How to Break Free from Perfectionism and Embrace Imperfection and Authenticity [Episode #898]

This week’s topic: How to Break Free from Perfectionism and Embrace Imperfection and Authenticity.

Hi everyone, welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have on our show today a very special guest, New York Times bestseller, Dr. Catherine Shanahan, who has a new book out called Dark Calories, How Vegetable Oils Destroy Our Health and How We Can Get It Back. Dr. Shanahan or Dr. Kate, as I will be calling her today, actually wrote a book that I read years ago called Deep Nutrition. She continues to be a trailblazer in educating us about topics of the day and vegetable oils is something that we definitely all need to know about because…..

Summary

In this conversation the topic of perfectionism and how it affects our health and well-being. Kimberly shares her personal experience as a recovering perfectionist and provides actionable tips and strategies to break free from perfectionism and embrace authenticity. Kimberly emphasizes the importance of self-compassion, mindfulness, and resilience in overcoming perfectionism. She also highlights the connection between perfectionism and mental health, and the role of a healthy lifestyle in breaking the pattern of perfectionism. The conversation concludes with a heart-centered meditation practice.

 

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6 Simple Food Principles for Increasing Your Vitality and Longevity [Episode #755]

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STUDIES AND LINK ON TOPIC

1. Understanding the Impact of Perfectionism on Mental Health

• Study: “Perfectionism and Its Relation to Mental Health and Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis” (Smith, C., Saklofske, D., Yan, G., 2018)
• Findings: This meta-analysis in the Frontiers of Psychology (2018) examined multiple studies on perfectionism and mental health. It found that maladaptive perfectionism is significantly associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. Conversely, adaptive perfectionism, characterized by high personal standards without the harsh self-criticism, is associated with positive well-being.

3. Self-Compassion as a Buffer Against Perfectionism

• Study: “Self-Compassion and Adaptive Psychological Functioning” (Neff, K., 2003)
• Findings: This study in the Journal of Research in Personality (2003) explores how self-compassion can act as a buffer against the negative effects of perfectionism. High levels of self-compassion are linked to lower levels of self-criticism and anxiety, promoting greater psychological resilience.

4. Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions for Perfectionism

• Study: “Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Perfectionism: A Meta-Analysis” (Lloyd, S., Schmidt, U., & Joiner, T., 2015)
• Findings: This meta-analysis in the American Psychological Association (2023) evaluated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in treating perfectionism. CBT interventions significantly reduce perfectionistic tendencies and related symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, by challenging and restructuring maladaptive thoughts.

5. Perfectionism, Authenticity, and Relationship Satisfaction

• Study: “Perfectionism, Authenticity, and Relationship Satisfaction in Young Adults” (Hill, A., & Curran, T., 2016)
• Findings: A study in the American Psychological Association (2016) investigated the relationship between perfectionism, authenticity, and relationship satisfaction. It found that individuals who embrace authenticity and imperfection report higher levels of relationship satisfaction. Conversely, perfectionistic tendencies can undermine relationships by fostering unrealistic expectations and critical attitudes.

6. Mindfulness and Acceptance in Reducing Perfectionism

• Study: “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as a Method to Decrease Perfectionism” (Shapiro, S., & Carlson, L., 2004)
• Findings: A 2004 study in the International journal of stress management study explores how mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programs can help reduce perfectionistic behaviors. Participants in MBSR programs reported lower levels of perfectionism and increased acceptance of their imperfections, leading to improved mental health and well-being.

7. Resilience and Adaptive Coping Mechanisms

• Study: “Resilience as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Psychological Distress” (Flett, G., & Hewitt, P., 2014)
• Findings: A study in the Journal of Counseling and Development (2014) examined how resilience can moderate the effects of perfectionism on psychological distress. Individuals with higher resilience are better able to cope with the pressures of perfectionism, experiencing less distress and maintaining better overall mental health.

