Perfection Pressure And The Teenage Nervous System

Perfectionism doesn’t arrive as a neat little personality trait. It arrives as a nervous system that never quite unclenches and a quiet belief that love, safety, and belonging must be earned. I’m back from a short summer break and I’m going deep into what I’ve seen over 15 years of supporting families and young people: the pressure to be perfect is growing, and it’s shaping how children feel in their bodies long before they can explain it in words. 

We talk about that delicate stage around ages 10 to the mid-teens, especially the transition from Primary 7 into secondary school, where children can swing between needing comfort and pushing back with big emotions. I unpack why comparison is not “just in their head”. The nervous system compares feelings, not facts, which is why filtered lives, cultural standards, advertising, and the endless drip feed of online success can still hit as if it’s proof that you’re behind. If you’ve ever wondered “When did I stop being enough?”, you’re not alone. 

Then we get practical. I share parenting and communication tools that support nervous system regulation and emotional resilience, including a key reframe from Brené Brown’s work: reward effort, not results. You’ll hear simple phrases to use after school, ways to highlight character over achievement, and how to hold disappointment without rushing to fix it, so children learn they can rest, make mistakes, and still belong. If this lands with you, subscribe, share with a parent or friend, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to feeling safe in themselves.

Transcript

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Welcome Back And The Perfect Trap

Naomi Mills 0:27

Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer. And welcome back to the podcast. I'm so delighted that you've come. I have just been on a little summer break, so I pre-recorded a couple of episodes. It feels really great to be back. And the last one that you will have heard will have been about boredom being perhaps a really useful tool in helping reconnect with and regulate our nervous systems. And certainly your young people may have been embracing that I'm bored feeling over these last couple of weeks. And I hope that last week's episode has given you some good insight into why that's actually really a good thing. And on this episode, I'd really like to talk a little bit about the pressure to be perfect. And this time I'm going to talk about it from my own professional perspective and what I have noticed in working with families and young people over the last 15 years. And next week I am hoping to interview a genuine young person of 10 years old, my daughter Beatrix, to try and get into her insights as somebody who's going to be transitioning into primary seven and then into secondary school, which is actually a really fundamental time, I find, for all young people, right at the end of primary, that cusp of moving into secondary. And I know there can be a real mentality, both in the young person and sometimes the adults as well, of well, they're growing up now or they won't need to be as much anymore. And I think it's just a very delicate time between what's going on in our children's development because they it's very natural, particularly for girls actually, to swing between that very childlike, needy, huggy-kissy small person persona. And then you get sass and talk back and emotional roller coasters, and that's actually a really healthy, natural part of their psychological development. And it's really interesting to then consider what's going on in their physiology, in their nervous system underneath, and all of the tools that we've talked about throughout the podcast, actually, about slowing down, grounding, being bored, being creative, physical touch. There are lots of different ways that you can feed that, sorry, give your child what they need in terms of grounding and calm without them really even knowing about it. Because of course there's nothing wrong with them. They're just about to go through this tremendous transitional phase for quite a number of years to come. And what I want to explore today is how has that kind of changed in recent years? I want to explore with Beatrix, particularly next week, what it's like to be 10 in 2026. Because I feel that there

Growing Up And Nervous System Needs

Naomi Mills 3:40

is a question of when did we stop becoming enough? When did informational overwhelm, and I'm not just talking about social media, when did the world really show up with this view of perfectionism that our young people are really latching onto? And I see that every day in the clients that I help and in the families that I talk to, there is a lot of comparison and perfectionism. And so that's what I want to explore today from a nervous system perspective. But what that's really doing to how our bodies are operating. And it's of real concern to me, not only because I am the parent of someone who's going to go through this and is potentially already going through it, but because as a clinician, I understand the, I don't want to use the word danger, but I'm trying to think of a better one, the negative consequences of when perfectionism and not good enough becomes our default at any time, but particularly when we're young, that's then putting a lens on our entire lives unless we do something consciously to release that and give ourselves a new story, one that is a lot more inclusive and kind and gentler, frankly, to our nervous systems. And just in case you're not a parent or you're thinking this isn't relevant for me, I'm not just talking about performance at school or sports performance, but we are all performing somewhere at every aspect of our lives, in how we look, in our friendships, in our jobs, in our work, in our relationships. Every one of us is performing somewhere. And so I wonder if you can ask yourself, who is it that you're trying to impress? Because that's not a very comfortable question to ask, but it is one that's worth asking. And I really think whether you're 10 or you're 14 or you're 40 or whatever age you are, we are all often consciously, but very certainly unconsciously carrying this invisible pressure to be to perform, to be productive, successful, good looking, interesting, even to be healthy, to be kind or popular, to be happy, to become a version of ourself that feels like it is good enough. And I do a lot of one-on-one work with people when they come in retreats, and it and every form of self-development, which is extremely helpful in allowing ourselves to understand our bodies and our nervous systems and really regain ownership of who we are and how we want to operate in this world, there is always an element of this not good enough. And so, what happens when this story happens when we are young, when it begins around early teenage years, when our brains are still developing, you're trying to work out who you are. Belonging is so important to our young people, friendships feel incredibly important, hormones are changing, school just keeps increasing that pressure year on year with expectations, with exams. It's a real huge transition, five to seven years for all of our young people. And every day they are also carrying a device that will give them instant access to

