Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

by Burns, David D.

  Jennifer’s list is shown in Figure 14–1. She concluded that her perfectionism was clearly not to her advantage. Now make your list. After you have completed it, read on.

  2. Using your list of the advantages and disadvantages of perfectionism, you might want to do some experiments to test some of your assumptions about the advantages. Like many people, you may believe “Without my perfectionism I’d be nothing. I couldn’t perform effectively.” I’ll bet you never put this hypothesis to the test because your belief in your inadequacy is such an automatic habit it has never even occurred to you to question it. Did you ever think that maybe you’ve been as successful as you are in spite of your perfectionism and not because of it! Here’s an experiment that will allow you to come to the truth of the matter. Try altering your standards in various activities so you can see how your performance responds to high standards, middle standards, and low standards. The results may surprise you. I’ve done this with my writing, my psychotherapy with patients, and my jogging. And in all cases I have been pleasantly shocked to discover that by lowering my standards not only do I feel better about what I do but I tend to do it more effectively.

  For example, I began jogging in January 1979 for the first time in my life. I live in a very hilly region, and initially I couldn’t run more than two or three hundred yards without having to stop and walk because there are hills in all directions from my driveway. Each day I made it my aim to run a little less far than the day before. The effect of this was that I could always accomplish my goal easily. Then I would feel so good it would spur me on farther—and every step was gravy, more than I had aimed for. Over a period of months I built up to the point at which I could run seven miles over a steep terrain at a fairly rapid pace. I have never abandoned my basic principles—to try to accomplish less than the day before. Because of this rule I never feel frustrated or disappointed in my running. There have been many days when due to sickness or fatigue, I actually didn’t run far or fast. Today, for example, I could only run a quarter mile because I had a cold and my lungs said NO FARTHER! So I told myself, “This is as far as I was supposed to go.” I felt good because I achieved my goal.

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  Figure 14–1. Jennifer’s list of advantages and disadvantages of perfectionism. She concluded, “Clearly the disadvantages outweigh the one possible advantage.”

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  Try this. Choose any activity, and instead of aiming for 100 percent, try for 80 percent, 60 percent, or 40 percent. Then see how much you enjoy the activity and how productive you become. Dare to aim at being average! It takes courage, but you may amaze yourself!

  3. If you are a compulsive perfectionist you may believe that without aiming for perfection you couldn’t enjoy life to the maximum or find true happiness. You can put this notion to the test by using the Antiperfectionism Sheet (Figure 14–2). Record the actual amount of satisfaction you get from a wide range of activities, such as brushing your teeth, eating an apple, walking in the woods, mowing the lawn, sunbathing, writing a report for work, etc. Now estimate how perfectly you did each activity between 0 and 100 percent, as well as marking how satisfying each was between 0 and 100 percent. This will help you break the illusory connection between perfection and satisfaction.

  Here’s how it works. In Chapter 4 I referred to a physician who was convinced he had to be perfect at all times. No matter how much he accomplished he would always raise his standards slightly higher, and then he’d feel miserable. I told him he was the Philadelphia all-or-nothing thinking champion! He agreed but protested he didn’t know how to change. I persuaded him to do some research on his moods and accomplishments, using the Antiperfectionism Sheet. One weekend he did some plumbing at home because a pipe broke and flooded the kitchen. He was a novice plumber, but did manage to fix the leak and clean up the mess. On the sheet he recorded this as 99 percent satisfaction (see Figure 14–2). Since it was the first time he’d ever tried to fix a pipe, he recorded his expertise as only 20 percent. He got the job done, but it was time-consuming and required considerable guidance from a neighbor. In contrast, he received low degrees of satisfaction from some activities he did an outstanding job on.

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  Figure 14–2. The Antiperfectionism Sheet.

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  This experience with the Antiperfectionism Sheet persuaded him that he did not have to be perfect at something to enjoy it, and, furthermore, that striving for perfection and performing exceptionally did not guarantee happiness, but indeed tended to be associated more frequently with less satisfaction. He concluded he could either give up his compulsive drive for perfection and settle for joyous living and high productivity, or make his happiness of secondary importance and constantly push for greatness, and settle for emotional anguish and modest productivity. Which would you choose? Try out the Antiperfectionism Sheet and put yourself to the test.

  4. Let’s assume that you’ve decided to give up your perfectionism at least on a trial basis just to see what happens. However, you have the lingering notion that you really could be perfect in at least some areas if you tried hard enough, and that when you achieve this, something magical will happen. Let’s take a hard look at whether this goal is realistic. Does a model of perfection ever really fit reality? Is there anything you have personally encountered that is so perfect it could not be improved?