 

Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.782)
Namaste loves and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. Today is a very important show for our health and our emotional well -being because it addresses perfectionism, which is something that I know very well. I grew up as a perfectionist. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. And I think in many ways we expect more out of ourselves, a never ending sense of being more perfect, a more perfect parent, more perfect mom, more perfect worker, more perfect student, more perfect housemaker. Our house could be more perfect. Everything needs to be more, more, more, more, more. So today we’re going to talk about how to break free from perfectionism and embrace authenticity. So sometimes we think that the opposite of perfectionism is imperfection.

And I have a different viewpoint of this now that I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into the heart and research around the heart and the true self. And I believe that the ego sees imperfection. It sees things as not being quite right, not quite perfect enough. But actually, if we start to go deeper, deeper down, there is a deep wholeness that is the truth of our nature. That is who we really are. So actually,

If we can go a little bit deeper and shift our paradigm, we will see that perfection is here right now. And we don’t have to fit some sort of external standards for perfectionism, which create a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety in our daily life, a lot of robbing of our fulfillment and our joy and trying to be skinnier, more fitter, have more things to show that our life is perfect.

Right? All these external things don’t have to matter. They don’t have to be so serious. So today we’re going to dig into some actionable tips and strategies as always, after we talk about our research. So we can really start to uproot this very damaging quality of perfectionism, which again, in my life, drove me into obsession, insomnia, eating disorders, many different things.

Kimberly Snyder (02:20.654)
So I’m very passionate about sharing about how we can get past this because our emotional state, our emotional wellbeing has a direct effect on our vitality, on our health, on our energy, and simply on our enjoyment of life. So very excited to dive in today. And little reminder that our show notes are over on mysaloonit .com. If you’re enjoying our show, please leave a review. It’s a wonderful way to support the show. Please share the show with anyone you think would benefit.

And remember that you can ask questions for this Thursday show over on our website. There’s a podcast tab. All right, let’s get into our show today. And our question comes from Charlene who lives in North Carolina. Charlene, thank you so much for being part of our community. Thank you so much for bringing this important topic to our forefront of our conversation. And you write, I’m a self professed perfectionist and I struggle when things do not go my way and it is affecting my personal relationships. So as I mentioned at the top of the show, you said something so great here, Charlene, which is things not going my way. And when we say things aren’t going my way, what we’re really talking about is ego’s way. Ego, the mind, the overthinking, the expectations, the trying to control has a very set way that we think life should go and things should turn up and things should turn out in timelines and all of it. So.

That’s where the rigidity comes from, which builds into perfectionism. What we’re talking about is perfect by ego’s standards and ego’s ideas. There is a completely different way of looking at the situation at hand. So for instance, and I’m paraphrasing here, there is a quote in my new book, which I just read today, the audio book all day long. So it’s top of mind for me. This is a quote by Dr. David Hawkins.

And I’m paraphrasing, but he talks about the perfection of now that in stillness in the heart, we could start to see a different way. So instead of seeing an imperfect fading rose, we see when the rose is a bud, it’s a perfect bud. We see when the rose is a perfect rose. We see when it’s a perfect fading flower because it just is what it is in that moment. And then we see a perfect withered flower.

Kimberly Snyder (04:46.286)
Right, in each stage, it’s not that it’s imperfect, it’s not that it’s lacking, it’s that it’s fully embodying where it is in that moment. And so as we start to transcend this idea that things have to be a certain way, we can start to see a greater harmony at play, we can start to relax more, we can start to enjoy the ride more, meaning life, the day -to -day moments, and not feel so caught up in things not looking a certain way and feeling a lot of suffering because of that.

there is an impact on perfectionism and this rigidity on mental health. And a study called Perfectionism and its Relation to Mental Health and Well -being, a meta -analysis from the Frontiers of Psychology in 2018, found that there was a actual connection between higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, and with perfectionism. And…

Perfectionism was characterized by high personal standards with high harsh self -criticism. When we take away the harsh self -criticism, on the other hand, it was associated with positive well -being. So this harshness, this rigidity, this really much depletes our mental health, our emotional well -being, our feelings of being okay in the world. So we start to start to grasp it more and more and more. We start to pick on our bodies. We start to pick on our diets. We start to feel that we are not doing enough. We’re not good enough. And of course, this is a slippery slope into more suffering and more harsh criticism. A study called the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for perfectionism published in the American Journal, sorry, in the American Psychological Association in 2023.

