Perfectionism is a Trauma Response

Perfectionism is one of those qualities that can help us to be really successful. We often get rewarded by society, by people we love, in business, and financially, for being a perfectionist. But there's a real difference between striving for excellence, being an integrity in your work, and being a perfectionist. And there's a cost to being a perfectionist. Inside of your body, that level of stress, those unattainable goals, that constant feeling of self-abandonment and shame that can come from being stuck in this protective, adaptive trauma response known as perfectionism. Jennifer and I are going to take a deep dive into perfectionism as a trauma response and look at the effects that it has on your body, on your nervous system, on your relationships, and on your life. Do you describe yourself as a perfectionist? Have you thought about why and what the cost is? To get the tools to work with your nervous system to make it possible to be present for your life, and feel safe being a full, messy human. Join us for two free weeks of neurosomatic training, with me and Jennifer live on the site at rewiretrial.com. We'd love to meet you there. Hello, welcome to Trauma Rewired. The podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body and what you can do to heal. Hi, I'm your cohost, Elizabeth Kristoff, founder of neurosomatic intelligence training, and ICF accredited a course for healers, therapists, coaches to help bring behavior change, trauma resolution, and mindset change from the body to the brain. And I'm your cohost Jennifer Wallace, a neurosomatic psychedelic integration guide bridging the work of neurosomatic intelligence into your plant medicine healing spaces. Okay, so we're talking about perfectionism today and the protective output of perfectionism. I think this is, of course, we've found ourselves in it so deeply as we always do with any of the trauma responses that we explore. But before we dive into this, I just want to honor and acknowledge our audience was we have a worldwide audience that stretches to corners of the globe that really just spark a gratitude in me that is just it kind of blows my mind. So I just want to say thank you. We see you on that map and we know that you're listening and I'm so honored and grateful that you spend your time with us. Yeah, so many people reached out, especially about the CPTSD series and the ways that it impacted them and it was so magical and beautiful and I love making these connections and just like you said Jennifer, it's such an honor to have people listen to this podcast, to connect with us, to connect with this community and to allow us to shine in our full self-expression and pursue our purpose is such a gift and we're really grateful. Yeah, we do talk about community a lot in community is something that really means a lot to Elizabeth and I and so we just wanted thought it was important for us to take this moment to say thank you for you for listening to us being with us. Absolutely. And hopefully you'll find yourself in today's conversation as well in perfectionism. Oh, the neurology of perfectionism and how it can show up and it's a sneaky little bastard. Perfectionism is really difficult because the one of the first things that I think we need to look at and examine is that it's it's one of it is a protective response. It's a protective trauma response with real health consequences and we can dive more into that deeply throughout the rest of the episode. But in our culture, it's often celebrated as something to be proud of. You hear people you know where their perfectionism like a badge of honor and are often rewarded for perfectionistic traits and so how do we start to distinguish between like striving for excellence and and putting out work that is in alignment with your highest values and being stuck in a self-destructive harmful state of perfectionism that is really a response to stress and trauma that especially occurred during your development. Yes, because they're different. Yeah, it is it is completely different and have different sensations and feelings in your body. Yeah, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about where perfectionism comes from and how it is actually linked to a scores and adverse childhood experiences and you know developmental mental trauma complex trauma growing up. So there's a lot of research behind perfectionism and it's increasingly recognized as this multi-dimensional construct that consists of both intra and interpersonal concepts like you can have it externally with other people trying to be in perfectionism within social constructs and you can also have it intra personally like inside of yourself the voice inside of your head and so there's been to find as three types of perfectionism. There's self-oriented socially prescribed and other oriented perfectionism. So self-oriented is that inner critic voice the thing inside of you that is putting yourself into these really high standards and high expectations of yourself. There's socially prescribed which is when you believe you have to appear perfect externally that you have to perform in your social circles to be loved and accepted and not rejected by society and then there's other oriented perfectionism which is when those expectations get pushed out on other people and you have those really high standards and expectations for others. It reminds me of the inner critic external critic situation whereas when someone is voicing so hard their perfectionism and expectations of perfectionism onto other people the internal perfectionism voices must be so strong and so loud and it just began I mean like everything that gets bottled up internally eventually it finds its way to the outside world as well. Yep absolutely and we talked about this quality a lot in the CPTSD series but especially in terms of the