  To test this, look around you right now and see how things could be improved. For example, take someone’s clothing, a flower arrangement, the color and clarity of a television picture, the quality of a singer’s voice, the effectiveness of this chapter, anything at all. I believe you can always find some way in which something could be improved. When I first did this exercise, I was riding on a train. Most things, such as the dirty, rusty old tracks, were so obviously imperfect I could easily find many ways to improve them. Then I came to a problem area. A young black man had his hair in one of those fuzzy naturals. It looked perfectly smooth and sculptured, and I couldn’t think of any way it could possibly be improved. I began to panic and saw my whole antiperfectionist philosophy going down the drain! Then I suddenly noticed some spots of gray on his head. I felt instant relief! His hair was imperfect after all! As I looked more closely, I noticed a few hairs that were too long and out of place. The closer I examined the young man, the more uneven hairs I could see—hundreds in fact! This helped convince me that any standard of perfection just doesn’t fit reality. So why not give it up? You are guaranteed to be a sure loser if you maintain a standard for evaluating your performance that you can’t ever meet. Why persecute yourself any longer?

  5. Another method for overcoming perfectionism involves a confrontation with fear. You may not be aware that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Fear is the fuel that drives your compulsion to polish things to the ultimate. If you choose to give up your perfectionism, you may initially have to confront this fear. Are you willing? There is, after all, a payoff in perfectionism—it protects you. It may protect you from risking criticism, failure, or disapproval. If you decide to start doing things less perfectly, at first you may feel as shaky as if a big California earthquake were about to hit.

  If you don’t appreciate the powerful role that fear plays in maintaining perfectionistic habits, the exacting behavior patterns of perfectionistic people can seem incomprehensible or infuriating. There is, for example, a bizarre illness known as “compulsive slowness,” in which the victim becomes so totally bound up with getting things “just right” that simple everyday tasks can become totally consuming. An attorney with this brutal disorder became preoccupied with how his hair looked. For hours each day he would stand before a mirror with a comb and scissors trying to make adjustments. He became so involved in this, he had to cut back on his legal practice so he could have more and more time to work on his hair. Each day his hair got shorter and shorter because of all his furious clipping. Eventually it was only an eighth of an inch long all over his head. Then he became preoccupied with balancing the hairline alon
g his forehead, and started shaving it to get it “just right.” Each day the hairline receded farther and farther until eventually he had shaved his head totally bald! Then he felt a sense of relief and let it all grow back again, hoping it would come in “even.” After the hair grew back, he would start clipping it again, and the whole cycle would be repeated. This ludicrous routine went on for years and left him a substantially disabled person.

  His case may seem extreme but cannot be considered severe. Far worse forms of the disorder exist. Although the victims’ strange habits may seem absurd, the effects are tragic. Like alcoholics, these individuals may sacrifice career and family to their miserable compulsions. You too may be paying heavily for your perfectionism.

  What motivates these exacting, overcontrolled individuals? Are they insane? Usually not. What traps them in the senseless drive for perfection is fear. The moment they try to stop what they are doing, they are gripped by a powerful uneasiness that rapidly escalates to raw terror. This drives them back to their compulsive ritual in a pathetic attempt to find relief. Getting them to give up their perfectionistic malignancy is like trying to persuade a man hanging by his fingers from the edge of a cliff to let go.

  You may have noticed compulsive tendencies in yourself to a much less severe degree. Have you ever pushed relentlessly to look for an important item like a pencil or a key you misplaced when you knew it was best to forget about it and wait for it to show up? You do this because it’s tough to stop. The moment you try, you become uneasy and nervous. You feel somehow “not right” without the lost item, as if the whole meaning of your life were in the balance!

  One method of confronting and conquering this fear is called “response prevention.” The basic principle is simple and obvious. You refuse to give in to the perfectionistic habit, and you allow yourself to become flooded with fear and discomfort. Stubbornly stick it out and do not give in no matter how upset you become. Hang in there and allow your upset to reach its maximum. After a period of time the compulsion will begin to diminish until it disappears completely. At this point—which might require as much as several hours or as little as ten to fifteen minutes—you have won! You’ve defeated your compulsive habit.

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  Figure 14–3. The Response-Prevention Form. Record the degree of anxiety and any automatic thoughts every one or two minutes until you feel completely relaxed. The following experiment was performed by someone who wanted to end a bad habit of compulsively checking door locks.

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  Let’s take a simple example. Suppose you are in the habit of double-checking the house or car locks several times. Certainly it’s okay to check things once, but more often than that is redundant and pointless. Drive your car to a parking lot, lock the doors, and walk away. Now—refuse to check them! You will feel uneasy. You’ll try to persuade yourself to go back and “just make sure.” DON’T. Instead, record your degree of anxiety every minute on the “Response-Prevention Form” (see Figure 14–3) until the anxiety has vanished. At this point, you win. Often, one such exposure is sufficient to break a habit permanently, or you may need numerous exposures as well as a booster shot from time to time. Many bad habits lend themselves to this format, including various “checking rituals” (checking to see if the stove is turned off or if the mail has fallen into the mailbox, etc.), cleaning rituals (compulsive handwashing or excessive housecleaning), and others. If you are ready and willing to break free of these tendencies, I think you’ll find the response-prevention technique quite helpful.

  6. You may be asking yourself about the origin of the crazy fear that drives you to compulsive perfectionizing. You can use the vertical-arrow method described in Chapter 10 to expose the silent assumption that causes your rigid, tense approach to living. Fred is a college student who was so preoccupied with getting a term paper “just right” that he dropped out of college to work on it for an entire year to avoid the horrors of turning in a product he wasn’t entirely satisfied with. Fred finally enrolled in college again when he felt ready to turn the paper in, but sought treatment for his perfectionism because he realized it might take too long to complete college this way!