Kimberly Snyder (06:43.054)
found that cognitive behavioral therapy significantly helped to reduce perfectionism tendencies and related symptoms such as depression and anxiety by challenging and restructuring maladaptive thoughts. So what’s great about cognitive behavioral therapy is there is greater awareness. Whether we do cognitive behavioral therapy,

or other modalities, I think the important part here is to start to be aware of the stories and the narratives that we’re telling ourselves day in and day out. So when I was in the height of my perfectionism and my eating disorders, I remember some of the self -talk being so harsh around telling myself that I wasn’t good enough, I’m so fat, you are so stupid, you have no self -will really, really, really harsh things, I would say to myself, day in and day out, and it was quite unrelenting. And so I didn’t have the skills back then to start to separate my thoughts and my identifications with myself, my worth, as not being related to how much I weighed or how much I happened to eat that day. So it’s really important that we start to create that separation, that we are not our thoughts.

We are not these harsh labels that we place on ourselves. And we’ll talk about more of that in a second. Mindfulness and acceptance. Mindfulness -based stress reduction as a method to decrease perfectionism was studied in the International Journal of Stress Management back in 2004. And it found that programs that were targeted at lowering levels of perfectionism, led to improved mental health and overall well -being. So again, everything is interrelated. That’s why we talk about our four cornerstones so much. Perfectionism is stressful. It puts us into stress responses all the time. It reduces our energy. It very much has an effect on our gut health and our digestion and our immunity. I just want to take a deep breath hearing about all these.

Kimberly Snyder (09:05.71)
harsh things that I used to tell myself because even hearing it reminds me of how stressful it used to feel and how compressed I used to feel in my body and in my life. And so it’s a type of stress that day in and day out has a very major impact on our overall wellness. So we start to have to be aware of the ways in which perfectionism exerts itself. Never enough, never enough.

And like I said earlier in the show, there are many different avenues that this can start to present in your life. It could be in the area of parenting. It could be in your fitness level, in your, you know, your, your body in your, in your skin, in your hair, in your workplace, if you are a student in your grades, right? So we want to instead start to shift towards a different mindset. That’s about flow and adapting moment to moment, showing up in presence, doing our best and being more skilled at letting the rest go. Because perfectionism has this idea that again, things should be a certain way, that we can somehow control more than is beyond our scope of control, that somehow we play a bigger role than we do in outcomes.

All we can do is our best. I was at a chess tournament the other day, like I mentioned this in my last show. And, or I mentioned it on our Chilla Gorilla parenting conference actually, a couple of days ago. And I was amazed at some of the things that I saw with parents and shocked quite honestly. And those of us that are parents and those of you that may have your children in,

soccer or sports or other activities like chess. You may have witnessed this in other parents. I saw a real harshness with some parents and getting upset at their child if they lost a game and speaking quite harshly with them. And it made me a bit sad and also realized that when we haven’t really adjusted ourselves,

Kimberly Snyder (11:31.47)
or we haven’t seen this or identified it, we can actually pass it on unknowingly. So it’s really important that we become aware. Otherwise we can project out our stress and our ideas to those around us and those that we love. And sometimes we can get really caught up in stress. We can be sharp with those around us. That’s something that I also used to engage in if I was really frustrated with myself.

