Secret #22: Perfectionism with Dr. Z
Join hosts Emma Waddington and Chris McCurry, alongside esteemed guest Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona (affectionately known as Dr. Z), as they delve deep into the intricate maze of perfectionism. Together, they unravel the complexities that drive our relentless pursuit of flawlessness and the hidden costs it entails.
Dr. Z opens the discussion by dissecting the motivations behind perfectionistic tendencies, from a profound care for one's work to the haunting fear of failure and the rigid adherence to internalized rules. As she shares fascinating insights from her clinical experience, you'll learn about the crucial need to examine these often subconscious guidelines that forge our actions and shape our lives.
The hosts also reflect on societal pressures and the intricate balance of caring for others while nurturing self-compassion. They converse about the paradox of promoting self-care when society often glorifies self-sacrifice, and Emma candidly shares her own journey toward understanding that self-kindness manifests in various, sometimes unexpected, forms.
Dr. Z advocates for a balanced approach to high achievement by laying bare a comical yet relatable anecdote about her quest for the perfect TV - a metaphorical invitation for listeners to contemplate when to aim for the stars and when 'good enough' truly suffices.
Highlights:
Understanding Perfectionism
The Concept of the "Maximizer"
Self-Compassion and Self-Care
Social and Interpersonal Perfectionism
Radical Acceptance and Personal Values
TIMESTAMPS:
[00:00] Fear of failure and rigid rules controlling behavior.
[05:18] Understanding client's struggles, mind's protective patterns.
[10:21] Dismissing standards invalidates and fosters fear.
[12:53] Caring about values & flexibility in actions.
[15:58] Approach tasks with fear or expansion.
[18:52] Reflect on motivations driving urges and choices.
[22:49] Teenager's stress due to late-night studying.
[26:09] Helping people with self-compassion and growth.
[28:46] Prioritizing health, limitations, and personal connections.
[31:41] Struggling to balance responsibilities and emotions.
[35:39] Taking ownership of what matters is liberating.
[40:55] Advising on decision-making: maximize or satisfy?
About Dr. Zurita Ona:
Read Dr. Z’s book Acceptance and Commitment Skills for Perfectionism and High-Achieving Behaviors: Do Things Your Way, Be Yourself, and Live a Purposeful Life
Dr. Zurita Ona, Dr. Z, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist who has significant experience working with children, adolescents, and adults with OCD, trauma, anxiety, and emotional regulation problems. Dr. Z is the founder of the East Bay Behavior Therapy Center, a boutique therapy practice, where she runs an intensive outpatient program integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) to support clients getting stuck from obsessions, figure out what they care about, and do stuff that matters to them.
Dr. Z is a behavioral therapist with a passion for evidence-based practices including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Her clinical work is dedicated to helping all her clients to get “unstuck” and live the life they want to live. She is the author of numerous books including Acceptance and Commitment Skills for Perfectionism and High-Achieving Behaviors: Do Things Your Way, Be Yourself, and Live a Purposeful Life, Living Beyond OCD Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Workbook for Adults, and Escaping the Emotional Roller Coaster: ACT for the Emotionally Sensitive.
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[00:00:00]
Emma Waddington: Welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Emma Waddington.
Chris McCurry: And I'm Chris McCurry, and today it is our great privilege to welcome Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona, known professionally as Dr. Z, not to be confused with the high end guitar amplifiers of the same [00:01:00] name. She's a clinical psychologist in Walnut Creek, California, director of the East Bay Behavior Therapy Center. She is the author of six books and the coauthor of two more topics ranging from helping teens with OCD and parents of teens to adults struggling with OCD and perfectionism and how to break free from our emotional rollercoaster. She's the host of the playing it safe podcast as part of her mission to get people unstuck from ineffective playing it safe moves so they can start living a rich, purposeful, and meaningful life. And today we are going to be talking about perfectionism. So, welcome, Dr. Z.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Hello, Chris. Hello, Emma. Thank you so much for having me.
Emma Waddington: Yes. This is wonderful.
Chris McCurry: So, perfectionism How would you, how do you regard perfectionism and, you know, how does that differ from just you know, working hard?
