135. How Moms Can Break Free From the Perfectionism Trap

What if you could keep your high standards as a mom and lose the constant pressure that says you’re never enough? That’s the promise of a research-backed shift from perfectionism’s heavy “concerns” to its healthy “strivings,” and it can change the way you parent—and how you feel—starting today.

In this episode, I show you how to protect the part of you that wants to grow while refusing the self-criticism that steals joy. You’ll learn the telltale signs that you’ve crossed the line—like all-or-nothing thinking, deflecting praise, and chronic comparison—and get simple tools to reset your nervous system before you spiral. Then we put compassion to work, not as a slogan, but as a daily practice that fuels motivation without shame.

If you'd like to get the show notes for this episode, head to:

 https://leighgermann.com

Transcript

Values vs. Perfectionism

Speaker 0:00

You know that inner drive, that deep pull to be the best mom you can be? That is not perfectionism. That's your values talking. But somewhere along the way, for so many of us, that beautiful drive quietly shifts into something that becomes heavy, a voice that says, we're never quite doing enough. Today I want to help us understand the difference between those two feelings because one of those things is worth keeping, and one of them is stealing our joy. This is Leadership Parenting, how good moms break free from perfectionism. Did you know that resilience is the key to confidence and joy? As moms, it's what we want for our kids, but it's also what we need for ourselves. My name is Lee German. I'm a therapist and I'm a mom. Join me as we explore the skills you need to know to be confident and joyful. Then get ready to teach these skills to your kids. This is Leadership Parenting, where you learn how to lead your family by showing them the way. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Leadership Parenting Podcast. I am super excited that you're here with me today. And I just want to say welcome if this is the first time that you've found us and you're part of this awesome community of moms now that we have, following these resilience principles, learning how to be happier, more joyful, more powerful in our lives. That's what we're doing here as we study resilience in our leadership parenting community. And today I have something I'm excited to share with you. I recently read an article by Francine Russo, and I'll put a link to the article if you're interested in reading it. It was in the Scientific American, and it really resonated with me. I mean, I actually set it down to sit with it for a minute because it really put language to something that I have been watching in the moms that I work with for 30 years, and honestly, something that I know what it feels like myself. So I'd really like to take our time together today to share it with you. And then I want to unpack what it means for us practically, personally, in a way that I hope can actually help you out, that you could take with you and apply to your life. And I will put links to the research we um talk about and that are referenced in this episode in the show notes if you want to go deeper. Everything will be right there for you under this episode number. So you can go to my website, leegerman.com, look up this episode, and you will find the link to the research and the article that I'm talking about. So the title of this article was How Parents Can Be Kinder to Themselves and Avoid Perfectionism. Okay, pretty intriguing. Yes, because I think there are some buzzwords in there. They're very key words for us as moms that are so important for us to pay attention to. First, how can we be kinder to ourselves? It is the power to really help us do the work we're doing. And it's so counterintuitive. And avoid perfectionism. My goodness, there's the powerhouse phrase right there. I'm always a little skeptical when I see so much promised in an article, but I think the author, Francine Russo, did a really great job reviewing some of the research and talking about some concepts that I want to bring to you. So this article covers research led by psychologist Conrad Piotrowski. I hope I said that right, who has spent years, years studying perfectionism specifically in parents, not just as a personality trait in general, but what it actually does to us in the role of a mom or a dad. And what his research found is that perfectionism in parents isn't just one thing, it actually has two sides. And the researchers call them by very specific names that I love. This is the part that I actually have never heard before in all my training on perfectionism and self-criticism and self-compassion. This is what kind of got me excited that I want to share with you. Because I think once you have this image in your mind, which is something that we have talked a lot about, um, the two sides of everything that we face, that the things that work for us and that are light and good and helpful to us, and then the dark side of those things, right? That may be too extreme or take us over the edge of what's reasonable and helpful to us. And they have applied this in the research to perfectionism by using two specific terms to describe perfectionism, okay? Strivings and concerns. And these come directly from the research literature to describe the two distinct dimensions of perfectionism. And here's why I love these terms so much and why I think they matter for us. They don't just tell us perfectionism is bad. Stop it, right? We've got lots of messages on that. If you look on social media, you'll see plenty of messages on just stop dealing with perfectionism. But don't you find that that kind of feels like a trap? Like, what are you saying? That we're not supposed to strive for good things. Um, how do we strive without going into the dark side where it's too much? And we start to get caught in that. This, these two terms, strivings and