LinkedIn Presents

I'm Maura Aronsmeli and this is the Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories for business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges,

how they fell down, how they pick

themselves up, and how they hope work will change in the future.

Perfectionism is something we anxious achievers deal with every day.

Last week, we heard from Emmy Needfeld about how her upbringing and difficult childhood

and adolescence pushed her to physically and mentally unhealthy behavior.

Today, we'll continue the conversation on the need to be always perfect and what it means.

Later in the show, we'll hear from Eleanor Beaton,

an author and leadership expert about her own story of perfectionism, deeply rooted in her childhood.

But first, an expert in perfectionism to tell us a little bit more about where it comes from

and why it affects us. Thomas Greenspon is a licensed psychologist and a marriage and family

therapist. He's written the books, What to Do When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough, and The Real Deal in

Perfectionism, a guide for kids. Here's our conversation.

I'm curious, actually, what got you interested in studying perfectionism?

I have both a personal and professional interest in the topic.

Probably in the 90s sometime.

I got interested in it because somebody had published an article about something that

they were calling healthy perfectionism. And somehow or another, this struck me wrong.

Actually, I had been writing about perfectionism for quite a while before that, just brief notes

in a newsletter. But this article struck me. So I decided I wanted

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