfectionism is the trap of thinking that this is more important than it actually is. It goes to the extreme of I can’t rest until everything is done and nothing’s ever done. So it’s a real trap. It also can be a way to avoid judgment or shame because we the theory is if I do a really good job, then people will not only like it, but more importantly, those there will be less people that are saying that they didn’t like it.

I often say for myself anyway, that I want approval. Approval is something that I tend to get attached to. But disapproval is what I’m more motivated about. I am afraid of people disapproving of me, whereas I want approval’s a nice to have. Yes, I’d love it, but disapproval is something that I’m afraid to experience.

And so if there’s this kind of avoidance going on, then this will really affect quality of life because. You are basically living in fear and you, it shuts down the creative process. It’s, it just slows you down and makes you not enjoying not enjoy yourself because you’re worried about what others may think.

And so that drive can push you into perfectionism even when your mind, your body, your heart and your relationships are all saying, wait, hold on. Don’t go there. So how do you tell the difference between perfectionism and just wanting to do things well, because wanting to do things well is a great thing.

And especially as highly sensitive people, we’d love to do things well. It gives us purpose, it gives us meaning, and it’s natural for us to want to do a good job. It’s one of our skills, actually. But how do you tell the difference when, if you’re stepping into that perfectionism trap or you’re just.

Naturally wanting to do things well. One way you can tell is by the feeling that you have. I always say, stress will let you know, and it’s no exception here. If you’re feeling stressed, there’s a chance you’re starting to feel stressed because you’ve stepped into perfectionism. If it’s feeling energizing, it’s feeling fun.

If it’s something you’re excited to do, then chances are it’s not perfectionism. It’s just a natural desire to do things well. If you’re getting caught in thinking that the outcome of this is defining who you are, then it’s probably going towards perfectionism. If it feels, on the other hand, this is just a part of who I am and something I want to be trying and seeing what I can do with, and we’ll see how far it goes, then that’s a very different feeling.

That doesn’t feel like perfectionism. You may be excelling, you may be doing something really well. You may be enjoying doing it really well, but not caught in the perfectionism trap because it doesn’t define you completely. It’s just, oh yeah, this is what I love doing, period. I always like to think of analogy of playing a game, like you’re playing a board game or something.

You may be totally into the game. You may be having so much fun, maybe you’re playing Monopoly or something and you’re like putting more houses on the board and hotels, and you’re, you’re like having fun. It’s it’s exciting when you win some money and it’s oh no I lost some money.

But it doesn’t feel like it doesn’t feel like a major swing. It’s more like fun. You’re engaged. But you’re not lost in the game. What happens is when we, in life, whether we’re playing a game or just playing the game of life, when we get attached to our, we get identified with the player that we’re playing, the role that we’re playing, then when that role loses something, it becomes devastating.

Or when it wins, it becomes super amazing. Like it’s a kind of almost too ecstatic. So this is identification with the game that you’re playing. The call is, can you play the game without getting fully identified with it? Can you leave enough space for yourself, even while you’re playing the game?

It has to do with attachment. If you’re attached to the outcome, there’s gonna be stress. And the reason you’re attached is if you’re identified. So if you’re identified and attached. Then the game is gonna become stressful, and you’re gonna try really hard, as we HSPs tend to do. And you’re gonna be stressed because you can’t actually control the outcome, can’t control the dice, you can’t control the other players, you can’t control your work, you can’t control e every aspect of your work.

So yes, there are things we can control, but not everything, and that’s what makes perfectionism stressful. If you’re attached to having things come a certain way, come out a certain way, then you’re gonna be setting yourself up to be very stressed. But if you can be engaged with a kind of healthy separation, with like separating yourself from the outcome.

I’m gonna give this a try. I am gonna see what I can learn, and maybe I’ll actually win too. There’s a kind of loose hold on the outcome. There’s less attachment there, and it feels like fun. I’m in my own business, in my own world, in what I can control, which in my actions and not in what I can’t control, which is the outcome.

So one way you can test this is. Why am I doing this? What is the motivation for my action? Is this coming from care? Like I care ’cause that’s what I am. I love to do this. I’m interested, I’m curious. I’m wanting to help. If it’s coming from a place of genuine caring, that doesn’t feel stressful.

But if it’s coming from a place of fear that does feel stressful. So am I doing this from care or from fear is a great question to ask yourself. Basically, we want to come back to what we can control and stay or keep a loose hand on what it is that we can’t control. As highly sensitive people, we are built for doing things.

That’s what we do. We do things well. It comes with the territory, and we might as well own it because that’s who we are. That’s our nature. But from the outside, someone else might label us as perfectionistic and they don’t know for sure if we’re being perfectionistic or not. Only we can know that only we can see our hidden motives that are impelling us towards this, engaging in this process.

If my motive is to avoid disapproval, then I am very likely to get caught into the trap of perfectionism. If on the other hand, my motive for doing something is to express something that I’m passionate about, to engage with something I’m passionate about, then. It’s not probably gonna be perfectionistic, even if I am employing a lot of time on it.

Even if I am really making this the center of my life in a way, it’s yeah, it’s the center of my life in a way, but it’s not really the center of my life. My center of my life is still back here a little closer to myself. I’m engaged, but I’m, there’s a healthy separation. So this core motivation makes a huge difference in the experience.

And so if you find yourself attached to the outcome getting caught and drawn into perfectionism in any way, then the idea is how can you hold those thoughts or loosely? What I like to do is I notice what my thoughts are, what am I attached to? They usually are wants, they’re usually needs. I need this to be a big success.

I want them to like it. I don’t want anyone to be disappointed. These are wants, these are needs. These are thoughts that express the attachment that I’m experiencing. If you find a few of these thoughts, even one, you can identify it, write it down, and then begin questioning it. Ask, is that really true? I need this to be a big success.

Who would I be without that idea that I need this to be a big success? So much easier. I could be still playing the game, still aiming high, and at the same time relaxed because yeah, whatever happens. So the feeling I’m left with today is that doing things well is an HSP superpower. That’s what we’re born to do.

We have the capacity to do things well. Perfectionism, on the other hand, is just a mind trap that we have to learn to step around. And the key is noticing your stress. When you notice you’re getting stressed, chances are you’re getting caught in that perfectionism. When you notice that stress, look to the thoughts or thinking and see if you can question them.

In this episode, we looked at what it looks like when perfectionism starts running your life as an HSP, and we saw all the effects that this has and the stress that it causes. We looked at how to tell the difference between perfectionism and wanting to do things well, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to do things well.

It’s when you have to do things well out of fear that it becomes perfectionism. And finally, we looked at a simple mindset shift that can bring you back to calm, and that is simply by looking at the difference between your nature, which is. To be an HSP, to be good at doing things and to want to do things well, and your stressful thinking, which is getting you caught in identifying with the outcome, which is something you can’t control.

So if you notice this happening, if you notice that you’re motivated from fear rather than from caring, then check it out and see if you can question your thinking. But if you notice that things are going great and you’re enjoying doing things well, and you’re not that attached, then enjoy that as well.

So thanks for listening. It’s great to explore with you. This program comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Self-Compassion Wednesdays where we dive deeper into understanding ourselves as highly sensitive people by exploring the unique traits that shape our experience.