internal critic and toxic shame episodes so perfectionism in terms of being a trauma response or like a protective response that occurs often happens when we experience childhood trauma and we develop it as a protective way to ensure ourselves from getting hurt again and sometimes that trauma can look like abuse like we are actually really criticized for when we fail to meet unrealistic expectations as a child or maybe our parents are really hard on us but a lot of times that trauma can look like emotional neglect or perceived neglect or having any kind of situation where your needs aren't being met as as a child you're not getting the regulation the care and the attachment that you need so you start to turn inward to put a lot of pressure on yourself to be perfect and perform so that you begin to believe at this really deep level that if I can make myself good enough smart enough perfect enough then I can get the care and the attention that I need to stay safe to stay regulated to be loved and the catch with that is that that's no win because when we change ourselves internally of course we're not really changing the people around us and so we still continue to not get those needs met and then we have to work even harder to be even more perfect to put even higher expectations on ourselves grasping for that connection that we need the emotional and the physical and the support that we need and and we still don't get it and so that that voice gets louder and and more harsh and the perfectionism gets really strong and puts us under a lot of stress I was going to say this is a very abusive voice this falls into and it and it's coming from a lens of failure it's setting yourself so that you can fail at something it's not from a lens of like like the honest lens of you know what I'm going to just show up here and do the best that I can and actually believe that that's how you're going to show up it's like it's a voice and a demand inside yourself and for me what I learned about perfectionism this past couple weeks is that I set unrealistic time goals for myself and I think that I'm just going to be able to bust out a project or something in this case it was landing pages for the integrative work that I do outside of brain based wellness and I was like everyone kept saying well not everyone but sounds that see and even that phrase because it sounded like the three people I spoke to now turn into this huge crowded audience right everyone three people had said to me it's so simple don't stress out about it it's really easy you'll be able to do it well it wasn't that easy for me and I couldn't just knock it out and so then that voice that inner critic voice it just became so pervasive because as I started doing it did it look perfect I don't I started to really question myself on every facet of the landing page the words that images and then that all got reflected back onto me onto my body onto my time onto how often I fail and freeze it put me into procrastination and then eventually it completely froze me and nothing has been done and it also gave me a thing of like or an activation of you need support but then in the knowing that I need support to take care of this it triggered a money loop right I'm a small business solo business owner and taking out extra funds to hire support isn't an availability to me right now so then that perfectionism went into my bank account there's so much to unpack in the example that you just gave and I think the most important thing is that perfectionism is really debilitating the expectations that we put on ourselves they're unattainable we cannot get there perfectionism is like the bar just keeps getting higher and higher and will never actually meet the bar with perfectionism and then shuts us down into avoidance behaviors like procrastination or pushes us into trauma responses of freeze burn out overwhelmed because it puts so much stress on us so much pressure if there's you know real physiological things happening inside of your body when you start to work on those landing pages under those high expectations and all of the loops like you were saying that it activates and then you get that whole response of experiencing the adrenaline and the cortisol and having that move through your body and feeling so activated and then not being able to discharge that and just having that response continuously be activated and eventually you're exhausted you're exhausted you sat down and nothing actually gets accomplished no and just like we talk about the filtration system through your brain and then all the lens of everything starts to change whether that's like the shape the thread of toxic shame or the inner critic it it starts to get so pervasive and before you know it it's just expanded into every area of your life and not you can't meet the demand or expectation or like make it just the very best it just all sorts of fall apart and everything is dark and terrible and fucked and I can't do anything right yeah anytime our self-imposed workloads become so much it sends the amygdala our fear center into that fight or fight response and again over time our amygdala can become very hypersensitive and start to perceive a lot of threat and those sensations inside of our body can trigger us reminding us of other times when we experience that pressure and ignite that whole cascade just like you were talking about of the emotions that come with that the somatic memories of being a child you know striving for that step and not having your needs met anyway and and so it can really lead to some pretty severe consequences especially if you're somebody who has complex trauma and even if you're not you know there's a lot of research that demonstrates high rates of perfectionism especially self-oriented perfectionism that inner credit voice that self-judgment can lead to pretty severe mental health