Transcription
Hi everyone, Jessica, clinical psychologist for the sitecollective.com, and we're doing another schema video talk today. We're going to be focusing on the perfectionistic over compensator, which is one of the maladaptive coping modes.
Now, if you haven't already seen the schema therapy overview, the one with the kind of rainbow arches, go and have a look at that video first. It's the first one on our schema therapy playlist on YouTube and also up on our website. Gonna give you a bit of an overview of where I'm coming from today.
Okay, so perfectionistic over compensator. Why? What's the function of it? The perfectionism is around the idea of, "I have a fear that something bad is going to happen," which is where our vulnerability is. So, I'm going to engage all methods that I can to control everything and do everything perfectly because if I'm in charge of everything, then nothing bad is going to happen. I have a plan B and a plan Z, D through to Z, and I'm going to dot the eyes and I'm going to cross the T's and I'm going to micromanage everybody else to make sure that everything is done perfectly at all times. Then nothing bad will ever happen, and then I never have to deal with my vulnerability. Sound good?
This one is pretty familiar to me because I would have to say that probably earlier on in my career, definitely through my uni days, this was something that was kind of playing quite strong for me, and even before I knew what schema therapy was and before I knew what it was that I was doing and why. Now, my healthy adult's a little bit stronger. I'm a little bit better at regulating this most days.
Okay, what's the trigger for it? The trigger is usually a sense of something bad's gonna happen. And in terms of perfectionistic over compensator, because the perfectionism is so focused on kind of performance and task orientation, the bad thing is usually in the form of criticism. Either criticism from others whose opinion we matter are kind of concerned about, so the boss, parent, someone in a perceived position of authority, or criticism from our internal self, usually from demanding parent or punitive parent. Okay, so that inner critic voice and the self-criticism can be a strong driver for the perfectionistic behavior.
In terms of the schemas associated with this, most likely we're going to see unrelenting standards. Okay? But we're also going to see maybe some kind of schemas around failure and defectiveness, and hence this is the overcompensatory response. All right, so you've got to remember when a schema is activated, the fight part of the response is to say, "I'm going to make sure that schema doesn't happen." Okay? So the schema is failure. The perfectionism is, "I'm going to make sure I don't fail," in order to protect myself from the schema being activated and the vulnerability from occurring. All right.
The awareness. What does it look like? It's going to be things like, "I have to get this done right." "If you want something done right, do it yourself." "I can't delegate." It could look like micromanaging of other people, which could be in a workplace. That's probably gonna piss off your colleagues. Okay? Um, but it could also be for your kids, constantly looking over the shoulder, checking with your partner, "Did you remember to do this? Did you remember to do that? No, you're not doing it right. Let me do it. You've got to make sure that the pegs are color coordinated or some reason the washing just won't dry properly." All right.
There can be a sense of frantic nervous energy, maybe feeling like there's kind of this constant pressure, or there's a deadline coming, or there's this kind of constant stress and anxiety, and a real difficulty with resting or taking kind of any sort of downtime. There's this constant need to be productive or doing something or achieving something to prove your worth, and also to protect from that vulnerability. Okay? Sometimes we can see a lot of writing of lists, and my personal favorite that I see with patients is people who will write a list of basically a content list of all the other lists that they have. Someone who will often engage in a lot of over-planning, where they may be staying up late, um, to get tasks done, or staying back at work in order to get tasks done. It's the sense of everything has to be perfect at all times, otherwise I'm, I'm out of control, and I can't deal with the feelings of being out of control.
Right now, obviously, with everything, there's a bit of a sliding scale as to how functional that is. You can have someone who has some high standards for themselves that knows how to rein it in and set some boundaries to go, "I tried my best, and I got 85% on my math test, and I'm really happy with that." When the perfectionistic over compensator becomes maladaptive, anything less than 100% is not going to be okay. Right?
So what happens there is the perfectionism becomes maladaptive because it actually starts to cause more distress. The standards are set so high that they are unachievable, which means you're guaranteed to fail. But then it feeds back into the schema of, "Well, I knew I was going to fail." Right? So we get a lot of stress, we get a lot of distress, we get a lot of burnout that happens with it. And you can see this maybe in uni students, um, particularly those who would head towards kind of the harder degrees, like they've got something to prove. Okay?
