How anxiety and Perfectionism is a double-edged sword - particularly as female leaders and entrepreneurs

My name is Sheena Schuy (BPsych, MCoun, MSW) and you might know me as Sheena The Holistic Therapist on Instagram. Today we're going to be talking again about anxiety and perfectionism and we're going to be talking about how anxiety and perfectionism are your double-edged sword, particularly as a female leader or entrepreneur.

Society Rewards High Functioning Anxiety and Perfectionism.

A lot of the time anxiety and perfectionism is rewarded in society. It's rewarded, because perfectionism and constantly spending so much time getting things perfect and right, really is rewarded in society. So perfectionism is something people often confuse as a really, really fantastic trait to have. But what we mean by perfectionism is you just can't leave something alone. You just can't stop fiddling with it until it's perfect and sometimes there's never going to be your perfect so this can be things like constantly cleaning, adjusting, constantly working out or thinking about what you're working out or thinking about what you're going to eat because you want to have the perfect, creating the atmosphere there's a difference between cleaning and organizing and creating an environment that you love, and then constantly feeling on edge when things are out of place. And I need to get things into place and I need to make it look good. And perfectionism is usually when you're sacrificing other parts of your life to meet that need. So for example, you're choosing to work out instead of go hang out with your friends, spend time with your kids or do something for you, even when you're burnt out still doing those things. Same with the cleaning. It's ignoring the kids. Your cleaning is always going to be there.

But the thing is, is that it really is rewarded in our society to be doing all the things externally. It's a sort of perfectionism that really plays into external status. And again, that's why it's important because we reward people who have, quote, unquote, the perfect body in society. We reward people who are constantly thinking about their appearance and how they look and how they talk and how they present themselves. We often reward those people. And I've noticed that definitely, with the TikTok era, there's been a shift towards keeping it real and being more vulnerable. But it's still so pervasive. Anyone who grew up in the 2000s knows what I'm talking about.

That's the other thing too particularly with female leaders and entrepreneurs, people love it when a female leader will sacrifice all things to get the pitch perfect, or to get the job perfect. So she will sacrifice going on date night with her relationship. She'll sacrifice time with our kids. She will work all hours she'll respond to emails at all times. It's a lack of boundaries and putting everything else to the wayside besides the thing that you're focusing on. So that perfectionism is just you can see already the positives and the negatives, but it's just, it's rewarded and it's driven often by that high functioning anxiety or anxiety of judgment or Social anxiety.

There are many Underlying Psychological drivers with anxiety and perfectionism and they go hand in hand.

And procrastination also fits into perfectionism, which a lot of people don't realize it's going, I either have to do things perfect or not at all that sort of black-and-white thinking and it can be overwhelming because there's no such thing for some people as doing something. Okay, there's no such thing as going on. I'm just going to clean up a little bit. It's either kind of all or nothing.

And that's why some people don't even bother to start because they kind of go I know this is going to consume me and I won't be able to shut it off. And I can't turn it off. And so I just don't want to start because that's so overwhelming to be but if for people who don't suffer from procrastination because of the anxiety and the perfect the perfection, issue, perfectionism, they are often awarded because they meet their goals.

So female leaders and entrepreneurs again, whether they're in a workplace working for themselves or a business owner, they might have the edge in terms of meeting those goals.

Again, it's that double edged sword of they might meet the financial goals, they might get the work done, they might exceed expectation. What costs this is the thing that sort of brought you get to meet the goals. You get rewarded in some areas, but the cons are so great. And we need to talk about that part.

The Cons of Anxiety and Perfectionism.

The other edge of anxiety and perfectionism there is a constant feeling of never good enough. I'm never good enough. It's never good enough. For example you're editing a website, you could go back and tweak it and edit and tweak and edit and tweak it and it often feel like there's never going to be a point where you go okay, this i great and I can move on. There tends to always be a lingering feeling of, Oh, I could do this and I can tweak this and I can keep going with it - and that's normal as a business owner, female leader or entrepreneur or anybody in any workplace. There's some level that's normal, but if it's interfering with your ability to be fully present in the moment and to with your friends with your family, to be able to sit and rest then there is a real issue of never being able to turn that itch off.

Rest can be difficult.