consequences depression general anxiety social anxiety burnout lack of satisfaction in my feelings of low self-worth and and then another rub with that is that when we are people who are driven toward perfectionism when we are people who have been shaped by complex trauma in our development and have this perfectionist tendency it also makes us less resilient in experiencing other traumas in the future because we are in that loop of perfectionism and so we experience maybe some other kind of traumatic event later in our adulthood but as perfectionists we tend to feel overly responsible for things we experience self-blame and self-criticism and that event a lot of self-judgment and so then as we experience new different traumas in our adulthood operating under that mindset of the internal critic and the perfectionist makes us less resilient to being able to handle those new traumas and move out of them in a way that is with self-compassion and not really start taking it on ourselves this is really huge and pretty potent to hear and I think another everything that you just said is another huge reason as to why you would want to train your nervous system so that you can recognize the signals because you cannot the only guarantee is that you will be triggered again tomorrow or another day the trigger is coming you have a nervous system and it is gonna happen flat out full stop right so if you don't understand your nervous system and you're living in a high state of threat and then another threat comes on and your filtration systems are already wired for that that threat is going to send you so much further into dysregulation and numbing up behaviors and wanting behaviors addictive type behaviors that it's going to just get harder and harder to pull yourself out of you'll get deeper and deeper into the self-soothing or into the freezing and hiding yeah absolutely the intensity with which we will experience new traumas really changes if for somebody who experienced trauma in our early development and a lot of that perfectionism is like a need to control a need to control the environment control the way other people perceive us again that's at a really deep core survival level we feel that we have to appear perfectly to not be rejected to not be abandoned to be safe at that deep survival level and when we experience another trauma we are often losing control right and that perfectionist is very threatened and very triggered by the loss of control and again then that leads to a stronger reaction not just emotionally but physically inside the bodies of people who have already experienced you know especially developed mental trauma that then experience another event later in life and I think too and thinking of some of the numbing up behaviors like let's just take binge eating or food as a way to regulate your nervous system it is going to take more food eventually right it takes longer amounts of TV longer amounts of sitting down and it will be harder to interrupt the episodes if you will if you continue to go unregulated for so long yeah yeah and then there's the shame that comes with that coping mechanism and it just becomes this deep loop and I think a lot of people the perfectionism is so deeply ingrained that they don't even recognize it as perfectionism it's just like this way that they are they're just this really hard way of being on themselves and it's just how they are and they it's hard to even recognize that like I'm in the perfectionist loop and then it leads to some of those you know maladaptive coping mechanisms or it shuts us down it burns us out and it's hard to like put together necessarily like oh this is happening because I was so hard on myself because I put so much expectation on myself to be perfect to look perfect to sound perfect to make the perfect landing page and now I don't always understand that that's why now I'm engaged in procrastination I'm exhausted I'm laying in bed binge-watching TV instead of doing the thing that I want to do it's hard sometimes to see it and tie that together that hey this is coming from the expectations and the stress that I put on myself it's a low-level chronic of chronic stress that's always pulsing underneath like if you think about perfectionism in your body perfectionism in your healing like I have to look like this I have to perform this certain way my body needs to look like this or high-level female CEOs that we work with they have a huge driving level of perfectionism that they have to show up to like meet the demands of their office meet the demands of their family and show up to be like yes I can hold all of these jobs I can be the mom I can be the six-figure salary winner I can show up I can I can be at the sports games I can be here and I can train my body and it's like fry out like you're just get frizzled yeah not only do you have to show up in all of those roles but you have to look perfect while you do it too and that level of stress is dangerous for our health outcomes it truly is a level of chronic stress sometimes low grade like you said and sometimes high high grade of chronic stress that's going on all of the time that leads to inflammation it leads to emotional suppression burnout migraine fatigue mental health collapse disease states inside of the body there's a cost to that there is a cost there is a cost to the high driving 100% and I've definitely been there in different areas but it's interesting when I think of like the overtraining and the overworking like once we went into quarantine and hit the pandemic and I was able to just like let so much of that go it really changed my life to be able to understand what it was like to have more time for myself and to understand what it was like to kind of build my day out from a different foundation because it was like oh my god, I have no one to show up for. I have no one to work for. Yeah, I