Ellen Hendriksen
Appearances
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
The word perfectionism is actually a misnomer. Instead of striving to be perfect, it's really about never feeling good enough, especially in the context of an ever more competitive culture. It makes sense that we respond with the feeling that we're not good enough.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Thank you so much for having me.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Oh, for sure. Yeah. So I am a clinical psychologist. I work at an anxiety specialty center. And I have to say that the majority of my clients who come into the center have perfectionism at the center of their challenges. But nobody has ever come in and said, Ellen, I'm a perfectionist. I need everything to be perfect. Instead, people say things like, I feel like I'm failing.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
I feel like I'm falling behind. I have a million things on my plate and I'm not doing any of them well. And I think that's because the word perfectionism is actually a misnomer. That instead of striving to be perfect... It's really about never feeling good enough.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that, especially in the context of 2025, a demanding, ever more competitive, ratings-oriented, optimization-focused culture, it makes sense that we respond with the feeling that we're not good enough.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the definition of perfectionism is the tendency to demand of oneself a level of performance higher than is required for the situation. And I really feel like that definition is sort of like one of those optical illusions where if you look at it one way, you see one thing. If you look at it the other way, you see another thing.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It's like the bunny and the duck or the young lady and the old lady. Because there is healthy perfectionism, like the tendency to demand of oneself a level of performance higher than is required for the situation can be really great. That's when we hit it out of the park. That makes the world go round. That's when we strive for excellence. We do good work for the work's sake.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
We set high standards. We care deeply. Please keep doing that. Those are all amazing things. But where it can go. tip over into unhealthy perfectionism and to clinical perfectionism is when we start to get into two things, when that demanding of oneself a level of performance higher than is required turns into something called over-evaluation, which was a new term for me.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And what that means is when we start to conflate our performance and our character. Essentially, when I did good means I am good, or I did bad means I am bad. And we can over-evaluate anything. So think of the striver student who derives their value from their grades, or the employee who sees their quarterly evaluation as a referendum, not just on their work, but their character.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
The musician who's only as good as their last performance, the athlete who's only as good as their last game. We can really over-evaluate anything, like how healthy we ate today, whether or not we were awkward at the holiday party. It's wherever we think we have to perform as superbly as possible. to be sufficient as a person. So that's one of the big pillars. And the other is self-criticism.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that needs no definition, but in clinical perfectionism, it's particularly harsh.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, absolutely. That's the $64,000 question. So this is... kind of at the edge of science, but it's starting to look like perfectionism, even though it in itself is not a disorder. It's more like a cross-cutting part of other disorders. You know, perfectionism is part of social anxiety, eating disorders, depression, like lots of OCD, lots of things.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And so even though it's not diagnosable in and of itself, it's definitely heritable. It's genetic. So it can come from within, from our own DNA. It can also come from the way we were raised. So there's some research just showing likelihood of if we were raised in a family where love is sort of contingent upon performance, where love and pride get confused.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
If we were raised with a sort of snowplow or helicopter type of family, That can increase the likelihood that we come out perfectionistic. If we were raised in sort of a chaotic, unstable family where maybe there was some substance abuse, chronic illness that, again, made that family unstable, it's likely that we might come out feeling like we need to overcompensate for something.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But I think this is the most interesting thing. It can also come from the culture all around us. The researchers, doctors Thomas Kern and Andrew Hill looked at 27 years worth of data and found that perfectionism is on the rise. And I found it particularly fascinating that the inflection point was 2005. That's when it really started to increase like a rocket launch.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And I think it's no coincidence that that's when Facebook came out. So with the rise of social media, and again, this ever more demanding ratings-oriented consumeristic capitalistic culture, it makes sense that we respond by feeling like we're not good enough.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Sure. No, I think that's a really, really important point. Because absolutely, like the problem with perfectionism is not the high standards. We can aim for and get straight A's. Those high standards are fantastic. They do get us far in life. Performing really well at work. Yes, absolutely. That's going to get us some admiration, respect. maybe fast track or promotion.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that's why I think that the advice around perfectionism is a little bit misguided because certainly, you know, I identify as having some perfectionism. And sometimes I've been told, Ellen, you need to stop when things are good enough, or, you know, you really should lower your standards, right?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But like we talked about, when there is a little bit of over-evaluation happening, when we're conflating ourselves with our performance, good enough doesn't resonate when it's something from which we derive our value. We're not going to settle for what we consider good enough, like subpar or mediocre performance, because that would mean that we're subpar or mediocre.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So again, the problem with unhealthy perfectionism, it's not the high standards, it's that over-evaluation.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, well, here, I want to make one more point, because again, you're absolutely right about how it feels really good to hit it out of the park. And it does get us positive attention. And so perfectionism is, this is what makes it so hard, I think, is what is called interpersonally motivated. So essentially, it's trying to help us
