White knuckling your way through dumpster fires + stacked deadlines might *seem impressive* but underneath constantly second-guessing yourself, obsessively counting of how much you accomplished while beating yourself up — are hidden costs eating away at your efficiency (and overall ability to enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to create). This episode names what you couldn’t explain...until now.
Resources Mentioned In Episode 255:
The Impact & Intention Framework Ep. 171
Finding Your Compelling Why’s Ep. 174
Asking High Quality Questions Ep. 231
Giving Yourself Validation Ep. 237
Using Your Mood Meter Ep. 254
Deliberate Disruption The Calibration
Timestamps:
00:00–Striving for excellence in a dumpster fire while white knuckling
01:59-Definition of perfectionism
03:13–Uncomfy confession my overfunctioning
04:48–When powering through stops working
05:35–Fear uncertainty and doubt in disguise
06:40–Second guessing yourself despite the evidence
07:17– Are You Making This Huge Perfectionistic Mistake
08:31–Why overachievers get to disappointed in myself spirals
09:06–Over functioning feeds control issues BEST analogy
09:55–Beating yourself up When is enough enough
11:03–How I’m able to stop pushing through before burnout
12:05–Why perfectionist tendencies turn poisonous
13:45–The Clueless Mismatch Tool
14:20– Choosing what's familiar over what's functional
15:03–Disrupt overachiever autopilot with The Calibration
16:12–Tools to stop second guessing yourself
17:56–Perfectionism Podcast BTS
Quotes on Perfectionism:
"Most perfectionists conflate measuring with counting. You count how much you got done that day, you look at your to do list, all the check marks you count and you think that is measuring." –Courtney Love Gavin, Expert on Perfectionism Neuroscience
"You can't solve a problem when you continue to use methods that perpetuate it. And until you disrupt where those perfectionist tendencies are coming from, your brain will continue choosing what's familiar over what's functional." –Courtney Love Gavin, Expert on Perfectionism Neuroscience
Highly Credible Sources Cited in Perfectionism Podcast:
Anderson, E. C., R. Nicholas Carleton, Diefenbach, M., & Paul. (2019). The Relationship Between Uncertainty and Affect. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02504
Attwell, D., & Laughlin, S. B. (2001). An Energy Budget for Signaling in the Grey Matter of the Brain. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 21(10), 1133–1145. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004647-200110000-00001
Barrett, L. F., & Bar, M. (2009). See it with feeling: affective predictions during object perception. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1521), 1325–1334. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0312
Barrett, L. F., & Bliss‐Moreau, E. (2009). Chapter 4 Affect as a Psychological Primitive. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 167–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(08)00404-8
Braem, S., Coenen, E., Klaas Bombeke, Bochove, van, & Wim Notebaert. (2015). Open your eyes for prediction errors. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 15(2), 374–380. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0333-4
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(3), 181–204. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x12000477
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
Egan, S. J., Piek, J. P., Dyck, M. J., & Rees, C. S. (2007). The role of dichotomous thinking and rigidity in perfectionism. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(8), 1813–1822. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.02.002
Kummer, K., Mattes, A. & Stahl, J. Do perfectionists show negative, repetitive thoughts facing uncertain situations?. Curr Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04409-3
Mattes, A., Mück, M., & Stahl, J. (2023). Perfectionism-related variations in error processing in a task with increased response selection complexity. Personality neuroscience, 5, e12. https://doi.org/10.1017/pen.2022.3
Petersen, J., Ong, C. W., Hancock, A. S., Gillam, R. B., Levin, M. E., & Twohig, M. P. (2021). An Examination of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Neurological Functioning. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 35(3), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1891/jcpsy-d-20-00037
Pollard-Wright Holly (2020) Interoception the foundation for: mind’s sensing of ‘self,’ physiological responses, cognitive discrimination and dysregulation, Communicative & Integrative Biology, 13:1, 198-213, DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2020.1846922
Roy, M., Shohamy, D., Daw, N., Jepma, M., Wimmer, G. E., & Wager, T. D. (2014). Representation of aversive prediction errors in the human periaqueductal gray. Nature Neuroscience, 17(11), 1607–1612. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3832
Solms, L., Koen, J., A.E.M. van Vianen, Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., Anne, & Matthijs de Hoog. (2022). Simply effective? The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching questions in a self-coaching writing exercise. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895439
Sugiura, Y., & Fisak, B. (2019). Inflated Responsibility in Worry and Obsessive Thinking. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 12(2), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-019-00041-x
Perfectionism is very powerful. But only if you know how to leverage it. For more on optimizing your perfectionist tendencies go to perfectionist.solutions