think sometimes we're in it so deeply. It's just the way that our life is. It's the way that we're used to feeling that we don't even realize it until we have something that gives us a pause like the pandemic from that constant, constant state of doing and performing and working. And I think maybe let's touch on some of the ways that it can show up just so people can see like, do I recognize some of this in myself? Because I think one of the very first steps to starting to heal this behavior, this response and starting to move out of it is just recognizing it, starting to recognize when it shows up, recognizing that you have it in yourself, starting to parcel it apart from just doing a good job or having, you know, excellence in your work, it's different than that. So when you have like very rigid expectations or very high expectations of yourself and others, when you find that you're highly critical of yourself and other people, when you experience anger and shame, when you think you're not living up to those expectations, if those emotions are linked often with your performance, especially shame, that's a big red flag that you're in a perfectionism loop. If you work excessively long hours to prove yourself and yourself worth, if you are constantly engaging in negative self-talk, like taking a minute just to listen to that voice inside of your head, what is it like? Is it pretty demanding? Is it harsh? Is it negative? And do you experience disordered eating? If you experience periods of working incredibly intensely and then crashing, if you find that you crash after a lot of work projects or after after social events or after something that you've been preparing for, if that is always followed by a crash, then likely you're experiencing some perfectionism. If you find it very difficult to release control of those events and those work projects, and if you can find yourself becoming really obsessed with to-do lists or checking all the boxes obsessively editing, these can all be little telltels of the perfectionist at play. If you've built a big, exciting life, but are having a hard time being able to feel your success and experience the rewards of your hard work, then join us at RewireTrial.com for two free weeks of nervous system healing and training live with me and Jennifer so that you can develop the tools you need to be present and enjoy the life you've created. And if you can even check in sometimes about your connectedness to the present moment, do I even know what event I just left? Who did I speak to? What happened? I don't even know. It almost has a dissociative type of quality to it, right? Because at some point you just check out from your life. Yeah, that's right. What is your experience of these things? Like, are you really able to experience it fully? Are you able to enjoy it and have satisfaction and pleasure? Or is it really just about performing and wondering what everyone thinks of you and trying to navigate that voice inside of your head that is judging yourself the entire time? And then what does it look like to be aware of when you're in perfectionism and then how do we then talk ourselves out of that, off that ledge? I think that's where having tools for self-regulation really comes into play because it can be very challenging and scary to go against that voice. And you and I were talking today actually about how you took an action this week to move out of perfectionism and tell us a little bit about that because I think this is a really beautiful example of starting to take action against that behavior. So I was in the landing page perfectionism and in this week also my dog wasn't feeling very well and I had an emergency with her. And so just like the lens of the inner critic, the perfectionism, everything starts to go through there. It's the podcast came up. On Fridays I released short conversations related more to neurosomatic intelligence and integration work that I do with myself and with others. And I in the midst of all this other chaos and shut down eventually that I was experiencing from the perfectionism, I couldn't release an episode today actually the Friday that would have released before this. So no episode went out today. The only day that I had to record it I hadn't slept like not one minute. My eyes were bleeding. I was exhausted. I had a headache. I never experienced headaches. So automatically I know for that as a physical sensation like I'm capped. I have reached my edge and the only time I had to record I wouldn't have been able to show up in service. And this podcast is an act of service for me, for you, for us, for this work, for what we believe in in healing and community and what's possible in the world. And I couldn't have shown up in integrity and in alignment with that service. I would have just been pumping out an episode to just pump out a conversation because that's what happens on Fridays. And I had to have a real conversation with myself laying in bed in that moment to think about what road was I willing to go down. And I wasn't willing to push my body anymore because I knew I was at I had reached my limit. Like I said, there's a headache. I am there. That is my for sure sign in my body that says something has got to change. Like I can push through so much. But I just knew that if I showed up to record, I wasn't really showing up at all. I was showing up in perfectionism and who knows what kind of negative thought loops I would have gone into had a conversation really on Friday. I think there's so many great things to explore in this. And I think first of all, it's a great example of the difference between perfectionism and excellence, right? Because perfectionism would have led you to pump out an episode, create this rigorous content schedule. And I got to adhere to it no matter what. So I'm going to show up and do the thing because I said I