Sometimes I would be sharp with my best friend or my boyfriend at the time. We don’t want to be this way. We want to come more into our hearts, more into who we are. The shifts life so much. I’m so passionate about sharing more about the heart. If you can’t tell, it was the subject of our Chilla Gorilla and Lake Eliemer Journey to the Heart Children’s Book, which if you haven’t checked out yet, it is available now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold.

It is also the subject of my next upcoming adult book, which will be pre -selling as well in just a few weeks called The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, which is all about increasing heart -brain communication and bringing the heart forward to create more clarity and energy and vitality and emotional wellbeing in your daily life. So there’s one more study that I want to bring up and then I want to go further into some of these action steps.

has to do with resilience. Resilience as a moderator of the relationship between perfectionism and psychological distress. A study in the Journal of Counseling and Development examined how resilience can moderate the effects of perfectionism on psychological distress. Individuals with higher resilience are better able to cope with the pressures of perfectionism, experiencing less distress and maintaining better overall mental health. So one of the ways in which we can become more resilient is that we don’t over identify with the outside world with again outcomes, expectations, things looking a certain way. Instead, we start to identify more with the inner world, with the energy, this wholeness, this incredible true self energy, which we can start to access more and more through

Kimberly Snyder (13:57.71)
stillness, regular meditation, simply focusing on our breath, shifting into our heart, which I’ll be talking about again in this next book. Something as simple as shifting into your heart has been shown to start to rewire your nervous system and start to allow you to feel more of that safety and security coming from within versus from trying to grasp at it in the outside world.

So the first thing we need to do, as I mentioned, is to start to become more aware of where we are trying to seek perfection on the surface of life. Identify the areas that are key triggers for you. Maybe it’s looking in the mirror and you are very harsh with yourself in terms of your bodily shape or your skin or your hair or your nails or some other physical attribute or…

In my case, growing up, it was very much around having perfect grades and having these numbers, test scores and grade rank and class rank had to be a certain way. Otherwise, I got really disappointed with myself. So just start to be more self -aware. You may be very relaxed in some areas. You may notice that some friends or colleagues or acquaintances or whatever,

are very rigid or have different areas of perfectionism from you. And yet in some areas, trying to be the perfect parent, that’s another one that I’ve fallen into, caring for my children 100 % of the time, working so much, being up all night because I didn’t want to outsource any time for my child’s care and then being the best mom, planning and doing everything for them.

And that can be quite depleting as well. So just start to become more aware of the areas in your life.

Kimberly Snyder (16:02.862)
The second thing is to become more self compassionate. When we start to be aware, we can start to step back and say, wow, I really was so harsh with myself. my gosh, I think this one, I would, you know, I was bulimic and I would throw up into a pot sometimes. And I think about the harshness of that acid literally coming out of my body and how I treated myself. And so there’s these moments of deep self compassion of.

not judgment, but compassion. Wow, I really wasn’t a dark place. Wow, I really didn’t have the tools for coping at the time. Wow. And just take that moment to give yourself some love and that compassion, which is healing. These are all heart -based emotions and qualities. They actually create more soothing, more actual coherence, syncing up with your brain. They start to create more gentle, aligned,

perceptions. So do take that time to be more compassionate. You could also journal about this. You could speak to a trusted friend. Maybe you have a perfectionism buddy. I had my best friend who wasn’t a perfectionist, but I could bounce these thoughts off of him as I started to become more aware. And that became really part of my healing process is verbalizing it and talking about it out loud.

The next part is to challenge perfectionist thoughts by realizing that these come from the ego and they’re not of the true self. So soon I’ll be publishing our Heart Aligned Meditation, which is gonna be part of our upcoming seven day challenge. Those of you that are listening that are not part of our newsletter, please join our list so that you can get information about this free upcoming challenge, which is about revitalizing yourself around the time of summer solstice.

So we’re gonna start on June 20th, and this is a really powerful time, not just New Year’s, but to really recharge yourself from the morning up. And so we’re gonna be meditating, we’re gonna have some meditation tracks. We’re also gonna be drinking our Glowing Green smoothie, the Glowing Green powder in it, drinking hot water with lemon, doing this as a group, having some lives together, having time together to encourage and support each other, which is really, really powerful.