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It's trying to help us belong to the tribe. But perfectionism takes us down the wrong path to get there. It tells us the lie that we have to perform as superbly as possible to get people to like us, that we have to be good at things in order to belong. But think about why your friends are your friends. Like, are you friends with them because they're good at things?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
You know, do you like them because they're skilled at conversation? They always pick a good restaurant. You know, they always remember your birthday. You know, none of those things are bad, but I'm guessing that is not why you like them. You know, more, more likely you're friends with your friends because of how they make you feel. Like I'm,
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
When I'm with my friends, I feel connected, supported, understood, like I can be myself. But the lie of perfectionism makes us really double down on performance in order to earn our way into belonging rather than focusing on connecting or enjoying each other.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, we're trying to separate the overlap of our performance from our value, from our self-worth. So we're never going to separate those completely. Of course, we're going to be proud of the good things we do. Of course, we're going to be disappointed when the things we try don't work out. But if we can try to separate that over-evaluation That's what we're trying to do.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And to that end, I tell the story of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his time at UCLA under the legendary basketball coach, John Wooden. And the record of the team was so impressive that two researchers, so doctors Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore, sat in the stands for the 1974-1975 practices to see, like, what is the secret sauce?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Like, what does Coach Wooden do to make this team just hit it out of the park every time? To mix my metaphors. And what they discovered is that he very seldom raised or criticized his players. And that instead, as a former high school teacher, he did exactly that. He taught. He told you what to do and how to do it. So he would say things like, pass from the chest. Run, don't walk.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Take lots of shots where you might get them in games. Pass the ball to someone short. He was focused on information, not evaluation. And so we can take a page from that book. We can take the stance of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble and say, okay, what would be better for the work? What would be better for this task or this thing I'm doing?
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And that can help us try to separate out our performance from our very character. If we shift the focus from evaluating ourselves, like, you know, I'm so stupid, to focusing on how to make the work better, like pass the ball to someone short. For example, I had a client who was a conservatory student. She was a violin major. And she would just mercilessly criticize herself in the practice room.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
She'd say things like, oh, why are you so stupid? Why can't you get this? And so we tried to shift her over to focusing on the music and to say things like, okay, maybe I can try this slower. Maybe I can do this one measure at a time. It was about the work, not about her.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It certainly can be hard, but you don't have to completely separate this. We're not doing a 180. Just a little bit of being able to see our performance at a perspective, like 5%, 10% is really all we need.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Sure, yeah, I think we can take some of the eggs out of the proverbial basket of performance and leave some in there. Again, performance is important. I'm not saying it's not important or that we don't derive any of our self-image or self-worth from it, but we can distribute some of those eggs to things that are more qualitative, like connection. like enjoyment.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Like the people with perfectionism that I work with, often it's 110% all the time. And so I think the focus on perfectionism can sometimes edge out that we forget to connect with people. We forget to enjoy ourselves. We focus so exclusively on the performance. So for instance, maybe if we're part of a karate dojo, we only focus on working our way through the success of belts. We forget to
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
enjoy the camaraderie. We forget to enjoy the movement of our limbs or the joy of improving or learning new things. If we have spare time, we might think, okay, I need to always be productive. I should be watching a documentary. I should be reading history. And we forget that it's okay to... watch a grass out comedy or read a rom-com or just go hang out and connect with our friends.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
There's an outsized importance on performance in perfectionism, sometimes to the detriment of connecting with others in our lives or enjoying ourselves. And I find it ironic because perfectionism, again, is trying to connect us, but it tells us that we have to perform well in order for people to like us. But that's not true.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