would and people will judge me if I don't and I got to do the thing or else I'm failing as a podcast service. I'm failing as a businesswoman blah blah blah blah all the loops, right? And so you you do it anyway. Excellence is like I am going to live the work. I'm going to honor what this podcast is actually about. I know that I cannot show up in my fullest capacity and full self-expression in this state. I'm going to honor that we talk about listening to and respecting the body and moving at the speed of the nervous system. And I'm going to work in alignment with what we actually talk about. Even if that means I don't check the box on the calendar. I don't, you know, stick to the content schedule exactly. And so that is how we start to move out of perfectionism is looking and listening to our body, listening to the outputs that our nervous system is giving us. And questioning like, why am I doing this? Where is this coming from? And is it harmful to me? And is there even a point to it? Is it serving anyone? Or is it just this crazy thing that I've made up that I have to do? And how can I start to then see that recognize it, listen to the body, step number one, understand that perfectionism is a loop. And then what tools can I use to regulate around taking contrary action, right? So you are going to allow yourself to not do that. And then I, because I know you, I know that you probably did some stuff to make that safe for yourself. You did some drills, you did some grounding, you did your meditative practices, and you do the things that you know will help you create that felt sense of safety around taking an action that is moving out of that behavior. It was quite nice actually once I got through the regulate, like I made the decision and regulated and in your right, I did the practices to support my decision and not have a stream of thought loops later that I failed you. My audience, I failed you on Friday, but I don't feel like I did that because once again, this is all about showing up in integrity and in alignment. And it's a great, it's a gift. This is our gift. And I don't want to show up like, I don't know what the word is, I want to use it in a state of dysregulation. Yeah, I just can't even, it's hard enough. It's hard enough to sit here and show up so honestly and vulnerably to do it dysregulated would just further push me so far out. And I, I, okay, I'm not willing to sacrifice my body like that anymore. Yeah, absolutely. And we talk a lot about too about how, you know, people's nervous systems are always responding to one another and showing up as a safe container for people. That includes this podcast. When we show up, we regulate ourselves prior so that we are talking to you guys from a grounded and fairly regulated nervous systems state because even just the energy and the vocal tone and the, the way that we talk on this podcast has an effect on other people's nervous systems that are listening and we all affect each other. And so it really is a highest service to care for ourselves and to care for our nervous system and to do things when it's right, when it's in alignment with our body and our nervous systems so that we can do it fully. And I think that is really the most important step in moving out of perfectionism. And I was thinking too about, you know, we started talking about unrealistic goals. and timelines and how important it is to you know use time management like maybe it's time blocking as your tool for time management and something that maybe I need to pull into my practice a little bit greater but like what is reasonable from where I stand at my level of knowing and expertise. Maybe something is going to take you the rest of this day maybe it's going to take me a week to figure out maybe I need to look at some tutorials maybe I need to prepare myself better to take the action so that when I need to take the action I feel more supported. Yep absolutely and speaking of timelines and being realistic with our timelines and having that be one of the ways that we deconstruct perfectionism I think this is a really important place to talk about perfectionism and healing and how a lot of times we can find ourselves putting that same perfectionistic slant on our healing process that we do in other areas of our life like our work our body our relationships and trauma healing especially can't be fast it just can't be like trauma itself is too much too fast too soon right it's an overwhelm of the system and that pushes it into these protective responses and so when we're putting the same pressure on ourselves to heal in these timelines that we just invented with our cognitive mind the same way that we do in other areas of our life is the same way that we've been putting this pressure on ourselves in a state of dysregulation then we're just going to continue to dysregulate our nervous system with our our healing practices you know you really cannot rush your healing it's about progress not perfection and it's not linear and your nervous system is not necessarily going to get on board with what your expectations are for that to look like and calibrating those expectations mean realistic with yourself about your capacity is really the only way to safely start to do that and I think not only just what we expect from our healing practices because we talk about integration a lot like integration sometimes it's just finding safety in the pause letting it be letting it come into like how does this settle back into my body and what does it look like for me to move forward in from this new place because and thinking about like thinking back to food and being healthy and how I feed myself perfectionism in the food prep right everything it has to look a certain way and healing you kind of have to just let the pieces fall because you don't know what it's going to look like you are creating a new work