Kimberly Snyder (18:28.334)
And so the more that we start to connect to this deeper place in our heart, this deeper place that is the truth of our nature, the less we identify with the surface, the less seriously we link our worth with this physical construct, this part of us that is less than 1 % of who we really are. It’s not something that you can just be told. It’s something that you have to experience.

We experience when we go into this vastness of non -thinking, what Eckhart Tolle used to talk about and I used to want so badly, I started to experience for myself through meditation. And what’s great about heart -based meditations is that you’re journeying from the head to the heart, just like we say in our Chilla book, journey to the heart.

and you’re going into a very different field, a very different energy. You’re not escaping your life, you’re not suppressing your feelings. You’re going to this different portal of intelligence. And it helps to rewire your thoughts and your brains and your brain and your perceptions so that in your daily life, you start to think about things in a very different way that isn’t forced and it isn’t fake and it isn’t disingenuous. It’s actually coming from this deeper place.

the truth of your nature, this wholeness, this power in your heart. So I encourage you to break the pattern of perfectionism, to more and more shift into your heart. Again, we’ll have lots of tools around this coming up soon and in the challenge starting in just a week or so. Also for you to practice meditation regularly, especially in the morning, before you start your day. So you have a little bit of a different framework day by day, your coherence capacity builds, your framework builds, your thoughts will start to shift. And this is how we get past really rigid patterns. We have to pour energy like water over a flower. Day after day, five, eight minutes of meditation to start and go deeper if you want, but just

Kimberly Snyder (20:36.334)
Our heart aligned meditation tracks are going to be under eight minutes. So you can start to create a very different shift and perception change. And you start to feel this different sense of worth and self confidence that doesn’t come from achievements or how much you weigh or how fit your arm muscles are or how many children you’ve had or what your grades are or what your salary is or however you have tried to create more perfectionism in your life.

And it’s really important to build resilience as the study showed. Build resilience by coming away from going into the stories when they arise. So what I mean by that is you get a trigger, you weigh yourself, you don’t like the number or something doesn’t work out the way that you think it’s going to work out. Maybe you didn’t get a grade on your test or you didn’t get that work project to work out the way you wanted it to.

So you build resilience instead of going into that familiar pattern of beating yourself up and having really harsh language with yourself. Start to be more resilient. You start to challenge those thoughts with this new awareness that you are so much more than the surface of life. Keep coming down into your heart, into your breath. You break that mental pattern. Go for a walk.

Talk to a trusted friend or a counselor or a therapist. You do what it takes to become more resilient against these patterns. For me, it was a combination of this heart -based work, lots of journaling, lots of meditation, and again, speaking to a trusted best friend who could help me be a mirror. Now I’m a mirror for myself a lot of the time because I’ve, after this time, become more aware of these feelings arising.

Kimberly Snyder (22:35.854)
But at first, I would have a lot of dark, low thoughts at times, and it can help to have a trusted friend to bounce things off of and to say, hey, I just feel so bad that this happened today and, you know, really low. And again, we can’t rely on our friends to always be there and make us feel better. That’s why a counselor or therapist can be really helpful as well, right? And you can do that for other people or we all need community, we all need support in different ways. So seek out a support system that is consistent and that can really be there for you and is really effective and that you truly trust.

