If you're a perfectionist, you need to hear this.

Perfectionism really is about at root a need and a desire to prove to everyone and all around me that I'm good enough, that I'm worth something.

That's Thomas Curran.

He's a professor of psychology and the author of a landmark study

that the BBC hailed as the first to compare perfectionism

across generations.

And in his brand new book, The Perfection Trap,

he lays out the major problems with perfectionism,

why perfectionism is way more widespread than we might think, and most importantly,

how to overcome it in your own life. And I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to them so the

book is available now wherever you get your books but without further ado here's my conversation

with Thomas Curran. Thomas thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me great. I always find it really interesting how people land on the topics that they study.

So could you tell us a little bit more about why you chose perfectionism and sort of how you got to this point?

I was putting a lot of pressure on myself through university and graduate school.

You know, overcompensating I think a little bit because I grew up in a small town and go moving into sort of a more I guess middle class world. I just saw everything and all around me that people were so much better, they were working so much harder, they were so much smarter, they were so much brighter and I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to compete.

Eventually, I just burned out and when I reflected on that process it was really that kind of those

kind of perfectionistic beliefs, know must be perfect must do better

must always do more work harder that was creating a lot of the psychological

difficulties so I looked out into the field couldn't see much work in this area

and what work there was didn't really take what I believe to be like a big enough lens as to say looking in it more of a societal issue as a societal problem and so really started to delve into the topic in a great deal of depth and here I am 10 years later. How do you go from this is a problem I'm struggling with and I'm recognizing in myself to looking at the field realizing not many people are looking into it

to being the lead author on the first major study to really look at this across generations.

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