of art that is you from the inside out with maybe you're going to try some acrylic one day okay let me throw some oil on here what's a watercolor like like you really have to be a little bit creative and settle into play a little bit a little bit too so that you're like okay I'm going to try this and it might not work I'm going to throw this in here today and see how this lands into my healing practice do I what is cold plunge does that work for me I might like it I might not like it yep absolutely or whatever I'm just going to cold plunge out there but yeah there's this process of a little bit of experimentation and assessing and reassessing what works for you assessing and reassessing the dosage that's right for you and knowing that all of that takes time because safety really doesn't come from urgency and pressure it does not if we have this rapid timeline that's not where our body and our nervous system is going to start to find safety in those practices and working with people's nervous systems and working with my own I'm having to continuously remember how important minimum effective dose is and realize that a lot of times the work has to be much less intense much less stimulating and much more subtle than I'm often expecting you know that it has to be really dialed down I love that you just work use the word subtle it's really subtle sometimes and if we are racing through to the next spot to the next place and climbing the ladder you're going to miss the subtle messages and we always say with like disease states in the body like the body whispers then eventually the body's screaming at you and you can't avoid what it's being hitting so in the integration spaces because it's really about this NSI work where I really got familiar with what integration means and entails it wasn't in plant spaces it was here and integrating the inner child in the lessons that I'm learning about perfectionism and how my toxic shame shows up and what's it like to listen to the inner critic with an altitude that is new because awareness is a neutral place to be but when you're in your healing journey your awareness as it expands you can really get hard on yourself about your level of awareness yeah absolutely and I think that you know especially when it comes to to nervous system work with people with complex trauma it really has to be calibrated and that can feel really frustrating at times like it can feel frustrating to actually honor our own capacity and know that this is going to be an unfolding that takes some time but it is also important to remember because you talked about the subtle changes and sometimes it's hard to feel those and sometimes they feel like nothing at all and it's really important to remember that that's not true our nervous system is always adapting it's never not adapting and so as we are creating this new stimulus we are creating adaptation we are making a change and it's very easy to push that change too far too fast and recreate these strong protective outputs so it really becomes about like how subtle can we make the input what would be the smallest observer will change and allowing that really small change to be a big win and calibrating our expectations to recognizing those wins and really starting with very small steps so that we are continuing to move the work in a positive direction because it's easy to not move it in a positive direction and can we talk a little bit too about some of the limiting beliefs that come along with perfectionism and how they do sound protective to us and then how that creates the behavior and then it just continues in the loop can we just talk about like the importance of the limiting belief factor yeah so at a at a deep level we have these core beliefs that we develop usually very early in our development that are there to ensure our needs are met our survival needs attachment love safety and it can feel very true that if I don't look a certain way if I don't perform a certain way I am not worthy I'm not lovable I'm not I'm going to be rejected I'm not safe and so even when we try to cognitively move beyond perfectionism it can be really threatening to our survival brain that is still operating under this protective belief of I have to be xy or z in order to stay safe to maintain my attachments my social connections and to to be okay really right it does not feel okay like let's just really simply it just doesn't feel okay to move out of the behavior it doesn't feel okay to not look a certain way and show up at an event it doesn't feel okay to not work those extra five hours in preparation that are exceeding your boundary it does not feel okay to disappoint someone and so while cognitively we might understand it is okay I'm safe I will survive this inside of our body it doesn't our heart is racing our palms are sweating our maybe we dissociate and so that again is why it becomes really important to have some tools for regulation around taking those new actions as we start to move against those contrary beliefs and starting to examine the beliefs and how they're driving our behavior because eventually if we just keep pushing past them that just leads to its own stress and burnout and I think too when I think about the limiting beliefs like if I can do this perfectly I won't get hurt if I can control this and do it perfectly and it's like that level of if I can control this it's like how often has that worked out for us right how often have you done it so perfectly as best you can it's never good enough and it always is still going to fall apart yeah I think I talked about this in another recent episode but recently I have been really trying to scale back on my work hours and to just to give myself more free time to be and to feel and to experience emotions and to be just floating around doing whatever it comes to me right and so I've set this day of the week