Patricia Zurita Ona: when I think about perfectionist, I'm thinking about the [00:02:00] drivers, what leads people to overrepair, to work harder and harder. To do more and more to jump from one goal into another goal. And what we know is that behind all, all, all those behaviors, there is a person that want deeply cares about what they do, whatever project they are participating on Whatever role they have in their relationships in the family, they deeply care of the things or projects they're participating on.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And at the same time, as much as they deeply care, they're also scared about being a failure or making mistakes. And that fear of being a failure or making mistakes can be really, really paralyzing for some of them. Or the other aspect of perfection is, is that. A person is holding on to some rules about how things are supposed to be, how people should treat them, how they should perform.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So it's a combination of these psychological [00:03:00] processes. Deeply caring about what you participate on, being afraid of being a failure, being afraid of making mistakes and having these rules about how things supposed to be, the lead people to do all types of things. They spent hours and hours researching on information, internet.
Patricia Zurita Ona: If they are going to host a dinner, they are searching for all the recipes and they are trying to prepare everything perfectly. They are definitely working harder and harder. So all that leads them at the end on the one hand to feel, perhaps excited about what they're working on. And at the same time, if they don't check how these perfectionistic behaviors are working in their life, they can end up feeling very tired, depressed, ruminated and struggling.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So perfectionist is just this, this. Word that we use to talk about more than deeper drivers, duplicating about what you do. I'd be very scared about being a failure or making mistakes [00:04:00] and holding on to rules about how things supposed to be.
Chris McCurry: some of these rules, I imagine, are, go back pretty, pretty far in one's history. Family of origin stuff. And we can come up with all kinds of crazy rules, almost out of thin air when you're a child. So how do you see that in your work with folks in terms of kind of uncovering some of these rules?
Chris McCurry: Because a lot of them, a lot of the rules we operate by are very implicit, and we don't even know we have that rule until we start to articulate it. And in my experience, just getting people to articulate the rule can be a therapeutic achievement in itself.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right. That's right. That's such a great question. One of the things that I found is that. Most of my clients when, when, when I'm working with them some of them, they are aware that they have perfectionistic tendencies. A lot of them, they are not aware of that. All what I know is that they're very frustrated [00:05:00] because they have been working harder on a project and things are not going well.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And they are ruminating on that and they don't understand what's happening. So I think there is a lot of truth with what you're saying Chris, that Sometimes people are not aware of all these, how these rules are driving their behavior, how much they're being pushed to do more and more. What I have found very helpful is, of course, to slow down and a step back in the work we're doing.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's always a good beginning, right? And I usually start asking my clients for what really hurts? What's really, really the hardest part about that particular project, about that particular task they're struggling with? I want to understand to that T what's their experience that they're really distressed about it.
Patricia Zurita Ona: As they are sharing what they are struggling with, I also try to ask them, what does your mind tell you? What is your mind trying to, to, to protect you or push you to do more and more? What would be the other side if you don't do this? So I think takes a lot of diving [00:06:00] in, into unpacking where they are getting stuck.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So usually start with these, these stuck situations that they are dealing with. And I do ask questions again, that what is your mind working so hard to protect you from? What is your mind pushing you to do right now? I may ask questions, and how old is this thought? Is this a new thought? Is it only coming for this particular project?
Patricia Zurita Ona: Or has this thought been before? And I'm referring to these rules, right? And what you find is that you do, it's exactly as you're saying, that there is a historical pattern that has been reinforced. People are holding on to rules since very early, since very, very early. It's not something that happened from one day to another day.
Patricia Zurita Ona: They remember when they were children, that were how they were approaching a task. They remember when they were teenagers, the rule that they were falling through and there are many, many of these rules, right? I had a client long time ago that had this rule about every time [00:07:00] he had a conversation, he needed to throw a joke to make sure that the person reminds him, you know, with a smile on their face, because that's how he felt appreciated.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So that was a behavior that he would always make the point though, right? And he was dealing with more what we call social perfectionist. so this rule was ingrained from very, very early I think we cannot in my work, I found that The way to catch these rules is to really by asking what were these moments of a stagnant and unpacking them and then mapping them right when you were a kid, how this will show up for you when you were a teenager, when you, when you're early twenties, when you were like, mid twenties, and you will see how people have, hold on to this rule and then how they have been managing the rule throughout their life in different areas of their life.
