You’ve read all the self-help books, watched all the morning routine TikToks, and read all the articles on how to increase your productivity… but still, you’re miserable. You’re always in a rush, your sleep schedule is f*cked, and you’re wondering where all your ambition went.

Then you open Instagram and see everyone in their Clean Girl Era, minimalist living rooms, and Big Girl Jobs. What do they have figured out that you don’t? It feels like you’ve tried everything and all you have to show for it is an anxiety disorder, a caffeine addiction, and a persistent feeling that nothing is ever enough.

Having been there ourselves, the least common denominator for all of our diagnosed and undiagnosed conditions seems to be… perfectionism — even though our lives feel far from perfect.

Our Favorite Flaw

Perfectionism is usually worn as a badge of honor. In job interviews, you proudly declare your biggest weakness as caring too much, trying too hard, and having impossibly high standards.

Initially, perfectionism tricks you into believing that you can control outcomes: If I show up perfectly, everyone will like me and all will be well with my soul. But beneath the facade lies a truth a lot more insidious: If I don’t give you a reason to criticize me, I won’t get rejected.

With stakes like spelling tests, term papers, and SATs, the pursuit of perfection feels more manageable — you know what to what to expect, how to behave, and whether or not you have passed or failed. But when life gets less unpredictable, the facade starts to crack.

The once-attainable challenge of getting it just right transforms into an insurmountable burden — you’re so overwhelmed that even the smallest tasks feel impossible. Your perfectionism stops being a tool to win you the race in gym class, and starts becoming a vehicle to avoid mistakes entirely.

Thomas Curran, a professor of psychology at the London School of Economics and a leading expert on perfectionism suggests that over time, perfectionism aggravates shame, guilt, stress, and fear of failure. Early anxieties about not meeting a standard of excellence metastasize later in life and manifest as overcompensating, overthinking, overachieving, and over-preparing as an attempt to control outcomes.

He suggests that perfectionism is a deficit orientation — meaning, if you’re always preoccupied with the ways that you fall short, you never get to feel good about yourself for very long. At its core, perfectionism is about trying to manage perceptions and earn approval.

Welcome to the Perfectionist to Procrastinator Pipeline. It sucks here.

Let’s open up the hood and take a look:

1. You feel the Pressure to Be Perfect

…because you need everyone to like you.

You likely developed your people-pleasing behaviors in childhood, driven by the primal fear of rejection for survival. It typically unfolds like this: You want your teacher to like you, so you become especially agreeable, accommodating, and cater your behaviors to reflect what she’s looking for in a star student.

You start learning the behaviors that keep you secure (accepted) and those that put you at risk (rejection). As a child, the formula is obvious — complete tasks, be polite, and avoid trouble for approval. This pattern feels rewarding, which typically spills over into for you relate to peers, parents, and other authority figures.

Basically: Be a good girl + do everything perfectly = love and acceptance

In adulthood, the simplicity of this formula fades. Despite your belief that you can manage how people experience you by adjusting your behavior, reactions start becoming more unpredictable. Stellar performance reviews don't guarantee a promotion, and great first dates don't guarantee a follow-up text. And you think it’s your fault. You take these micro-rejections personally, as proof that you weren’t or didn’t do enough. You make it all about you — you could and should be doing better.

2. You have a Fear of Failure

…because you have a black & white mentality.

For the perfectionist, everything is extreme — you’re either winning or you’re losing. Life is great, or you’re a fucking loser. You’ve passed or you’ve failed, and there’s no in between.

You only try things you think you’ll be good at immediately. You’re afraid to look like an amateur in front of people whose opinions you care about. This black and white outlook on life has turned succeeding into the only acceptable option, and failure into an absolute nightmare.

…because your self-worth is at stake.

Taking risks, putting yourself in new situations, and trying for the sake of it? Without a predictable outcome? You could never.

You are terrified to fail because your self-worth needs you to be flawless in order to be enough. But when achievement is the main source of validation that you get in our life, it becomes your life source, your fuel. So when you aren’t getting it… it feels like a threat. Your personhood hinges on where you currently land on the Winner to Loser Scale (and remember there’s no in between!).

3. You’re Overthinking Everything

…because you crave control.

Your people-pleasing behaviors are rooted in the control over how others perceive you, providing a sense of safety. This craving for control likely shows up in every aspect of your life — ruminating about that weird comment you made to the barista, the fact that you used two exclamation points instead of one, and worrying about the seating chart for that dinner next week. For you to feel fully safe, every little moment of your life has to be anticipated, thoughtfully considered, or manipulated entirely.

You’ve internalized that overthinking = control = safety. Overthinking keeps you safe, so it became your default setting.

You overanalyze everything — from how many exclamation points you use in an email to which pair of pants to order to which movie to watch. You second-guess minor decisions because they all feel major. Because that pass/fail mentality once brought you peace and control, you’re hung up on making right decisions and avoiding wrong ones; so, overthink everything — because one wrong move and BAM, you’ve failed.

This over-analysis, combined with the pressure for perfection, sky-high expectations, pass/fail mentality, and a fear of failure creates an impossible way to live. The mental gymnastics that accompany every little interaction and decision become exhausting — no wonder you’re tired.

4. You’re Stressed and Anxious

…because life isn’t how you want it to be or think it should be.

Completely driven by the fear of making mistakes, life starts feeling like it’s happening to you, and it always feels less than satisfactory. Those big visions you have for your life seem just as far away as ever, because you’re not actually doing anything about them. But how can you? You’re too tired, you’re too overwhelmed, you’re too stuck in the mud where you are now to even consider thinking about the future. The lack of progress only intensifies your irritation — everyone else seems to be making things happen, so why not you?

