Welcome to the Phoenix Helix podcast dedicated to autoimmune resilience. Today, I have a mindset minisode for you, so let's dive right in.

Thank you. Hi friends.

So today I want to talk about embracing imperfectionism.

Full disclosure, I am a recovering perfectionist myself. and in spite of knowing that perfection is impossible

and human beings are fallible, and I am human, like all of you, I still sometimes find

myself unconsciously striving for perfection, especially in times of stress. So you may

wonder, why is this a problem? Because there's a big

difference between healthy striving for excellence and pursuing the impossible. And perfectionism

pursues the impossible. And how that often manifests in someone's life is that a fear of failure

can prevent us from trying new

things altogether. When we do have goals, we might procrastinate because we're afraid we

won't do them perfectly. We often have trouble accepting help because we don't trust anyone

else to do things right. We tend to hate mistakes, judging both ourselves and other people anytime we spot one.

Nothing is ever good enough to be considered complete, and we apply that standard to ourselves as well,

never feeling that we are good enough. Our inner critic can get louder and louder, and we become very sensitive to the

criticism of others. So not surprisingly, there are health consequences to this type of perfectionism.

Not only does it increase depression and anxiety, but across a number of health conditions,

including autoimmune disease, it worsens health

outcomes. This is important for us to know because if we apply perfectionism to our healing

path, which many of us do, that can backfire. So it doesn't mean we shouldn't have any goals at all,

no standards, not care about anything.

That's not what I'm trying to say.

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