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Chris McCurry: Well, and I think context would be important here, too. I mean, it Making sure you tell a joke in every conversation you have is gonna work great, unless you're at [00:08:00] the funeral. So, you know, rules have to be put up against the context in which, you know,
Chris McCurry: you're operating.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right. That's right. And perhaps that's one of the hardest part when people are prone to duplicate about what they do. And they quickly engage in perfectionistic actions that they are not discriminating when sometimes working super ultra hard is the right thing to do. And when sometimes letting things go is also the right thing to do, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: Like there is no this context sensitivity about where you are in life. My day has X number of hours. How much can I get done in this amount of hours? What happens when I say yes to every single thing in front of me. So I think that that is why in my work, I like to talk about harnessing actions.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Finding the golden nuggets of when working hard and harder is the right thing to do. And when sometimes letting things go and doing [00:09:00] good enough things is also the right thing to do.
Emma Waddington: I think something I was listening to you and thinking about that story, right? I think it's incredibly validating to know where those messages came from, because sometimes, you know, working with clients and even myself, I can hear those messages in my parents or in people that looked after me. And in that context, perhaps that was the best thing I could do to get enough love, affection, attention, validation.
Emma Waddington: That was the right context working really hard or making sure I didn't make mistakes was more likely to get me my needs in that context. But as we fast forward in the world I live in now. Over striving, needing things to be done perfectly, no longer gets me those needs and actually has lots of costs.
Emma Waddington: Sometimes, perhaps, you know, helping us and other people who are struggling with these behaviors notice that it [00:10:00] did make sense then. It just. No longer does today can be very helpful and validating it has been for me.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right, that's right. I think, One of the things that in the past has made me cranky is when, when we simply say people let go of your standards, don't work so hard, right? I think those messages are also very invalidating and there is so much, I think, messages in pop psychology and social media around that every client I have worked with has found those messages very invalidating because we're describing once they are historical, second, they had had a purpose in their lives.
Patricia Zurita Ona: It just happens that as people are moving in life, they were doing the best they could to manage to manage, you know, how together meet the needs met to manage. Also, there is stories of not being good enough. Right, so I think. Flipping the coin a little bit and noticing how these. How this fear of making mistakes has developed what [00:11:00] their mind tells them when the mistake happens, what their mind tells them when something goes wrong and really looking at the history of that makes a difference.
Patricia Zurita Ona: I think it's a much more compassionate approach.
Chris McCurry: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's so much more compassionate and hopefully generating some self compassion in the client. And, you know, instead of saying, you know, well, you're just doing it wrong. You know, to be able to say, well, yeah, of course, you have that rule. And of course, you're still trying to apply it to the current situation.
Chris McCurry: It's just not fitting. Let's take a look at that. So yeah, it is, it is very validating, but also opening up the possibility of, you know, we could shift this.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right. That's right. I think the other alienating message that people have received is that again, they have to drop their standards. So when I start working with clients who are prone to duplicate about the things, I capitalize that the work is not about letting it go of how much they care.
Patricia Zurita Ona: It's [00:12:00] distinguishing how it really works on their life and when, how, how they have to find their own freedom to relate to those values in a flexible way. Right. Because again, I think when I work with these clients, if you ask them about what's behind the project they're working on, or the resume they're working on, or the book they are writing, or the podcast they're working on, you will hear this strong attunement with what they really care.
Patricia Zurita Ona: They care about disseminating. They care about they care about aesthetics. They care about creating something new. They care about the dinner they're going to host. So touching that, touching the value and what matters to them helps them to say, okay, are we holding into the value as a rule or as a principle?
Patricia Zurita Ona: Right? That is an important question to ask them, right? As, as I'm saying the word rule, I'm making a fist on my hand. So I will do that in my work with clients. So are you holding into that value as a rule like this, or are we holding it flexible and dancing with what life is bringing to you right now, [00:13:00] because they're usually they're holding it like a rule, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: So I think making that distinction also can be very, very helpful to them on the sense that the work is not to stop caring or to stop doing things. perfectly. The work is distinguishing when you have to let it go, when you have to hold the value more flexible and find what is in front of you without, without rigidity, I will say.