Comparison Culture And Constant Scrolling

Naomi Mills 7:20

thousands of people who seem prettier or more confident or more successful. You know that story. And it's interesting because the family member of mine, who is just about to finish their teen years and is an incredibly accomplished young person, recently shared with their parent that they felt they weren't really doing well in inverted commas at life because of what they'd seen online with friends and such like. And although all of us know logically in our minds that everybody's putting the best of themselves on social media, that a lot of it is a filter, it's a show, the way our nervous system receives that information, it doesn't take that on board because it's mind logic versus kind of that aching in your heart that we all have of, oh, I wish my life looked like that. Kind of regardless of whether their life truly does look like that or not. Because remember, we are wired for survival, we're wired to thrive. Our bodies are still primarily working to feel included in the community and to feel safe. So your nervous system isn't comparing the fact that someone's put a filter on it and nine times out of ten, we share the good stuff and not the negative stuff. Your nervous system is just comparing feelings, and feelings are so powerful because every image that we're allowing ourselves to see comes up with am I enough? Do I look right? That person seems happier, looks like they've got more friends, they're doing better than I am, and it's not a one-off that really does this to us, it's that continuous drip feeding that happens actually at every age to us if we are engaging with looking around us. And I'm trying to not just make this about social media, I'm in life in general, it's in television, it's in every all the information and the images that we consume through advertising, just through walking through life. Perhaps you don't go on social media at all, but we have these standards of what it is culturally to be successful, to be good looking, to be happy. And these hundreds, if not thousands, of comparisons every week are shaping the stories that we tell ourselves. And let me bring this back to the young people. Because if you imagine being 14 years old, before you've even left for school these days, you've probably already checked your phone, seen what your friends are doing, perhaps seen somebody who's prettier or funnier or did better than you in life. And this is why it can feel like our children aren't just being allowed to grow up anymore, they're being asked to perform because they have this ability to compare themselves with thousands of people every day. And as we've said, comparison is how we as humans learn where we fit in life, and comparison is not a bad thing, but comparison without grounding and logic can become quite dangerous. And so I'm going to talk about, as parents, if you're a parent of a young person, some of the things that you can do to help soften that experience for your young person and really help them feel better and see that there is value in not meeting these incredibly high standards of perfectionism, that the culture, which we cannot change, is presenting for them. Children are also constantly measured, of course, at school, and that continues through university and work. So it's a part of life to experience success, to experience failure, and all of this is part of resilience building,