concerns, actually separate out the two things that are happening inside of us. And they show us that one is worth protecting and one is not. So the strivings are the healthy part, the drive, the high standards that you have as a mom, the genuine investment in being a good parent. That part comes from your values. It comes from caring, the commitment you've got. And we don't want to get rid of this. So I will admit, I think I fall on the side of perfectionism far more than I do not. And, you know, I guess what the opposite is of not caring about things. Well, I don't even think that's in the ballpark of what we're talking about today. I think most of us are trying to either be on the side of being kind of calm and free-flowing and easy-going as opposed to being a perfectionist. And I find I tend to lean toward the perfectionistic side. And that really is because of all of these things. I have a genuine investment in being a good parent. And I know you guys do too. I know because I have had thousands of conversations with you or moms like you, that you feel very strongly about your role and the responsibility that you have. So when someone comes along and tells us, stop being so perfectionistic, it can often feel like a really hard thing to do. What are you saying? Are you saying that I have to let go of the caring or the values and just kind of be satisfied, lower our expectations? And what I love is that the shadow side of this caring and this striving, they name as concerns. And concerns are the part of perfectionism that makes perfectionism a bad thing. It's the self-doubt, it's the fear of falling short, it's the constant measuring of ourselves against standards that we maybe can never reach, the inner voice that says we're not enough, even when we've given everything we have. Pietrowski's research found that parents whose perfectionism was weighted, meaning heavier toward concerns, that self-critical, self-monitoring side, they experienced something very, very striking: greater uncertainty, dissatisfaction, even regret about becoming a parent. Not because they don't love their kids, but because that concern that they have, that heavy focus was stealing the joy out of the very thing that they care the most about. This is the real definition of perfectionism. It's having so many concerns about our goals and our dreams, about our children and our role and the ideals that we have, that the concerns are so high that they outshine the strivings. They make it heavier, almost too heavy at times for us to even bear. So much so that we sometimes think maybe we're not cut out to be a mom, or we can't appreciate the things that are going well because it's always weighing on us. It's so heavy. And our goal, what I want to help us work toward, is to keep the strivings while reducing the concerns. Yes to the drive, no to the self-punishment. This makes so much sense. We have study after study that shows us that the biggest risk factors for parental burnout is that drive to be a flawless parent. And notice I said flawless, and particularly social pressure to be a flawless parent combined with our own self-doubt and our own kind of low self-esteem around our ability to parent. So this is what we might say is a classic double whammy. Moms who already feel like they're not doing well enough, they're feeling kind of bad about how they're parenting because their concerns are so big. And then they receive some outside pressure. And moms with a stronger esteem for themselves, especially in their mothering role, they're more protected from that outside pressure. So, what does that tell us? It tells us that what we believe about ourselves on the inside shapes how much the pressure on the outside can actually harm us. That's a big deal. That's something that we can actually work with. So, this is the article, and then the little deep dive I did on the pieces of research that were alluded to in the article too. But I don't want to just hand you the research. I want to kind of apply it to what's happening to us in our lives, why this matters so much. I believe that moms by nature, we're wired to care. We notice, we track, we think ahead, we plan, we worry, we're trying really hard. And that is not a flaw. I think when I get faced with the challenge to stop being perfectionistic, it kind of hits me there, right? Like, I need to stop doing that stuff. And I don't really think that's what we're supposed to do. That's actually our love in the action. It comes from what we care about because we want to raise kind children and show up for them and we want to do this well. It matters to us. But here's the thing about all of that beautiful drive we have it's that shadow side. That shadow side has all those concerns. And that's where the perfectionism lies. It's like a quiet shift from being okay with all of our desires and our hopes and our dreams and our ideals, and then just a little bit of a shift over that line from I want to give it my best and do a great job at this, to I'm never gonna be able to do quite enough to make this perfect. And this is exactly what the research is describing: that shift from striving for things, the healthy values-driven pursuit of growth, to drifting over that line into concerns, where we're no longer growing towards something, but judging ourselves against something that we perceive that we can never reach. Okay, I know I'm a little bit of a geek about this, but this is super exciting because this tells us where we need to use our intelligence, where we need to be smart about this. When we can find the core place to intervene, we've got the problem figured out. My friends, perfectionism, we can figure this out because this culture that we're mothering in, it is designed to keep us in the concerns side of the line. Social media shows us highlight reels all the time. Parenting content tells us everything we could and should be doing better. And the more we absorb that, the louder that inner critic