Chris McCurry: I just, I just wrote down what you said. Dancing with what life is bringing now. That's amazing. That's wonderful.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Isn't that what we all do, though, to the best we can? Sometimes we dance cha cha cha, sometimes we dance.
Chris McCurry: I, I, I don't know. It's like my, my wife loves to dance, but he also wants to lead. And that, and
Chris McCurry: I'm willing to let her lead, but it has created some problems before. So, yeah, I mean, dance, dancing with life is great. Is as long as get a, we're allowing life to [00:14:00] lead sometimes.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right.
Patricia Zurita Ona: that's right.
Patricia Zurita Ona: As most often happens, right, that life is usually bringing to us all types of situations, right? From the moment we opened our eyes to the moment we fell asleep. Everything went off many times, right? That's just life.
Emma Waddington: Yes.
Chris McCurry: in a quote and so here, here, here we go. I'm, I'm going to quote the Roman Stoic Seneca, who said the fates lead him who will him who won't they drag.
Emma Waddington: But you certainly do, rag. Yeah.
Patricia Zurita Ona: I love that quote. My goodness.
Emma Waddington: Yes.
Chris McCurry: So, , how do we know when we're, when we're dancing well, and how do we know when first Toes are getting stepped on?
Patricia Zurita Ona: Wow. That's such a deep question. Yes. Or being drug. Yeah. in my work, I like to talk about this micro choice points every single [00:15:00] moment when we deeply care about something. We're making a choice in the case of work with perfectionist. Is choosing, am I approaching this task to manage my fears of being a failure or am I approaching this task because it's going to expand my life?
Patricia Zurita Ona: What we have is that with perfectionist, as we know, there is this strong fear of being a failure and making mistakes, not being good enough. Because I'm afraid of this, I may overprepare, I may spend hours again searching information going to the nitty gritty of details. So when people have this urge, this urge to actually do things, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: So when my clients have that strong urge to do things, to work the extra five hours, I ask them to check what's driving this. Am I trying to work more to just, you know, manage my fear of being a failure? Or am I trying to do more because this is going to expand my life and it's something I deeply, deeply care?
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's a very subtle [00:16:00] distinction. I think it's a very subtle distinction. Of course, when you deeply care about what you, what you're participating on, there is, there are going to be fears of making mistakes. But there is a difference when the fear of mistakes is so loud, and it's on your face, and it's like heavy metal.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Versus when you're pursuing your balance and the fear of mistakes may be there, but it's a little bit softer and you know that this is something you want to pursue. So then distinguishing the experience of when people are making choices is one way to distinguish, right? We are dancing in an effective and a skillful way in life.
Patricia Zurita Ona: When we are acknowledging the time that we're living, what's happening in our lives, we were making these intentional choices about the area that we want to prioritize in our life versus trying to do everything at once versus not checking how our behaviors are affecting our life and the relationship with ourselves. So that will be a short response
Emma Waddington: And I think that's what the When we're talking about the [00:17:00] gripping versus allowing, you know, the sort of dancing, it's the noticing that's really key. Are we gripping or are we dancing? How are we flowing with things? And that sense of stuckness is incredibly painful. Feeling really stuck and things not working feels visceral. And you know, helping ourselves to lean into and being curious, what's this actually like for me right now will help us to be more open and perhaps see some of the unworkability because sometimes seeing the unworkability is very painful, like we're doing
Emma Waddington: something wrong and. And it's hard. Yeah, absolutely.
Chris McCurry: admitting defeat.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as you guys were talking, there is this. So I also might ask my clients to check. What are you chasing here? Are you chasing an outcome? What are you chasing the process of participating on this project? Because quite often we're going to be chasing a particular outcome that we don't have [00:18:00] control of, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: So it's also important to check what is my motivation here, right? What am I really, really chasing here? And in terms of motivation, I also invite my clients to ask Are you trying to avoid something? Are you trying to gain something like approval from others or feeling love or feeling seen, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: So that's another key question for people to reflect on what's driving this urge. I also sometimes ask my clients to check as you have this urge, how are you relating to these standards? In particular, when things go south, what are you really, really trying to manage here? So I think this is a reflective questions is slow down again, this automatic response of just going along with whatever these urges tell you to do.
