I recently interviewed clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen, whose book How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists came out on January 7th. 

You can read Part I of our interview here. Below is Part II, where we discuss more about perfectionism in relationships. 

MF: How does perfectionism hold us back from connection? 

EH: Perfectionism tells you the lie that you have to double down on performance to belong and connect. [So], we double down on competence but what’s more important is warmth and so, we miss out because that leads to [a] perfectionistic self-presentation. 

So [we] only show what’s good, hiding what’s going poorly, put[ing] our best foot forward to be socially safe, not get[ting] rejected or criticized. But what happens is it ends up setting us apart, because then we end up being superhuman, unrelatable, or we set up a dynamic with our friends where we have more of a coach, teacher-student, or mentor-mentee relationship, as opposed to an equal relationship.

When we disclose, when we don’t do a perfectionistic presentation, when we ask for help, it signals we are equal. If I show you some of my mess, you usually reciprocate Oh, me too. And it shows that it’s not this hierarchical relationship. We are the same. And that also signals I trust you to see the mess and not judge it reject me or criticize me harshly. And that’s the foundation for a closer relationship.

MF: Yes, I trust you. We are equals. Those are powerful. If you’re perfectionistic, if you act in perfectionistic ways the relationships are hollow because you’re not authentic and people don’t really know you. And it reminds me of the loneliness you can experience around people. 

EH: For sure. Perfectionism means having to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person. Let me show you how good I am. We’re doing that to try not to get rejected. But in the end, when we’re singular, we’re separate. And so if there’s nothing people can relate to, then that’s going to make it hard for us to connect.

MF: I think there’s an assumption about love embedded in there. Like to be loved is to have power, or to have a positive reputation, rather than to be loved, is to be known, to be understood. 

And where do you think that that comes from?

EH: I came across this researcher, Dr. Tom Lynch. He says, if we don’t show much, nobody knows much. 

As for where it comes from, it can be genetic. The cutting edge of science shows that it is a heritable trait. 

But, we do know, it comes from families of origin. Gordon Flett and Paul Hewitt, who are the OG perfectionism researchers, have identified four types of families that make it more likely for you to come out perfectionistic. 

1. It can come from the classic helicopter or snowplow parents who are overly protective.
2.  It can come from perfectionistic families where we see hard-driving, high-achieving, we-are-our-performance behaviors. 
3. The third are families where love is contingent upon performance, where love and pride get confused because pride is earned through performance, but love is a freely given emotion. It can be easy to come out of families where you feel like the only thing that got you noticed was getting good grades and accomplishments and that your parents might not have noticed your personality, or when you felt deeply, or when you cared about something. 
4. The last type of family is a more unstable, chaotic environment: the parent with substance abuse or chronic mental illness can make kids feel like they have to double down on performance to gain a sense of control and stability.

MF: So if we’re perfectionistic in our relationships, always need to be strong and poised and on top of everything, and it feels petrifying to not be… what advice would you give us? 

EH: In perfectionism, evaluation is very all or nothing. It’s either I’m strong or I’m weak, or I’m smart, or, I’m so stupid, or like, I’m capable, or I can’t do anything. I think the advice around perfectionism, of “you have to lower your standards or stop when things are good enough”, does not go over well. So I try to not lower people’s standards. But instead of all or nothing, we’re trying to bring it together and have both. I’m a smart person who sometimes gets a wrong answer. I’m a strong partner who sometimes needs help. I am a capable person who sometimes screws things up. To keep one’s good ideas of themselves and allow room for the inevitable blips and bloops of life. 

MF: I’m competent-ish. I’m wondering does it feel too radical, or might it feel too destabilizing for someone perfectionistic to think “I don’t have to be competent to be worthy or valuable.”

EH: That’s the North Star. I think if we can get to “I’m valuable just as I am, and I don’t need to perform and prove myself to earn love or belonging”, that would be ideal. However, I think living in 2024, we’re in this optimization-focused, ratings-oriented, capitalistic, consumeristic society that makes us feel like we have to perform and achieve and consume to ever higher levels. And so we, if we’re put in a situation like that, of course, we’re going to respond with some perfectionism. 

So yes, ideal to think that we all have inherent worth, and yes, existentially, I 100% believe that, but it’s hard in a society like we have.

MF: I imagine some people are thinking, “I always wanted to get close to this friend, but it always seems like they have a wall up. When I ask them what’s going on, they just pretend everything’s going so sparkly.” 

People who want to get close to a friend that they might recognize as perfectionistic. So is there anything you can do as a friend [to get past that?]

EH: Yeah, in the responsibility pie there, it’s mostly on the friend to be willing to show vulnerability, to say, oh my gosh, that terrible thing happened to me too, as opposed to, the knee-jerk reaction of a perfectionistic friend to give advice, coach or show that they know what they’re doing. 

I think of the smaller part of the pie, what the friend who wants to get closer to the perfectionistic friend can do [is] you can model being the friend that you want to have. You can do some disclosures and [ask] has anything like that happened to you? 

MF: I have friends that are like this, and when they’re at a breaking point, they’ll finally be like, everything’s not okay. And then I’ll be like, Oh my god, I love this side of you. I feel so close to you. I try to affirm when the perfectionism goes down a little bit.

EH: I see a little bit of perfectionism in my kids, and I will say over and over again, I will love you, even if you get straight F’s and get put in jail. I will still love you. It doesn’t matter. And so with a friend, if they’re beating those themselves up over something, you could say, like, I still care about you. I don’t care that you fell skiing.  Or you can make fun of them a little bit. Well you know, our relationship is built on how well this dinner turns out. 

MF: Can you tell me more about the idea of “doorknobs”? 

EH: This is from the psychologist Adam Mastroianni. He talks about how good conversations have doorknobs. They open a door into ever deeper sanctums. There’s this huge Venn Diagram of overlap between folks with social anxiety and folks with perfectionism. So in a chapter that talks about how to get closer to people, and tries to coach folks through not just giving advice or doing the perfectionistic self-presentation, [I advise] offering conversational doorknobs to allow people to get to know us better and more deeply. 

MF: That’s beautiful.

Any other tips for people that might realize that they are more perfectionistic in their relationships, or even towards other people?

EH: If we find that we’re controlling the people around us and driving people away, we can essentially stop pretending that we’re not doing it. Try to speak it out loud and say, oh I’m sorry, I’m being controlling again. I’m trying to stop, sorry. 

And there’s a technique in the book from Dr. Thomas Lynch, who has done some excellent work with people with over control [over regulating your emotions]. He has a technique called self-inquiry, where he asks you to find the thing you did or the reaction you had that you’re a little bit ashamed of—that you were happy to hear about the misfortune of a friend, or you felt superior when you performed a household task better than your partner. If there’s a sense of superiority or shame that’s getting in between you and your relationship with other people, name that, and then ask, is there something here for me to learn?

If you enjoyed this interview you can read more about perfectionism in Dr. Hendriksen’s book, How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists, which is out now.