White Knuckling & the High Price of Powering Through
White knuckling your way through dumpster fires + stacked deadlines might *seem impressive* but underneath constantly second-guessing yourself, obsessively counting of how much you accomplished while beating yourself up — are hidden costs eating away at your efficiency (and overall ability to enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to create). This episode names what you couldn’t explain...until now.Resources Mentioned In Episode 255: The Impact & Intention Framework Ep. 171Finding Your Compelling Why’s Ep. 174Asking High Quality Questions Ep. 231Giving Yourself Validation Ep. 237Having Impeccable Boundaries 239Being A Curious Scientist Instead Of The Judge Ep. 208Using Your Mood Meter Ep. 254Understanding Your Person Account Ep. 252Measuring Your Person Account Ep.253Identifying Perfectionist Prediction Loops Ep. 250Popping Up In Perfectionistic Brain Ep. 249Deliberate Disruption The CalibrationTimestamps:00:00–Striving for excellence in a dumpster fire while white knuckling01:59-Definition of perfectionism03:13–Uncomfy confession my overfunctioning04:48–When powering through stops working05:35–Fear uncertainty and doubt in disguise06:40–Second guessing yourself despite the evidence07:17– Are You Making This Huge Perfectionistic Mistake08:31–Why overachievers get to disappointed in myself spirals09:06–Over functioning feeds control issues BEST analogy09:55–Beating yourself up When is enough enough 11:03–How I’m able to stop pushing through before burnout12:05–Why perfectionist tendencies turn poisonous13:45–The Clueless Mismatch Tool 14:20– Choosing what's familiar over what's functional15:03–Disrupt overachiever autopilot with The Calibration16:12–Tools to stop second guessing yourself17:56–Perfectionism Podcast BTSQuotes on Perfectionism:"Most perfectionists conflate measuring with counting. You count how much you got done that day, you look at your to do list, all the check marks you count and you think that is measuring." –Courtney Love Gavin, Expert on Perfectionism Neuroscience"You can't solve a problem when you continue to use methods that perpetuate it. And until you disrupt where those perfectionist tendencies are coming from, your brain will continue choosing what's familiar over what's functional." –Courtney Love Gavin, Expert on Perfectionism NeuroscienceHighly Credible Sources Cited in this Perfectionism Podcast: Anderson, E. C., R. Nicholas Carleton, Diefenbach, M., & Paul. (2019). The Relationship Between Uncertainty and Affect. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02504Attwell, D., & Laughlin, S. B. (2001). An Energy Budget for Signaling in the Grey Matter of the Brain. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 21(10), 1133–1145. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004647-200110000-00001Barrett, L. F., & Bar, M. (2009). See it with feeling: affective predictions during object perception. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1521), 1325–1334. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0312Barrett, L. F., & Bliss‐Moreau, E. (2009). Chapter 4 Affect as a Psychological Primitive. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 167–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(08)00404-8Braem, S., Coenen, E., Klaas Bombeke, Bochove, van, & Wim Notebaert. (2015). Open your eyes for prediction errors. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 15(2), 374–380. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0333-4Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–204. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x12000477Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01Egan, S. J., Piek, J. P., Dyck, M. J., & Rees, C. S. (2007). The role of dichotomous thinking and rigidity in perfectionism. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(8), 1813–1822. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.02.002Kummer, K., Mattes, A. & Stahl, J. Do perfectionists show negative, repetitive thoughts facing uncertain situations?. Curr Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04409-3Mattes, A., Mück, M., & Stahl, J. (2023). Perfectionism-related variations in error processing in a task with increased response selection complexity. Personality neuroscience, 5, e12. https://doi.org/10.1017/pen.2022.3Petersen, J., Ong, C. W., Hancock, A. S., Gillam, R. B., Levin, M. E., & Twohig, M. P. (2021). An Examination of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Neurological Functioning. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 35(3), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1891/jcpsy-d-20-00037Pollard-Wright Holly (2020) Interoception the foundation for: mind’s sensing of ‘self,’ physiological responses, cognitive discrimination and dysregulation, Communicative & Integrative Biology, 13:1, 198-213, DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2020.1846922Roy, M., Shohamy, D., Daw, N., Jepma, M., Wimmer, G. E., & Wager, T. D. (2014). Representation of aversive prediction errors in the human periaqueductal gray. Nature Neuroscience, 17(11), 1607–1612. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3832Solms, L., Koen, J., A.E.M. van Vianen, Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., Anne, & Matthijs de Hoog. (2022). Simply effective? The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching questions in a self-coaching writing exercise. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895439Sugiura, Y., & Fisak, B. (2019). Inflated Responsibility in Worry and Obsessive Thinking. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 12(2), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-019-00041-x