Patricia Zurita Ona: But required really to step back and reflect on the choices they are making and to check what drives those choices. [00:19:00] That's
Emma Waddington: The reality is that when we get sort of, when we do engage in behaviors that could be described as perfectionistic, when we are pretty determined to make sure we do get to that outcome, or we, you know, work really hard. to do things to a degree that we think people will be happy with, you know, what's what's sitting behind all of that is the fact that we care deeply about whatever project or about whatever person we're working hard from, and it's not because. There's something wrong with us that we can't stop behaving in this way. It's because that we care. It's because it's so important to us. And I think that's really important because a lot of people who have these really strong drives to work really hard. And because they care very, very deeply. We can also be very critical [00:20:00] when we don't meet those expectations and the reality is that that criticism can also go on to the fact that we can't stop, you know, because those messages that we get.
Emma Waddington: Often are, you know, just don't, you know, can't you just stop caring? I've had clients say to me, just stop caring. I've been told to stop caring. And it's so painful because there's a part of them that thinks, why can't I just stop caring? What's wrong with me? That just sort of adds to that. Yeah, adds to the fear of failure, right?
Emma Waddington: I can't even stop caring. And, and the truth is that you can't stop caring. That is impossible. We just can't stop feeling.
Chris McCurry: Well, I've sometimes brought that up with clients, you know, sort of an I ironic way would just say, well, I mean, if you don't wanna be anxious about, you know, school, just stop caring about school. And if some teenager will go, well, what, what I, I, and, and I'll say, [00:21:00] well. You know, if you're going
Chris McCurry: to care, you get to feel X, Y, and Z, you
Chris McCurry: know?
Chris McCurry: And so let's talk about that,
Chris McCurry: you know, just don't care about whether your child, you know, comes home at night, what,
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right. You remind me years ago when I was starting to work on the book on perfectionist, had a session with a teenager, of course. And this client was working on college applications. So it was working hard, it's challenging, very competitive, right? You can imagine the stress that, this person was going through.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And then somehow I don't know what was going on through my mind. I don't know. But then make this comment, like, I'm wondering how will it be to work until maybe midnight tonight and then wake up early tomorrow? Because every night this teenager was working until 2, 3 a. m., waking up very late for classes and then rushing to school, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: This was going on for [00:22:00] two weeks. So, I remembered, I don't know what was going on through my mind. The moment I finished saying that sentence, This thing looks at me and say, Dr. Z, did you smoke crack today? How can you tell me that? I have to get my essay done.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And then we go another is like, how can, how dare you? How can you ask me to not care and work harder and harder, right?
Emma Waddington: That's right. That's right. And it's so interesting 'cause those two come together caring and working hard. Right. And that, and that's
Patricia Zurita Ona: Yeah.
Emma Waddington: the problem is that
Emma Waddington: there are, there are two pieces.
Chris McCurry: yeah, there's, there's also caring and letting go. but I, I think it's also important for people to realize, and this is something that. In acceptance and commitment therapy, we talk about a lot where these values, these things that, you know, we, the things that guide our behavior, they, they, they need to be freely chosen. [00:23:00] They need to be, this is a choice, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm choosing to care about. My college applications, you know, I'm choosing to care about, my child's safety or whatever it may be.
Chris McCurry: And then I
Chris McCurry: think that ownership, it helps, you know, say, okay, you know, this is, this is my choice. This is, you know, what I've, now I have a bunch of decisions to make based on that choice.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's right. That's right. I think you know, sometimes there are certainly cases in which People are engaging over preparation or perfectionistic behaviors because, they want to be perceived in a particular way by others, right? I think there is also a little bit that, right? Social perfectionist, interpersonal perfectionist.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So it is helpful to unpack really, right? That the value is something you're freely chosen that matters to you. That is how you want to stay. Stand up for your life that has nothing to do with how others [00:24:00] perceive you feel or think of you because we don't have control of that. Right? So, sometimes there is a little bit that I'm packing that we have to do on the values, but that the core, I think there is this size of the coin as Emma was mentioning.