Your stress and anxiety start lingering more persistently. They feed on each other become your whole personality.

While stress is supposed to play a productive role in your life (keeping you safe from being eaten by a tiger receiving a D on your exam), staying jacked up on it makes it less effective. It’s just like your tolerance to caffeine — to actually feel it, you need more of it over time. So the cycle continues.

You wind up in a place where it’s impossible for you to take action unless things are really bad — your apartment is starting to smell, that 30-slide presentation is due tomorrow, or you’re about to lose your scholarship.

And where does that lead? Burnout, exhaustion, chronic procrastination. And it feels like the only way out is to outrun it, to keep grinding, to beat it.

5. You’re Too Self-Critical

…because that’s all you know how to be.

Rather than trying to overcome the perfectionism and procrastination that has you feeling trapped, you beat up on yourself instead. You’re under the impression that if you push, if you try hard enough, you can make anything happen. But despite your hardest efforts, you still haven’t reached that job, that salary, that ideal version of yourself. And because you haven’t succeeded at this, it means you’re failing.

Because there’s such a stark difference between what you expected versus what’s actually happening, your inner monologue has a field day ripping your efforts apart. You should’ve worked harder, you should’ve tried more, you should’ve done things differently.

Your inner critic feasts on you — and you don’t fight back. You’re too tired.

You get so used to picking apart your own behaviors looking for ways that you could do better, that it becomes the default. Your inner critic takes the driver’s seat and all the nicer voices get silenced completely. Why should they chime in? You haven’t done anything to earn it.

Grinding Harder Was Never the Answer

If you’re susceptible to even just one of these phases, you can still suffer the consequences of the whole thing. It’s demoralizing to look back on a string of unfinished projects, somedays, and dreams that feel further away than ever because you’ve been so preoccupied with controlling outcomes and perceptions. You start to realize that everyone else thinking you’re great means absolutely nothing if you don’t think you are.

We’re going to leave you with three strategies to take with you on your way out. These are things you’ll continually come back to, but as a perfectionist, you’re probably going to think you can do this in one flip of a switch — and this is where all your work lies.

The work is never done, and taking the longer view of it all is the only way out.

It may feel like there’s no way this could possibly work, that these ideas are completely antithetical to how you’ve been doing things. When you’re still under the spell of black and white thinking, maximum effort seems like the only acceptable approach, and that everything should feel hard. But the following suggestions will invite you to slowly take your foot off the gas pedal just to see how much better you can feel.

✌️ Neutralize

When you make a mistake, black and white thinking and the all-or-nothing mentality are always right there to provide commentary — but you don’t have to believe everything you think.

While the self help content telling you to "change your mind in order to change your life" isn’t wrong, it’s never as easy as it sounds. And as a perfectionist, you’re used to living in the polarity of either having figured it our or being a hopeless case.

In a sea of people telling you to just love yourself, we’ve found it far more effective to prioritize neutrality. The goal of neutrality is never that you’re thriving or living your Absolute Best Life™ (that’s some more perfectionism stuff!) – it's about accepting the facts without turning them into a whole story.

There’s plenty of time to work on feeling better, but when you’re really down and out about things, neutrality is the way to go.

Instead of: Spiraling out about a typo you sent to a list of 30+ people and waiting to get called into your boss’s office for this horrible mistake.

It can be: I made a typo — it happens. It’s doesn’t actually mean anything about me.

👇 Lower the Bar

Tell a perfectionist to aim for a B+ and you will end up with solid A level work. As a perfectionist, you’re predisposed to run yourself ragged with trying to get it right, which means that your version of “good enough” will still be quite good.

To put it another way — your half-ass is someone else’s full ass.

But for a perfectionist, lowering the bar will feel wrong at first, like one step forward and two steps back. But those two steps back are a bit like pulling the slingshot — especially when the Perfectionist to Procrastinator Pipeline has you clogged up in a temporary rut or a full-blown burnout. When you’re in one of those states, trying harder does not feel good, or in many cases, possible.

Instead, lower the bar. It’s highly likely that your expectations about something are greater than the capacity you have available and that’s totally okay. You can aim for a B+ and still feel great about the outcome.

Instead of: Well, I don’t have time to clean out my entire car right now, so I’m not going to do any of it. I’ll wait until I have time to do the whole thing, to do it perfectly.

It can be: I’ll just fill this bag with a few pieces of trash because that’s all I have time to do. It may only make a small dent, but it’s progress nonetheless.

✂️ Cut Yourself Some Slack

It’s way harder to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments when you’re under a lot of stress than when you have a more calm and centered mindset. This is because your capacity for what you can do changes every day, but your self-criticism will persist as long as your unattainable standards do.

In psychology, the phrase Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR) is often used to help clients find their way to the belief that their loved ones are doing their best and deserve grace. Extending UPR to yourself works the same way — if you can find a way to return to a generous long-view of things, it will help you find acceptance regardless of the outcome.

Instead of: I completely lost control of the day, I’m such a failure for not being able to stay on track YET AGAIN.

It can be: A bunch of unexpected things came up and took longer than expected, but honestly… I did my best.

If at first it feels like you’re making excuses for your less-than-perfect outcomes — cut that sh*t out. This is not about settling for less than you deserve, but instead, zooming out on the bigger picture. This one thing not going how you expected is not the end of the world, and life is long.

For more on this, check out Kate Neff’s TED talk or Radical Compassion by Tara Brach.

Grinding even harder was never the answer. You just had to believe it was in order to survive before you knew better. But now that you know you don’t have to be perfect, you get to be good.