gets. We've recently done a couple of episodes on the inner critic. She shows up because we care. That's the only reason why she's loud in our head. But this is a little bit of a perfect trap. And we need to know it. We have to recognize it when it's happening because we can't navigate something that we can't see. And when you drift over into that perfectionism side where we're all caught up in those concerns and we're comparing externally, I know I've been there many, many times. It can feel so discouraging. It just takes the energy right from us. So here are a few signs that I want you to watch for and see if it's showing up in your life. And if it isn't, I'm so happy for you. You've cracked this code. But if it is, you are not alone because all of us, I think, have at least experience in the past or current experiences that are showing up for us where we're drifting over into perfectionism. So do you ever have one rough moment that reframes your entire day? You know, you might snap at bedtime and then instead of just having a hard evening, you're the worst mom ever, right? Do you hear that voice? That's the concern side of perfectionism talking. And specifically, we could call it all or nothing thinking, right? It's one of those thinking traps that perfectionism uses as a disguise to make us think that we're failing. Or do you ever deflect a compliment about your child? Maybe someone says something kind and instead of letting it land and accepting it and kind of reveling in it and feeling like, okay, I'm getting some validation here. Maybe your brain immediately goes to all of the things that are happening that they don't see. And that's the inner critic again. Not trusting good news, not giving you space to actually get some feedback that things are going well. Or maybe you've got that constant measuring thing going on against other moms, maybe against who you think you should be, maybe an imaginary version of a mom that's supposed to have it all together. And I say imaginary as a real thing because I don't know anybody who has it all together all the time. That measuring is exhausting and it just never takes us anywhere good. And finally, do you notice this kind of going on in your family? Your children struggling to feel like they're enough, even when they're doing well. Sometimes I think just as human beings, we tend toward this behavior. And we often share it with our kids. Our own self-doubts get quietly handed down. The way we talk about our own mistakes, the way we recover from our hard moments, or maybe take a long time to recover, our kids watch all of it. And we don't want that for them, which is exactly why this isn't a small optional thing and why I get so excited about it. Learning to recognize and disrupt perfectionism in ourselves is some of the most important parenting work we can do. Not only for our kids, we're passing that on to them to be able to know how to do this, but it helps us love parenting more and love our lives. Okay, let's talk about what to do with all of this. Because knowing isn't just enough. We need application of these tools, right? And the first thing, and I can't say this enough, the first thing is just noticing that if you struggle with perfectionism, it doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It means that you care. I want you to see it as a coin. And on one side is all of that striving, all that caring. It means you have high standards. And on the other side is the concerns that cross the line, they're not helpful. So from now on, when you hear the word perfectionism, I want you to think strivings and concern. And perfectionism means we are more focused on the concerns than we are in the strivings. So important that we can separate these out because it's super hard to know how to kick perfectionism to the curb when we think it's still connected to the things we care about. It's almost impossible to do. That's where I got stuck because I was like, I'm not willing to give up on this stuff. I care too much about it. So I guess I'm just gonna have to be perfectionistic. But we don't. This is the powerful thing. You know, the finished research that I shared with you, the thing that protected moms from burnout wasn't getting rid of external pressure. That's another answer that we get, right? We just have to stop listening to everyone around us and maybe take big social media breaks and stop talking to other people and stop looking at other people. And I think that's impossible in our world. We often even look to each other to see if there are new ideas that we need and things we can follow, mentors that we could follow. So we don't have to even worry so much about the external pressure. What we believe about ourselves on the inside, that's the work we need to do. That's what we're building the strong fortifications around. Starting with our nervous system. When you catch yourself in that spiral, you know, that kind of self-talk. I'm a bad mom, I should have done this better, I'm not cut out for this. That's not the moment to analyze or problem solve. That's the moment to take care of yourself, right? Get your body out of threat mode, take a breath, calm your nervous system. Next thing I want you to reach for is that idea, maybe I've just veered over the line. You know, when you're driving and you just look down for a second, maybe even at your speedometer, and you look up and you realize that your car has just started to drift a little bit over the line. And we correct. That's what I want you to think about when you catch that self-talk going on in your head, that self-criticism. I want you to think, oh, I'm veering over into self-criticism. And that voice thinks it's protecting us by pushing us to try harder, but mostly it's just wearing us out. So when you notice it, we want to bring in self-compassion. We just did an episode on how to work with your self-compassion and your inner critic. I think it was episode 131. You can go check that