Patricia Zurita Ona: When you deeply care, you're going to be prone also to do more and more, right? The perfectionistic actions are going to go they're going to turn up. And I think that's, that's why it's important to help people to check really how it's really working in my life and to help them to make this discrimination which leads me to, to this other point I was going to make. One of the hardest things that I have found with my clients is on the one hand, self criticism, Which is really, really hard because they can be extremely compassionate with others, but really, really harsh with themselves. And sometimes they hold on to beliefs that by being tough with myself and motivating myself, I am not tough with myself or critical with myself, I'm letting myself off the [00:25:00] hook.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And that's where certainly self compassion practices or self compassion on the go exercises can be helpful for, for for those moments of a stagnance. Struggle I have seen is that in life people, we do care about different areas in our life. We care about our friendships. We care about parenting.
Patricia Zurita Ona: We care about our careers. When a person is prone to deeply care at times, they are trying to hold on to so many things at the same time. Right. We dismiss the fact that they have certain number of hours that we have limited amount of energy every single day. And and sometimes I have to ask my clients, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: What are we going to focus on this week? What are you intentionally going to pay attention to? And why are we going to say no which is very, very hard because this tough choices definitely requires kindness and sometimes grieving, sometimes grieving that I have to say no to so or so that I care about and that I have found that that's very, very [00:26:00] hard, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: But I think it is important to, to help people to make this distinction and to acknowledge it is humanly impossible for all of us to perfectly live our values in all areas of our lives at all times. We are not designed like that.
Emma Waddington: I love that idea of grieving. I have not thought about it that way. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Can you expand on that a little bit? Because I think that's a really important idea. That when we can't do everything the way we want it to be done, there is grief.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Yeah. I can share a personal experience I had a couple of years ago. I certainly deeply care about dissemination, deeply care about creating resources to show the application of ACT for feed based struggles that speaks to my heart. And I also deeply care about my connections with people and having rich and rich relationships [00:27:00] and hanging out with the people that I care about.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And during COVID I got sick. and I got sick to the point that instead of having, I don't know, 14 hours of function during the day, my days shrunk to maybe 8 hours, 7 to 8 hours, I will wake up and that's as much as energy I will have, because I had low iron levels, so, at that time, I will get emails or invitations to give a presentation, or I will have sometimes invitations from my friends to go for gatherings or for hikes.
Patricia Zurita Ona: But I genuinely knew that my body couldn't handle more than seven to eight hours. That was as much as I could do, and if I push it too much, I will feel it. So I remember I got an invitation to give a workshop. I think it was some procrastination. I don't remember, but it was that really, really tough moment in which I had to navigate that relationship with my body and my health and the relation [00:28:00] with my career.
Patricia Zurita Ona: And I knew that I was scared of course, of saying no to this, to this invitation, because I will never be invited again. My mind was telling me all those thoughts, right? What's going to happen? They're going to think I'm rude. So at that time, when I got that email, right, I, I have to, one, I chose to prioritize the relationship with my health and say no to many things, many things that deeply, deeply mattered to me, giving a workshop, participating in another book, and it was tough.
Patricia Zurita Ona: It was tough. The grieving came by acknowledging that I was hurting, that the choice that I was making was coming also with with the pain of saying no to all the projects that I wanted to participate on, to acknowledge when sometimes my mind was telling me things like, this is going to be it, you won't get that invitation.
Patricia Zurita Ona: The knowledge that my mind will go into this disaster forecaster way of thinking, right? I think [00:29:00] that has been extremely helpful in my life. Certainly to make room for that what comes when we're saying no and to encourage my clients to make room for the disappointment, the sadness about having to say no to other things.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Think about parenting, how often parents have to make all these very, very tough choices. Do I go to the soccer game of my kid? Do I go to this other class, right? Or do I go do this for the family? That's very, very hard, right? What happens when they try to pull into so many directions and what happens when they kind of slow down and just acknowledge that this is as much as I can do right now, so it's also making room for the sadness, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: Knowing that in that moment, that was a values based choice. So I think grieving comes with acknowledging that we're hurting in some way, like noticing the feeling that comes, noticing what your mind tells you. Usually it's about the future. It's going to be really, really bad. And it's still [00:30:00] going back to your values in that moment.
Emma Waddington: it just dawned on me something that I don't think I've reflected on enough. Is that often when we make this decisions, the dominant feeling is guilt that we often feel guilty and we don't pay enough attention to the grief, like, like, as you were talking about, you know, prioritizing your health, and saying, no, there's that guilt to say no, or not going to your son's soccer.