If you're a person who finds rest really difficult, if you go to sit down and give yourself some just chill out time you find yourself thinking “oh, I should have done this or I can do this or I need to do this” and list making and all the things - It really is a sign that there are some internal, unprocessed trauma and attachment stuff driving what’s going on. Those experiences leave the nervous system dysregulated. They leave you unable to rest. Working a lot with these women, I have seen that those drivers often come from childhood experiences of getting love when you achieve something, getting praised when you achieve something, finally getting attention when you achieve something or feeling worthy when you achieve something when really we should feel loved, seen and worthy without achievement.

That's why a lot of parenting strategies nowadays, particularly the ones that I encourage is just when you're just sitting on the couch with the kids saying “you're amazing and I love you” so that they don't attach having to do something to be worthy, to be loved, to be seen and to get attention. They know they are loved just as they are. As a millennial myself, our generation absolutely did not get this and a lot of us struggle with how we go about getting love feeling worthy and getting that attention. But for a lot of women in particular, that anxiety and perfectionism is a way to meet those needs.

And again, it's that feeling of never good enough. It just cannot turn off. There's no off button, it feels like you're always on and you're again as mentioned to sort of neglecting the important things in life of being present with your partner, present with your kids. present with yourself. Just sort of taking time to turn inward. What I can see when anxiety and perfectionism is really high up there and when there's a lot of unprocessed emotion because I can see when people just cannot sit even for a minute with a breathing exercise or meditation. It's just too unsettling too overwhelming. There's too much dysregulation going on. And all of that is a recipe for burnout.

If you can't rest, if you can't meditate, If you find it hard to switch off or cannot be present - You're on the road to burnout. Then burnout takes a while to recover from. Burnout is literally feeling you've run out of juice in the tank, there's not there's nothing left in the tank, and then you might go on little pool a bit more and that's when your physical health really deteriorates. Again, I often see this manifesting is stomach issues, organ issues, skin issues, kidney issues, liver issues, sort of a lot of body aches and pains and unexplained issues. These are the warning signs that burnout is down the track because you're you've had so much cortisol and adrenaline running through your body which are the stress chemicals, that they're actually damaging your body so they're no longer at a peak performance level, they've gone past that because you have run on that for years. This causes damage to your organs and you're going to burn out without change. I often see this manifests as people who slipped into a depression and have got stuck in it for months. Who couldn't get out of bed couldn't move because of sickness and chronic fatigur.

The way I explain it to people is if you don't stop and listen and stop and slow down, your body and your mind will force you to. This often looks like getting sick and not being able to recover for months on end. It's like your body's saying, “we're done, I'm going to get sick so that you stop and you rest”. So how can we address this if you if you're related to this? If you're nodding your head thinking oh my gosh, this is me. First of all, this is pretty much 90% of people who walk through the door of my clinic. And it's me. I've been there have been that person.

how can we resolve some of these things?

Well, it takes changing a few things on a few different levels. But it's being superclear about the difference between work and home setting really clear boundaries. It might be in the evenings when you're spending time with family from five till seven - Just no phones during this time. Its limiting interaction with social media because sometimes social media will send you into a while, you'll see a post about something in your area of work or work out and then you start thinking, oh, I need to do that. Oh, that's a really good point. Oh, I should create a post about that. It's just too hard to switch off.

So you need to have strong boundaries around your social media use boundaries around your phone and your notifications, and put your phone away for a few hours. There are parts of the day when you can function and get things done that you don't need your phone. Believe me, it's absolutely possible. Again, prioritizing rest as anxiety-inducing perfectionist people - Rest feels like a betrayal or lazy or wrong. So it's retraining yourself to grow actually my body and my mind and my soul needs rest. Absolutely everybody needs rest. I'm going to burn out if I don't learn how to sit with the rest.

It can be practicing things like journaling, meditation, anything that's going to get in tune with your intuition, slowing down and doing things like walking. Walking is incredible for anxiety, burnout, and all of that because it actually reduces cortisol and stress, unlike jogging, or high-intensity interval training, which actually increases cortisol. Don't want that. Need to reduce it. And again, as always, it goes without saying that seeing a therapist and processing stuff, understanding for you personalityy. What are your drivers what experiences what internal core beliefs are driving where you all need? Your specific needs to be, to be perfect and what's driving your anxiety and what experiences both conscious and unconscious Have you gone through that are driving your anxiety.

I'm sure you already know what to do, improving your sleep, reducing caffeine, eating well exercising, drinking water, all the basic boring things that we all know that we should do, but actually implementing it and following through with the support of therapists, coaches, friends and family. You’ve got this and you can start small.

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Let me know and of course check out our Anxiety Personality Quiz to learn your type, or our Podcast for more on this topic!