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:00:00]:
I should be able to do it all even if I'm living in a dumpster fire. What's wrong with me? Why can't I get this together? I must not be trying hard enough. Am I lazy? What are they going to think if I can't finish this? I've never intentionally not finished something. I'm a finisher. I follow through. I'm the person everyone counts on. I'll just push harder. I'm pushing through.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:00:20]:
I will sleep less. Why can't I just power through? Am I overreacting to this? Am I too sensitive? Do I just need to focus on. I just need to stop getting distracted. How can I make my showers more productive? I wish I were a robot right now. It's so easy for everyone else. Why is it titanically hard for me? I'm your host, America's leader on rewiring perfectionism clg and this is Perfectionism Rewired, the podcast. Welcome to Perfectionism Rewired. This episode gives you languaging and logic to to make it all make sense for what you've been knowing but couldn't necessarily name or explain why.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:01:01]:
This episode is going to show you specifically how you're not so far behind, you're not slipping, you're not losing your edge. Answering the question, why do I feel so empty? When is enough enough? Am I overreacting? Am I over functioning? This episode is going to make it so you stop second guessing yourself so that instead of being like, oh, I'm so disappointed in myself, you are giving yourself grace. Ultimately, this episode is giving yourself permission to stop confusing depletion for a lack of discipline and reallocate the commitments and the choices you've made before for the reality of your life right now so that you don't crash and burn, so that you don't yell at your kids, so that you're not questioning yourself anymore. For this episode, all you need to know is as a human species, we are able to see the reality in front of us and also be able to envision a different reality at the same time. That cognitive capacity is unique to the human species as far as we know. And as perfectionists, they the difference between us and pedestrian, AKA non perfectionist, is that we see the delta between the current reality and what the ideal is, what it could be like, what could be improved, what could be better. What? Oh my gosh, how can you not see this? Let's do it this way. We are the people that not only do we see it, but we because we have an advanced cognitive capacity we feel an active compulsion to bridge that gap.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:02:45]:
That's the difference between an idealist and a perfectionist is that idealists can see it. And then they're like, yeah, that's there. Where perfectionists are like, yeah, that's there. And like, how fast can we get this done? Let's do it this way. Are you with me? Oh my goodness. The inefficiencies. That is what perfectionism is. All the links to all episodes and concepts mentioned are in the show notes Truth booth.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:03:09]:
I feel very uncomfortable right now. I decided with myself for Venan integrity is that I wasn't going to come back to episode 255 and pretend we're not in the middle of the amazing series. I think best work I've ever done miniseries on how your perfectionist brain actually works. We've done seven episodes and I realized my capacity, my person account, it's a mismatch for the current season of Life that I'm in right now. I have been wrestling with. I'm not finishing this series on how your perfectionist brain actually works. It doesn't feel good to not finish something intentionally, especially when you're a perfectionist. What came up in my head was like, what will you think about me? Am I out of integrity by not finishing this? What's wrong with me that I just can't power through this? Why does this feel so much harder than before? This cognitive dissonance occurs when your life implodes.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:04:15]:
And it has tripled the cost of us doing business as usual. My 2025 got earthquaked very early on and has just continued to have volcanoes explode and dumpster fires. I remember I was telling my coach back in February or March. I was like, well, things can't get any worse. And then it's like, ha ha. Life's like, try me. And it has. That's just the reality of the situation.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:04:43]:
What happens for us as perfectionists is life's a dumpster fire. And the way you usually operate as a type A hyper achieving perfectionist, it becomes impossible to white knuckle or just power through. And I don't know about you, but this is the first time in my life where I've experienced it to this level for my entire life. And maybe this is yours too. I've been able to outwork and complete anything that I set my mind to. If there was a will, there was a way. Vintage CLG thought, all that matters is that we achieve it. All that matters is we have the appearance of everything's okay.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:05:27]:
I can do it all you can count on me. The compulsion that we feel as a perfectionist to have everyone think that everything's okay and to not change anything because change, changing something would be admitting some sort of deficit or inadequacy, which is not true. What I see way too often with us type A hyper performers, ambitious, successful, driven perfectionists, or if you don't identify as a perfectionist yet, an overachiever with perfectionistic tendencies, is that the circumstances in our life will change and we have that logical awareness. We're like, yeah, I understand my brother has stage three cancer and I'm taking him to radiation five days a week. So like logically you know this, but your actions tell a different story. There hasn't been any sort of reassessment on, okay, these life circumstances have added more to your load because of where we tend to live as perfectionists, we have that logical awareness, but we're not actually taking that and translating that into reassessing the commitments that we've previously made, what our schedule looks like, what we actually have the capacity for, what we're actually available for. Instead, what most often happens is you get less locked and rigid without realizing it. Especially if you've never been taught to measure your internal resources.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:07:12]:
Most perfectionists conflate measuring with counting. You count how much you got done that day, you look at your to do list and all the check marks you count and you think that is measuring. Especially if you've never been taught to measure your internal resources, you're only used to counting and you're usually counting your output. What you achieve when that's you, you are most likely to think the solution is that you just need to push harder, you just need to power through. You just need to keep on white knuckling and you're just like, I just need to get back to normal. That's usually because you measure your self value based on how much you know or how much you can do, and usually a combination of both. This is how much I know, this is how much I can do. This is how much I do for other people.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:08:00]:
This is how much other people count on me and how much, how much. That's a sign you're counting. You're not measuring. Why? Because measuring is something that you do ahead of time. You set those parameters for yourself and then you measure in the day to day. And no, that doesn't mean that you tell yourself, I'm going to accomplish all 10 of these things and then you measure how many of them you've gotten done. Vintage clg used to do that all the time. What's happening without you necessarily realizing it, you are becoming more and more depleted.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:08:33]:
What I see a lot is you end up getting frustrated with yourself and you're like, why is this so hard? I'm so used to powering through. I'm so used to doing all of these things when it's like, dude, your person account is over withdrawn. And it doesn't mean that you're not strong enough or that you're not trying hard enough. It just means, like, you're a human. Yes, you're a perfectionist, but you're still a human. You are not impermeable to the natural climate of the reality that you're living in right now. Your physiology and your capacity is a mismatch. It's just a mismatch.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:09:08]:
Think about it like you're in a torrential snowstorm and you're like, yeah, but I planned on wearing sandals outside in this summer dress. And you're just like, continuing to do that, but you're getting frostbite, you're suffering from hypothermia, and you're like, yeah, but this is what I plan to do. And I told everyone I'm wearing this outfit. That is the exact same thing that we're doing as perfectionists when we're not reassessing and reallocating what is really vital for me to do right now. I realized the circumstances of my life no longer matched the way that I was operating. That's not the first time that I realized it, but this is the first time that I chose differently because I asked myself the high quality question of at what cost am I willing to run myself into the ground? Am I willing to significantly put my health at risk? Here's what I noticed in the mood meter. These are the feelings that have been most prevalent for me from January to June. Exasperated, perturbed, furious, depleted, Crestfallen, panicked, Clenchy, choking on saltwater.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:10:16]:
Flailing, thrashing, depths of despair. Incongruent macaw. And because of the mood meter, I was able to track and be like, okay, so like, here's the area where we are. We're definitely on the unpleasant side of the x Y axis, and we're oscillating between the very low activation and very high activations. And I know that both of those impact my person account. Your person account gives you data points that you can use to measure your own internal resources. Listen to episodes 252 and 253 for the 411 on your person account how I'm able to measure and know my person account is over withdrawn. Before I'm completely burnt out or living in terrible town, I had my alerts, my own check engine light.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:11:11]:
I will have that I hate my business type feeling, which is not at all how I normally. And that is a sign for me like, okay, you're depleted. I'm unable to eat because of the inside my sleep hygiene. I'm just like, no, I will think because my person account is depleted, I don't have access to the growth and the learning and the development I normally would. Because they're prediction loops that we as perfectionists are way more susceptible to in our brains. Which, if you're really curious about that, listen to perfectionism rewired. Episode 250. When your person account is over withdrawn, you are more susceptible to poisonous perfectionist tendencies.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:12:05]:
I've experienced a lot of poisonous, unhelpful perfectionist tendencies popping up black and white thinking, catastrophizing, ruminating, fear fisting, projecting, saying that, oh, my client's gonna be so disappointed if I don't get this to them. When like, in reality, it's like, actually, I'm the one that's gonna be really disappointed. We project onto other people how we're actually feeling about ourselves. Those pernicious perfectionist tendencies pop up, but they don't cripple me. I don't entertain them. I notice them and then I deliberately disrupt them. The way that I look at it is when they pop up, I've dropped my keys and then I pick up my keys. I don't make it mean anything about me.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:12:55]:
It's not a big deal. What I notice because I used to be like this too, vintage clg is we unconsciously think, okay, if I'm a rewired perfectionist, these are never going to pop up again where it's like, no, the difference is, is that you're stronger. The difference is, is that you don't get sucked into them. You don't go on like rumination benders for a week. You are still in charge. It's just like you dropped your keys that, like, you're not gonna be like, oh my God, I dropped my keys. What does this mean about me? No, it's just like, okay, I dropped my keys, I'm picking them up. No big deal.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:13:34]:
I wasn't planning on talking about this, but we are just going with it for this episode. When you think about Cher from my favorite movie of all time, Clueless, well, it's. Clueless is tied right up There with true Beverly Hills. But in Clueless, when Cher is picking out her outfits on her computer and decide, okay, do these outfits go together or is it a mismatch? In this season of using this clueless tool that I love, the mismatch, I have ruthlessly been looking at all of the perfectionist solutions my company offers and the number one struggle that all perfectionists have, like, ugh, if I could just make this go away. And it's when you're very aware of your unhelpful patterns, those habits that you hate. Yet despite trying your hardest, which is a lot, because you're a frickin overachiever and you strive for excellence in everything that you do, you keep repeating them even though you're painfully aware that they're making you miserable. The reason why this occurs is because you can't solve a problem when you continue to use methods that perpetuate it. And until you disrupt where they're actually coming from, your brain will continue choosing what's familiar over what's functional.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:15:03]:
So I have created the calibration. What the calibration does is it makes it so you are no longer in the dark about why and what you are doing. The calibration is precision neural engineering. It is not coaching, it is not therapy, and it's not just talking superficial. Oh well, tell me about that. It is a neuro calibration for you where you bring your very specific perfectionist tendency and deliberately disrupt it. We cut right to the root of the root. So you walk away knowing exactly why you have been stuck on autopilot and knowing how to disrupt it in the moment without wasting any energy, blaming yourself, being like, oh, why am I still doing this? Right, none of that.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:15:53]:
If you are like say less, where do I go? Go to perfectionist solutions slash calibration. And to make it even simpler, there is a link in the show notes that takes you there. The tools that are helping me and that will help you are the impact and intention method. Having my compelling whys, asking high quality questions, giving myself validation, having impeccable boundaries, being a curious scientist instead of the judge, leading myself with curiosity instead of contempt, using my mood meter, understanding and measuring my person account, identifying the prediction loops popping up in my perfectionistic brain and deliberately disrupting them. If you go to the show notes, there are links to every single one to recap at every every moment you have an opportunity to make a different choice. There's no such thing as I made this choice so I need to lock into it if that is what's going on then that's a clue. Brain hasn't been updated yet. It's running on prediction loops that are no longer relevant.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:17:16]:
Which if you want more info on that, listen to Perfectionism Rewired Episode 249. Your action step for today's episode is to try one of those tools. Experiment with it. Ask yourself at what cost is that worth it to you? And if you are recognizing you know what you want, you know what needs to change, but it feels like an invisible boulder that's like blocking you from getting there. That's exactly what Perfectionist Solutions is here for and it's what we do best. I did it. I did it. Just so you know, the uncompanist has been here the whole time but I just grew.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:18:00]:
I just deliberately disrupted. And thank you so much for being here for listening. I know how busy you are and I'm thrilled that we are continuing to go through life together as perfectionists. Take care. Bye.