Emma Waddington: There's the guilt, but actually there's also that grief. I'm not participating in things that matter. We often pause on the guilt and then potentially get self critical about the guilt and don't give ourselves enough room to grieve and recognize, actually, this is really important stuff. And I'm sad that I don't get to do
Patricia Zurita Ona: that's right. I think many times when I think about perfectionist, we're thinking about the doors, the go gatherers that people can make [00:31:00] things happen. But with all that, right, what we have is a person that it can be sensitive to getting things done in a particular way. It can be sensitive about duplicate, about things.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So I think talking about the grieving process of saying no to something that matters can also be very I think very transformative for people and for all of us.
Chris McCurry: Well we all have some area of our life where we get stuck.
Patricia Zurita Ona: I have many, Chris. I don't think just one. I have a collection of
Chris McCurry: But
Chris McCurry: you know, something Emma said a moment ago, you know, that something, something mattered. And I think one of the, one of the things that I've talked about that I learned through acceptance and commitment therapy was that things. Things don't matter. We matter about things. So it's really mattering.
Chris McCurry: It's a verb to matter [00:32:00] about something. And so, and to, and to be able to say that I think is a way of owning that and saying, I'm mattering about my son's soccer game, as
Chris McCurry: opposed to like, I gotta go to my son's soccer game. You know, I, I'm mattering about it. It's, it's a choice. It's part of that bigger constellation of being a good dad, which I
Chris McCurry: matter about. And so Yeah.
Chris McCurry: that's, that's mine. That's my thing. And, you know, maybe next week I won't matter about it, but today, today I'm going, even though it's raining and, you know as it, as it often is in Seattle during the fall when kids are playing soccer. but you know, that's what good dads do
Emma Waddington: I was just thinking that there is something quite liberating to be able to take ownership about what matters. Like, I'm thinking, listening to you Patricia and thinking. You know, you give, as you speak of, of individuals who hold these really high [00:33:00] expectations, there's a kind of an acceptance and a compassion that this matters and therefore you will, it makes sense. That you will work so hard because it's matters and there's something really important and liberating to be able to put our hands up and going I'm mattering about this, actually, it's okay that it matters that I cared so deeply about hosting this amazing dinner party and it's okay.
Emma Waddington: And it doesn't matter to me if nobody else sees it, it only matters to me. And it matters greatly that, you know, I, I care deeply about I apply for my courses or, and, and giving ourselves permission to care about these things and to have
Emma Waddington: eyes on all the things that we care, I feel is really validating listening and thinking about all the things that I care versus I think in our community and now [00:34:00] with the sort of you. Reign to speak of, of social media. There's these competing messages that have really. Difficult. One is that, you know, you need to care a lot about things like, need to care about the environment. You need to care about what's happening in the world. You need to care about all these things, but then the other sort of message that seems to be also a lot of my clients, including myself struggling with, but don't care too much, don't work too hard.
Emma Waddington: Think about yourself care. what are
Patricia Zurita Ona: true. I
Emma Waddington: you doing enough for you?
Patricia Zurita Ona: it.
Patricia Zurita Ona: I love
Emma Waddington: before she'd said to me, I was talking to her about something and she said, but are you doing enough for you? And I thought, I'm not, I'm not doing anything for me.
Emma Waddington: Oh my goodness. I'm failing at that. I'm, I'm doing nothing. And she was like, well, you know, you of all people. You should practice what you preach. I feel, Oh my goodness. You're right. So I went off and spoke to a [00:35:00] girlfriend, another friend. I was like, I don't do anything for myself as we're having a cup of coffee together, and she goes, I think this is doing something for yourself. You're right. . I'm like, that's true. That's also something for myself. And suddenly I could list a whole load of things that I do for myself. And so I went back to my other friend, I do do stuff for myself. And she's like, well, so the bottom line is that there is such a huge struggle, right?
Emma Waddington: Be it, are we doing too much? Are we doing, you know, are we focusing on doing not enough, you know, too little enough time so that we relax? It's like this constant bombardment of mixed messages. And underneath it is a human that
Emma Waddington: cares about all of it. I care about me. I care about my people. I care about the things that I do.