So a healthy lifestyle can also help to break perfectionism. When our gut health is out of whack, when our microbiome is compromised, when we don’t have enough healthy omega fats, when we have micronutrient deficiencies, when our body is off, it’s easier to slip into, again, the connection between mental health and emotional well -being. Physical health is very much linked up. So it means that we start to feel more.

vulnerable, more stressed out. So it’s really important to get enough sleep, to take your SBO probiotics, to live your healthy lifestyle, to have all that beautiful fiber, to drink your glowing green smoothie. Hopefully you have started to take the glowing greens powder. Otherwise check it out for yourself. It’s got amalaki, one of the most powerful herbs in Ayurveda for rejuvenation and youthful energy and tons of amazing qualities.

to create that inner strength and resilience, as well as chlorella, spirulina, moringa, ashitaba, cordyceps, mushrooms, amazing plants in our formula. So live a healthy lifestyle. And this should very much include meditation, times of stillness, times of quiet, so that you’re not so overly identified with the busy, modern, crazy life that we live in on the surface.

Kimberly Snyder (24:43.982)
running from place to place, seeing things pass before your eyes, scrolling on social media. It’s very easy to beat yourself up. It’s very easy to fall into perfectionism if we are caught up in this modern life, which largely reflects the ego.

Let’s take a deep breath here. And let’s just do a little practice together.

as we close up, there’s a lot of talk around this. It’s something that we have to experience. The perfection really is inside. There isn’t imperfect, there’s imperfection in a way, but there’s only one you. There’s this unique true self energy. So the truth of who you are, the real way, not just the surface of, hey, I’ve got a zit today, or my hair isn’t perfect, whatever it is.

Just take a moment if you’re not driving or walking, close your eyes and just shift down into your heart. Take a few deep breaths, focusing right there in your heart center. And if you are driving or walking, you can do some of this with your eyes wide open and aware. You can shift part of your attention to your heart.

Kimberly Snyder (26:03.566)
And then just for a moment, focus on the energy of appreciation, just expansive and coherent building, coherence building. This helps to sync up your brain and your nervous system and your heart. Something you appreciate, a person, beautiful sunset or a park or the ocean. And then drop that visual and focus.

on your, on the feeling of appreciation in your heart, just for another moment.

Kimberly Snyder (26:48.75)
another deep breath in.

And then just take a moment to thank your beautiful heart. Open your eyes if they were closed.

This feeling of going into that field where it’s not about thinking, it’s not about what you look like, it’s not about anything that you can label about yourself on paper. This is where true perfection lives. True perfection in the way of presence.

Kimberly Snyder (27:21.134)
You can’t label light. You can’t try to put it into a box. And so at your core, this beautiful energy, this light inside of you is already perfect.

You just have to tap into that connection with it. And it’s always there to be connected to. And the little micro moments when you notice a beautiful sunset and you sort of get lost in your child’s eyes or you’re not thinking about anything while you’re doing the dishes or folding clothes. This is perfect. And we can start to…

consciously go into these places and these states more.

with this awareness, everything we talked about today on our show, and regularly seeking these moments again in stillness through the heart aligned meditation, which we’ll be sharing by next week in our seven day challenge, challenging the thoughts, noticing that they’re from the ego, they’re from judgment and self judgment versus this much, much more, infinitely more peaceful place of vastness inside of you.

So we just start to sink down below those divisive thoughts into the heart, into the breath, into this moment.

Kimberly Snyder (28:53.678)
I’m really honored to be here with you, to connect with you. Thank you for tuning in today. From one recovering perfectionist to another, I know how harsh it can feel and lonely and isolated and debilitating, but there really is a way out. And the way isn’t going to come from other people. It’s not going to come from trying to get more on the outside. It’s going to come from the inside. It’s going to come from you connecting to what is already there. The beauty and perfection inside of you and inside of your beautiful.

heart. So I will be here with you always to support you more. Please find me on social media at underscore Kimberly Snyder. Please send this show to any recovering perfectionist that you know or anyone that you think would benefit from this. And we will continue to grow together. Please check out the website for more resources. And again, please join our seven day challenge. I think it will be amazing and we’ll have lots of live time together.

I’ll be back here Monday as always for our next interview show. Till then, take great care of yourself and remember, there is only one you and you are perfect in your core already just as you are. Sending you much love and I’ll see you back here soon. Namaste.