where I'm going to not engage in work at all and cognitively I know that that's what I want and I know that that's perfectly reasonable and that everything will be just fine if I'm not available for one day and yet I wake up in a state of panic. three times. And I really, I, I will like, I feel like I have to run. I feel slight. I feel like I need to get out of here. I'm not okay. I need to run. Sometimes I'll move into a little bit of fight response. And I get like really angry about it all. And I have to do a lot. I have to discharge the emotions. Most of those mornings start out with a good cry. And then a lot of self-regulation to make it safe so that it, then I can start to go on and, and have that day and enjoy it and be present for it. But right now it takes quite a, quite a big load of regulation and practice. It's been a real process for me to start to allow myself to have vacations where I don't have any kind of movement practice. You know, I mean, I can take a walk or whatever. But like, you know, there's no exercising and, and allowing myself to play with, yeah, periods of life where I rest and I recover and I give my body some downtime. And that has been a, it's been a delicate process where I have to practice minimum effective dose with changing that behavior too. So that I'm not pushing myself into panic or any kind of flashback. And, you know, as with all of this, it's, it's this fine line between creating change and doing enough, you know, enough stimulus to create change, enough behavior change to make an impact in our lives and to move out of these patterns and exceeding our minimum effective dose. I'm kind of straddling that all the time. And I will say it's definitely been a slow unfolding where my perfectionism came in with that too, right? Like, I need to be in more flow. I need to not be so rigid with myself. And then I have to do that immediately. And I've got to live this whole different life and be a completely different person right away. And if I don't then I'm failing. And so it's like this weird, like perfectionism on perfectionism. Yeah. That makes this perfectionism about deconstructing perfectionism and allowing myself to be more relaxed about that too. Well, we talked about it. And I remember telling you like, hey, I don't work on Mondays, but I might do something that is active for the business. Maybe I'll do some writing that day or maybe I do something, but I don't structure it. And I don't have any constraints around it. I just do it. If it hits me and I get an idea for this podcast or for my spirit path business, I do it. And I act on that, right? Because I get the download, I get the channel and then boom, I'm at it. Okay, I've been inspired. And I need to get this down. I don't necessarily consider it working. Because this work is my purpose. So when I'm in that flow, it might come up on a Monday. And I won't deny that what it looks like. And sometimes it's about just like titrating the work down so that one day it feels safe to not be here on Monday. It's all we can do is just like it's not, you can't just like boom tomorrow. I'm not ever going to do that again. I'm never going to pick up this pack of cigarettes. I'm never going to have that drink again. I'm never going to eat that donut. I'm never going to and starting those hard lines in the sand. And then the minute you start to cross over, I'm here comes all the negative, all the shite, all the responses, all the activations. And it's just like, okay, you know, next Monday, I'm going to just just take it down every Monday. I'm just going to take it down a little bit less, a little bit less, a little more time in nature, a little bit more time doing this. And using that spectrum to just know that it is always moving and calibrating. And I'm just titrating down until one day, Monday is just the day where I'm in flow. Might work, I might not. Yep. I think that's beautiful. And I think more broadly to, you know, projecting this out into more collective environments, it is important to think too about how, especially if we're business leaders, you know, entrepreneurs, we own our own business and we have a team. How this mindset and this reaction, this perfectionism can move into our organization. And that can be really harmful as well. So there's a lot of research backing that organizations where, you know, there's a workplace where internal pressure levels are supported by external pressure levels to perform lead to a lot more burnout, a lot more detrimental effects on the organization. There's a lot more sick days. The people in the organization experience poor physical health overall. There's more physician appointments, higher rates of absenteeism, a wide variety of health problems. And it also, there's a lot of studies that show it's harder to recover from illness in that mindset of perfectionism that people who have heart attacks, it takes more time to recover from the heart attacks, if they have those perfectionistic qualities, and they're more susceptible to future heart attacks. And that overall, of course, there's a link between autoimmune disease and that it can really lead to an unhealthy and quite costly work environment when we let that become pervasive in our work, in our organizational culture. I mean, when you think about it from that perspective and when you think about heart attacks being so related to ACE scores also, I mean, things are coming at you from multiple different angles. And if you are working in an organ, maybe you've recognized yourself in the organization that you just described. You know, is it worth it? Yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned ACE scores because there is also a lot of research that people with higher ACE scores. This seems obvious given that it's part of a reaction to trauma, but that there is a link between the higher your ACE scores, the