Emma Waddington: I care about it all. And, there's always going to be a drive to do a good job. That's about the things I care.
Patricia Zurita Ona: yeah. Emma. Thank you for sharing that. I love this story. I love this story. I [00:36:00] absolutely love it. And as you were sharing, it got me thinking that. Another aspect of working with perfectionist is really, Inviting people to radically accept themselves as they are, because I think the whole world, as you're saying, tells them all types of things.
Patricia Zurita Ona: But what happens when a person radically accepts themselves as they are, with this prongness to deeply care about what they do, and with this prongness to do things right and perfectly. Not because something is wrong, not because something is broken, not because they are neurotic. But just that's how they are.
Patricia Zurita Ona: So I think self acceptance, radical self acceptance, makes a difference also in the work of, with high achievers and perfectionistic action.
Chris McCurry: and acceptance is the starting point for being able to move and do things. So it's not just like, okay, I'm not gonna do anything because I'm fine just the way I am. But it's like, I heard some mother tell her child. I love you [00:37:00] just the way you are, but I love you too much to let you stay that way.
Patricia Zurita Ona: There we go. I love it.
Chris McCurry: So, yeah, I, I can accept myself and, and that frees me up to be able to move in the directions that are important to me and not do it in a, you know, way. That's toxic.
Patricia Zurita Ona: I think the other side, yeah, the other side, as you were saying, is I accept you too much to let you be that way will become with a change face, right? In how we approach decisions. I sometimes invite my clients to check whether they are, the way that they're making decisions, are they maximizers or are they satisfizers?
Patricia Zurita Ona: A maximizer is trying to make the best decision about every single thing, right? It needs to be, it needs to research a lot. The satisfizer will make a good enough decision. The story I have to share there is that one time I needed to replace my TV. And, and I went into this maximizing mode, and [00:38:00] thanks to Amazon Prime, I bought like five TVs, right, like 42 inches TVs, imagine that, right, and they were like the same model with variations, A1, B2, C1, right, because I was trying to make the best decision possible for this TV, right?
Patricia Zurita Ona: So when dealing with perfectionists, people are prone to maximize every decision in their life, right? It feels like this is a representation of who I am. It's a representation of my character. So we have to distinguish which decisions need to be maximized, where decisions can be satisfied and be good enough.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That's another area to help people to make a distinction.
Chris McCurry: Did you have 5 televisions delivered to your house?
Patricia Zurita Ona: The truth, the answer is yes, I did have. And thanks to Amazon Prime that I have to drag them and bring them back. True story, true story.
Emma Waddington: I [00:39:00] love that. That's brilliant.
Chris McCurry: Well, you know, I
Chris McCurry: know people that, they order, 5 of the same thing, but in slightly different styles and colors, and then they try them on. Send the ones they don't want back.
Patricia Zurita Ona: There we go, there we go, we're humans.
Chris McCurry: I've, I've known people that to buy three guitars, the exact same guitar, but three of them, and then they'll, cause they're all, they're all usually a little bit different, even if it's the same model and everything, and then they'll play out each of them and then decide which one feels best and send the other two back.
Chris McCurry: I, I, I took us off track, but in the few minutes that we have left we will put information about your books and your podcast on the show notes for this episode we'll get that up, but any, any other parting words of wisdom for our listeners.
Patricia Zurita Ona: For any person listening to us that is a go getter, a high achiever, a doer, a person that make things happen, I want to strongly invite you to check where it's [00:40:00] workable and helpful in your life to pursue your projects and your values in a way that it matters to you. and when it's time to let things go.
Patricia Zurita Ona: That will be my, my, my tip.
Chris McCurry: All right. Wonderful.
Chris McCurry: Thank you so much, Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona, also known as Dr. Z. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure.
Emma Waddington: Yes.
Emma Waddington: It's been amazing.
Patricia Zurita Ona: Thank
Patricia Zurita Ona: you so much for having me in your podcast and such a rich conversation.
Emma Waddington: Oh, thank you. Thank you for being with us. for sharing some of your personal things as well. I love those stories. They're always great.
Patricia Zurita Ona: You're very kind. You're very kind. The whole world will know about me buying five TVs now. That's
Emma Waddington: Maximizer indeed.
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