Reward Effort Not Results

Naomi Mills 11:25

and we're going to cover resilience in a in a later episode. One of the great takeaways I took from the work of Brene Brown, who I've referenced a few times in this podcast already, and her gifts of imperfect parenting, if you haven't read it, is a phenomenal guide. Is that one of the best ways to untrain our children out of perfectionism is to reward effort and not results. So when we reward their effort, regardless of whether or not they did well, as adults, they will actually perform more consistently and achieve more in terms of household income, job security, etc., than somebody that was rewarded for their results. And I was like, whoa. And that's because the child that's rewarded for effort, their nervous system actually learns, their wiring becomes, well, if I just keep trying because I've been rewarded for consistently trying, I'll get there. And so even though they fall down, they make mistakes, they don't succeed, they go again because there's reward in effort. But when we unconsciously reward our children for their results, to take, you know, a really classic sports example, you're going to perhaps that your child didn't come first in a race, they came third, and you see that, you know, as third, last, or failure or whatever. If it's if first is the only one that really matters to them, and this might not come from you, it could come from them and culture and friendship groups and other things. But if that's the only thing that matters, when these children grow up, they actually don't keep striving and creep pushing, so they don't achieve ultimately as much. And I really hope that lands. I try and implement that a lot in um my daughter's life, where if she she does music and if she has a music exam, we'll give her a little gift or a treat and a card that says, well done on trying so hard before we even know what her result is, to try and make it really clear for her that the reward is for her trying, not for whether or not she succeeds. Because we have to ask ourselves what wiring do we want to give our children? They can either start believing I get love and praise and you know these high social stakes when I perform well, versus people love and appreciate me and think I'm great when I try hard. Because when it becomes about the performance, that's where perfectionism really starts. And it's never because we expect our children to be perfect

Better Questions After School

Naomi Mills 14:20

or that they want to be perfect, but they do want to feel safe. So, what are the meaningful, simple things you can start doing at home, other than what I've just talked about, to subtly shift your child's perspective from this perfectionist mindset while understanding that belonging and friendships and being seen to be part of the group are fundamentally important at this age and a very healthy and normal part of psychosocial development, is instead of asking your children, you know, what did you get or what did you learn today? Children need to also hear things like, I loved watching you try. I'm proud of how you handled that. You don't have to get everything right. Perhaps sharing mistakes or struggles that you've had with them is a really lovely thing that you can do. And also just bringing some of this chat into your family, particularly around mealtimes or when you're all hanging out somewhere. Checking in, you know, what something that's made you laugh today, what's something that's challenged you, what did made you feel proud, all the ways in which you can start subtly but consistently highlighting to your child that there's far more to their personality or their worth is what I'm trying to say, than something they achieved, and it's bringing that into your conscious mind as an adult because

Naming Character Not Just Achievement

Naomi Mills 15:55

it that does take practice. And I'll give you an example because I actually had a really nasty fall on our way back from our holidays. I very bradly cut and bruised up a lot of my body, and my daughter was so sweet, not just at the time, but for the days after, like the first thing she would do in the morning would be to be like, How are your hands, mummy? How are you feeling? And it's so easy to let that stuff pass because you just you do you just have this lovely, cozy feeling that's like, my child's really empathetic, that's lovely. But have we told her that? Have we drawn that out consciously to show your child that that is a really beautiful attribute? And that's how we counterbalance this perfectionism, the not enough, all the stuff that as parents we just can't control what they'll see or what they'll hear, particularly at school and as they transition into adulthood. So I had to then consciously remind myself later that day to say thank you so much for checking in on me first thing this morning. It meant a lot that that was the first thing that you said to me. And so if you don't like some of these kind of quote, cheesier questions, because they can feel a bit uncomfortable for you, or the children are just like, I don't know. I don't know what made me feel proud today. It can feel quite American in its delivery. But what you can do is you can pick these parts in the day where you saw your child do something kind, where you saw them struggle and get through, where they did something that was noteworthy, and then really consciously bring it back to them. Because we really want our children to

Permission To Be Ordinary

Naomi Mills 17:40

know that who they are matters more than what they achieve. And so I don't think young generations need any more pressure, it's just permission. As parents, our job is to make it okay for them to make mistakes, to learn, to be disappointed and hold them in that disappointment rather than try and reduce it or take it away. Permission not to be the best, but to rest and to be just wonderfully ordinary because this all comes down to the fact that as children, when we learn that our worth is not earned, that love is given completely, regardless of what we do or do not achieve, that is the ultimate key to creating a stable, calm, safe nervous system that's gonna set your young person up for whatever the world throws at them throughout the teen years when they pull away from you and when they come back, that complete underlying knowledge that you see them as a worthwhile, fabulous human being, which I know you do. We just need to get into the practice of verbalizing it to them because the outside world is verbalizing a lot, probably a lot of things you wouldn't want said to your child. And as parents, our best ammunition for that is giving them the opposite view as well. So, thank you so much for listening to that today. It was kind of hard to keep on track, it just covers so much this topic. But keep tuning in, keep giving me your feedback, and remembering that you are the answer. Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparked something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uareanswer.co.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have it.