It will start to interfere with task completion. Sometimes what you will will see is a sense of, "If I can't get it done perfectly right, I'm not gonna bother. I'm not gonna try." Okay? So there can actually come this almost, um, like procrastination. Almost sometimes avoidant protector is a bit of a precursor to the perfectionistic over compensator before the over compensator kicks in. "Oh my god, what have I done? I've got to get everything right. I've got to do it perfectly." And I'm staying up until 3 AM to get it done. Okay? And it feeds a lot of self-criticism.
So when we see the crossover, there is a fair bit of crossover between the perfectionistic over compensator and the demanding parent. Okay? The perfectionistic one is saying, "I have to get this right. I've got to be perfect. I've got to be in control of everything." And the demanding parent is the one saying, "You better get this right. You've got to get this under control. You're the one that's going to fail if you don't get up at 5 AM and scrub the house before you go to work and get 95% on every single test that you ever do." Okay? It sets us up for failure with the impossible standards.
And there'll also be some relationship difficulties because people don't like being micromanaged. People don't like constantly being checked on. People don't like it when they're not able to engage in a project or a task or things like that. There'll be, look, there'll be some people who'll happily say, "Yeah, sure, you do everything. I don't want anything to do with it." They've got their own schemas going on, and we'll talk about that in another video. But generally speaking, people don't like the micromanaging or the controlling sort of stuff. Okay?
What the need is. Now, the need primarily is actually boundaries. Right? What you need to do is to set a limit and go, "Right, this is good enough," and I'm, I'm learning to become okay with good enough. Perfect is a myth. It's a fallacy. It doesn't exist. Okay? There can be times where you can get 100% out of a math test, but to get 100% on absolutely every test, on every subject, and everything in your life forevermore, it's not going to happen. No one can do that. Okay?
So setting some realistic boundaries around what's appropriate, what is achievable, what is realistic. Having some reassurance of, "I did the best that I could." Validation of the effort is actually more important than praise for the outcome or praise for the performance on the task. All right? So the healthy adult is going to be the one that comes in and says, "You've done a really good job here. You've tried really, really hard. Now let's take a break." Okay? It rewards the effort, it moderates the standards, and in a way, the healthy adult can actually help by bringing in some happy child.
All right, so out of the needs that we have, spontaneity and play is actually one of them. Perfectionistic over compensator doesn't usually like that one. "I haven't got time for that. I've got time for play. I haven't got time for breaks. I've got too many other things that I need to be doing instead, thank you very much." And the healthy adult goes, "Oh, hang on a minute. If you keep rushing at this rate, you're going to crash and burn out. How about we take a break? Let's go do something fun. Remember fun? Remember what that was? Let's go try and find it again."
As a way of being able to moderate some of the standards, create some break, and do this thing that we call "play recovery." I'm gonna do another talk on that one, um, for our just stress cycle and emotion stuff. But ultimately, the self-talk from the healthy adult needs to be dialing down the demanding parent and starting to bring in this idea of, "It's good enough." Okay? And focus on the effort from other people.
What you're also going to need is some boundaries. Okay? Maybe when the boss comes in and says, "It's seven o'clock. What are you still doing here? Go home." All right? Or for partners or parents to go, "You've been stuck in that study for the last four hours doing your homework. How about you come out and have a break? Have something to eat." Right? Um, validating the effort is going to be really important, kind of praise for the kind of the intention of how hard you're trying, not simply focusing on how many A's did you get on your report card. And in some sense, starting to bring in a little bit of opposite action. Okay? Of not trying so hard on absolutely everything and finding that balance between when you can let things slide, right, and when you do need to be conscientious and and driven and motivated, and knowing that that is not a permanent state.
Okay, so the take-home message for the perfectionistic over compensator is: pay attention to when you find that you are pushing yourself to the point that it's causing more distress. Recognize that and put in some boundaries for yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Have some play recovery. Give yourself a pat on the back for how hard you've tried. Okay? Have a breath.
All right, thanks guys. We'll see you next time. Find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and thecitecollective.com. Leave us some comments with what you thought of this, and make sure you hit that subscribe button for more updates on next videos. See you next time.