out. We've got several episodes on self-compassion. But what your self-compassion voice will tell you is that you have strivings that matter. They're connected to your values, that you love your kids. This is why self-compassion is one of our five pillars of resiliency, not just as a self-concept, but as a practice. It's something that we do. I am self-compassionate every day because this is where my strength comes from. It's stepping directly into my strivings and saying, of course, I'm feeling critical right now because I care so deeply about this. Now, what do I want to do? Because the moment that we step into that perfectionistic side and the criticism, it drains you. Do you notice that? I just don't feel motivated by all of that guilt and shame and awful feelings. It makes me want to run away, not step up, not move forward. Look, even when we mess up, the path forward is not shame. It never is shame. It's acknowledgement, repair when needed, and then moving forward and letting it go. So you might notice that we started out talking about perfectionism. We started out talking about strivings and concerns, those two sides of the coin. And now where we're ending up is in self-criticism and self-compassion. When I created the resiliency system, it took me a really long time because I thought, how am I going to put into some order the key things that we need to know as mothers to really show up and be resilient? Resilience means bouncing back. It means going with the dips and the challenges and the ups and downs of life. And I thought, how am I ever? There's probably so many things that make us resilient. And there are many things, but honestly, you guys, there's like five core pillars. And self-compassion is one of the main pillars because it speaks to this inner struggle that we have between our dearest, most fond, loved desires and our criticism of how we're doing at those things. It's exciting that it's this simple. I'm not saying it's always easy, but when you know what's happening, you know what you need to reach for. We don't have to stop everything externally. We just have to get stronger on the inside, trusting that we can connect to the things that we are striving for. That's what's underneath the perfectionism. And we don't need that dark taskmaster to make us love better or be better. It's a mistaken notion. And when you know about it, you can shine light on it, you can see it and do something about it. Protect yourself. Which expectations you're going to carry, which ones you're going to set down. What helped heal me from chronic perfectionism is really understanding the two jobs of parenting. And once again, that's a recent episode. Please, please go listen to it. If you have not listened to that, it's episode 133. Do you know the two kinds of love every child needs? And in that episode, I explain the two jobs of parenting. Our first job is unconditional love, making sure your kids know they're safe, they're seen, and they matter just because they exist and that you are there for them. And job two is teaching and guiding our kids, helping them grow. And I think what happens with perfectionism is we judge ourselves on job two. We look at even how our kids are doing, and we take that as a report card, and we're, you know, looking at their skill level or their progress or how fast they're going, specifically, and learning the things that. Want them to learn, and then we judge ourselves based upon that. And I think what happens is it makes job two so predominant in our minds that we don't get to pay much attention to job one, just unconditionally loving our kids, and I would add unconditionally loving ourselves. It turns parenting into this performance evaluation instead of a relationship. It's a lifelong relationship. It takes all of our time and energy, and we share our life with our children in our parenting role. We should be free to love that a little bit more and not feel so heavy with all those concerns. So takeaway, perfectionism doesn't protect us. It steals the joy, makes everything heavier than it needs to be. Research even showed us that parents who took a more reflective, conscious approach to their own high standards, who held on to their strivings while working to quiet or avoid the concerns, they shifted toward more realistic and sustainable expectations over time. That's how we get through perfectionism. It's not about caring less, it's actually about carrying less of that load. So now you have a little bit of a model in your mind. I almost see it as a perfectionistic coin. One side it says perfectionism, the other side it just says I care, I love. And I get to hold that coin in my hand and flip it to the side that serves me best. And what I do now, guys, most of the time, it's care side up. When I'm facing perfectionism, I know what to do. I can flip it and go into the things that I really care about and let self-compassion work with that self-critic so that I can move forward. And I want you to be able to do that too. You're enough. Look to the light, reach for the things that give you hope and energy and motivation to keep going. Your kids are lucky to have you. I hope you can feel that and see your way to taking really good care of yourself as you do the most important work on the planet. Alright, friend, that's what I've got for you today. All the research from today's episode is linked in the show notes. If you want to read the article or go straight to the studies themselves, it's all there for you. Take what's helpful, leave the rest, and remember you're doing so much better than you think. I will see you all next week. Take care. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with others. Or help others find me by leaving a rating or a review wherever you listen to podcasts. The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness, or disease. It's also not intended to be legal, medical, or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care.