We can instead focus on them, focus on our relationships, as opposed to trying to be good at things and earn liking and belonging that way.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, no, I mean, we, again, we absorb perfectionism through the culture. And if we're put in a situation where, you know, we are our grades, or, you know, our parents only notice us when we deliver as opposed to when we, you know, feel deeply or or notice us because of our personality or our talents, then yeah, absolutely. Every human reacts to the situation we're put in.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And so if we're put in what's called a perfectionistic climate like that, when we're defined by our performance, you know, think of the highest levels of women's gymnastics or like classical music orchestra auditions, then yeah, if there is no room for error, of course, we're going to respond with some perfectionism.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, but I think there is a difference between admiration and being impressive and versus belonging. So if we are impressive, if we're the top performer, then yes, we're singular, but we're also separate. Being at the top is pretty lonely. And so I think when we mistakenly double down on perfectionism, and again, the high standards are not the problem. Please perform well.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Like, please keep hitting it out of the park. It's that over-evaluation when we think that our self-worth, like our, to be sufficient as a person, we need to perform as superbly as possible. And so there, again, think about why your friends are your friends, or like think about the, when we, are trying to be closer to people, there's a difference between impressing them and connecting with them.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So vulnerability is a term that gets kicked around a lot, but let's define it so we can just be on the same page. So vulnerability is when we have a willingness to reveal thoughts, actions, emotions that might result in criticism or rejection and taking a leap of faith that we won't.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It's letting people that we want to be closer to, not just anyone, not our boss, not some authority figure, but letting the people we want to be closer to see some of the mess because that signals two things. One is vulnerability signals, I trust you. I trust you to see some of my struggle or mistakes, and I trust you not to judge or reject me for it. And second,
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
It signals we are the same, that just like you, I struggle or I need help or I need to ask for some advice. This is not a teacher-student relationship or a mentor-mentee relationship. If this is someone you want to get closer to, being equal and on the same footing is important. the foundation of that.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So being vulnerable and showing a little bit of what, you know, what might not go right all the time signals we're the same.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Right, right. We're trying to keep ourselves socially safe by being impressive, by putting our best foot forward and hiding the mess. But then we come across as superhuman or unrelatable or intimidating, and that keeps us disconnected. So not to get too academic about this, but humans' impressions of each other fall along two fundamental dimensions. There's competence and
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
there's warmth and competence is you know how capable skilled and or effective is this person whereas warmth is how trustworthy caring and kind is this person and in perfectionism we put a premium on competence. Again, that lie of perfectionism tells us we have to perform as superbly as possible in order to belong. But the most important dimension is actually warmth.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Because evolutionarily, we have to assess other people's intentions. Are they friend or foe? Are they in my tribe? So we have to assess their warmth, essentially, or lack thereof, before we evaluate their capability to fulfill those intentions, before we evaluate their competence. So warmth comes first and carries more weight.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Yeah, no, I actually, I love this question because I, so I take the subtitle of my book really literally, it's self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists. And there we don't even have to change anything. So, okay, let's take self-criticism.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So like I, you know, I have learned over the years that whenever I do something with a microphone or whenever I put a piece of writing out into the world, my brain will automatically
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
think it sucks and think it wasn't good enough but i have realized that this is just how my brain is wired that some brains are wired to be more optimistic or pessimistic more you know introverted or extroverted my brain and the brains of any other people with perfectionism are just fired to be a little more self-critical
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
But that doesn't mean that I have to listen to those thoughts or to take them so seriously or so literally that I can take the stance of listening to my self-critical thoughts like I listen to the music in a coffee shop. it's there in the background. It's, you know, it's happening and I can hear it, but I don't have to dance along. Like I don't have to sing the lyrics.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And this is a method called cognitive diffusion, which gets some perspective on the fact that our self-critical thoughts are just that, thoughts. And there are lots of ways to do this exercise. There's a A fan favorite method of doing cognitive diffusion is to sort of play with the thoughts to make them irreverent or like a little bit ridiculous. Again, to emphasize that these are just thoughts.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
So I have a client who likes to picture animal from the Muppets banging his drum set and yelling his thought, which is everyone will judge you. And I have another client who her thought is, you're going to let everyone down. And so she pictures that thought on a coffee mug. And she pictures herself taking a little sip from the mug when she has that thought.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
And again, it's to emphasize that this is not truth. These are not facts. These are products of our own brain. They're just thoughts.
Something You Should Know
How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. And I enjoy talking to you. You ask great questions.