  He had his confrontation with fear when he was required to turn in another term paper at the end of his first semester back in school. This time the professor gave him the ultimatum of either turning it in by six P.M. on the due date, or getting docked one full grade for every day it was late. Since Fred had an adequate draft of the paper, he realized it wouldn’t be wise for him to try to polish it and revise it, so he reluctantly turned it in at 4:55, knowing that there were a number of uncorrected typographical errors as well as some sections he wasn’t entirely satisfied with. The moment he turned it in, his anxiety began to mount. Minute by minute it increased, and soon Fred was gripped by such a severe panic attack that he called me at home late in the evening. He was convinced that something terrible was about to happen to him because he had turned in an imperfect paper.

  I suggested he use the vertical-arrow method to pinpoint just what he was so afraid of. His first automatic thought was, “I didn’t do an excellent job on the paper.” He wrote this down (see Figure 14–4, page 363), and then asked himself, “If that were true, why would it be a problem for me?” This question generated the upsetting thought lurking behind it, as demonstrated in Figure 14–4. Fred wrote down the next thought that came to mind, and continued to use the downward-arrow technique to reveal his fears at a deeper and deeper level. He continued peeling the layers off the onion in this way until the deepest origin of his panic and perfectionism was uncovered. This required only a few minutes. His silent assumption then became obvious: (1) One mistake and my career will be ruined. (2) Others demand perfection and success from me, and will ostracize me if I fall short.

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  Figure 14–4. Fred used the verticat-arrow method to uncover the origin of his fears about turning in an “imperfect” paper for a class. This helped relieve some of the terror he was experiencing. The question next to each vertical arrow represents what Fred asked himself in order to uncove the next automatic thought at a deeper level. By unpeeling the onion in this way, he was able to expose the silent assumptions which represented the origin and root of his perfectionism (see text).

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  Once he wrote down his upsetting automatic thoughts, he was in a position to pinpoint his thinking errors. Three distortions appeared most often—all-or-nothing thinking, mind reading, and the fortune teller error. These distortions had trapped him in a rigid, coercive, perfectionistic, approval-seeking approach to life. Substituting rational responses helped him recognize how unrealistic his fears were and took the edge off his panic.

  Fred was skeptical, however, because he wasn’t entirely convinced a catastrophe was not about to strike. He needed some actual evidence to be convinced. Since he’d been keeping the elephants away by blowing the trumpet all his life, he couldn’t be absolutely sure a stampede wouldn’t occur once he decided to set the trumpet down.

  Two days later Fred got the needed evidence: He picked up his paper, and there was an A – at the top. The typographical errors had been corrected by the professor, who wrote a thoughtful note at the end that contained substantial praise along with some helpful suggestions.

  If you are going to let go of your perfectionism, then you may also have to expose yourself to a certain amount of initial unpleasantness just as Fred did. This can be your golden opportunity to learn about the origin of your fears, using the vertical-arrow technique. Rather than run from your fear, sit still and confront the bogeyman! Ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” “What’s the worst that could happen?” Then write down your automatic thoughts as Fred did, and call their bluff. It will be frightening, but if you tough it out and endure the discomfort, you will conquer your fears because they are ultimately based on illusions. The exhilaration you experience when you make this transformation from worrier to warrior can be the start of a more confident assertive approach to li
ving.

  The thought may have occurred to you—but suppose Fred did end up with a B, C, D, or an F? What then? In reality, this usually doesn’t happen because in your perfectionism, you are in the habit of leaving yourself such an excessively wide margin of safety that you can usually relax your efforts considerably without a measurable reduction in the quality of the actual performance. However, failures can and do occur in life, and none of us is totally immune. It can be useful to prepare ahead of time for this possibility so that you can benefit from the experience. You can do this if you set things up in a “can’t lose” fashion.

  How can you benefit from an actual failure? It’s simple! You remind yourself that your life won’t be destroyed. Getting a B, in fact, is one of the best things that can happen to you if you are a straight A student because it will force you to confront and accept your humanness. This will lead to personal growth. The real tragedy occurs when a student is so bright and compulsive that he or she successfully wards off any chance of failure through overwhelming personal effort, and ends up graduating with a perfect straight A average. The paradox in this situation is that success has a dangerous effect of turning these students into cripples or slaves whose lives become obsessively rigid attempts to ward off the fear of being less than perfect. Their careers are rich in achievement but frequently impoverished in joy.

  7. Another method for overcoming perfectionism involves developing a process orientation. This means you focus on processes rather than outcomes as a basis for evaluating things. When I first opened my practice, I had the feeling I had to do outstanding work with each patient every session. I thought my patients and peers expected this of me, and so I worked my tail off all day long. When a patient indicated he benefited from a session, I’d tell myself I was successful and I’d feel on top of the world. In contrast, when a patient gave me the runaround or responded negatively to that day’s session, I’d feel miserable and tell myself I had failed.