more likely you are to have this characteristic of extreme perfectionism and the more that that impacts your overall health that is validated by research. If I can do this perfectly, I can stay safe. That's your body, your work, your time, your family, that's everything. And another problematic thing about that is that perfectionism also often keeps people who have trauma from getting effective help with the trauma because they're, they might be highly traumatized, but they're very good at covering it up and performing on the outside and appearing really well functioning. And underneath the surface, there's all of that dysregulation behind the scenes. There's a lot of emotional reactivity and maybe even self-harm or extreme numbing behaviors, but perfectionists are really good at shining it on to the outside world and not seeking the support that they need because then they have to show the imperfection to someone else. And so often the people who are who really need the help with this don't get it because they're good at projecting a certain image and they're very terrified of allowing that image to be dismantled. It's shattering an illusion. It is taking a brick and shattering the mirror of illusion. And that is really scary to do all in one throw. Right, we need to like chip away at it, not throw a brick through the glass. Yeah, so I think there's like a lot of ways as an individual, it's important to start to deconstruct this, to start even just recognize it and then work on regulating, around taking contrary action. But I also think it's a society. There's things that we could all collectively look at at how our organizations, how our constructs, how our different systems really promote this way of being that is harmful to all of us. As usual, it's always very enlightening. And so it's interesting to hear all the different types of perfectionism because sometimes I'll not have thought about that and then I'll find myself in something that you've said, maybe it isn't even something that's happening for me right now, but I can find myself when I did work for different organizations, when I did work for other people and how I hid so much of my work. Oh Lord, me too. Yeah, cannot work, couldn't overwork me, could not work me. No way. Yeah, I think I've said this on here before too, but I used to always have this like thought in my mind, like I may not be the prettiest person in the room, I may not be the funniest person in the room. I mean, I'll be the smartest person in the room, but you cannot outwork me. And that was like my motto was my identity was everything like if I hustle hard enough, no one can outhustle me. I'm scrappy. I can pivot and I will get it done, you know. And I mean, I'm talking about over a decade, living in that state of like not even realizing that that motto was kind of insane. Like I talked about in the very beginning, it was a badge of honor for me. I was going to say like that I would work myself into the ground. How did we get rewarded? Well, I got more shifts. I got to be the head teacher. Maybe I was promoted to a manager. Maybe I got more responsibility, more money, more more something. And it took me more, more away from myself and away from my home. I had a successful business that was built on the back of my workaholism and perfectionism. Perfectionism about my body, perfectionism about overworking, and eventually as I began my healing process, and that really started with nervous system training. When I started training my nervous system, I started moving out of those patterns of perfectionism and workaholism. And when that started to happen, the business did not last. It was unsustainable, Right? When I see. started to make changes because I was now not operating from that state of extreme dysregulation and realizing like, oh my God, I want to rest. I want to have boundaries. I want to care for myself and that really, really, really did begin with training my nervous system. I didn't even mean for that to happen. It's just what happened as a result of starting to work with my nervous system and the structure of the business could not sustain those changes and had to let it go. And so I think sometimes these skills, they will serve us for a while and we can, we can reach a certain place. But one, there's a cost. There's a cost to our health. There's a cost to our ability to be present and enjoy our life to have functional relationships and to experience pleasure and joy and all those good things, right? So there's a huge cost and also eventually that breaks. You have to have new skills, new tools and it's just, it's just not sustainable. Well, I don't know what we have coming up next and our lineup of recordings after perfectionism. So you know, stay tuned. It's just like what we love to do is to just take these really deep dives and to explore. It's like taking a torch into a cavern or a cave. It's like, okay, what can we shine on to these walls? Because there's so many nuances and trauma responses. Yeah, there really is. It's like endlessly fascinating to me and in intense at times, you know, but I am again, so grateful for everyone who listens. And if you're finding yourself in this episode, if it's really resonating with you and causing you to look at your perfectionism a little bit differently, understanding the cost, perhaps a bit more, the cost inside of your body and the stress level that this puts on the nervous system. And also looking at how perfectionism keeps you from being fully present in your life, showing up with authenticity in your relationships, being able to experience the pleasure, the joy and the fun of the big life that you're creating. Then join us at rewiretrial.com to begin to develop a toolkit to work with your nervous system and your body to move out of this protective trauma response and experience more of the big life that you're creating.