Can Perfectionism Lead to Burnout? | Episode 27 | Reviving Vet Med

There is no doubt that perfectionism can wreak havoc on our mental health and wellbeing. In fact, research demonstrates that veterinarians who experience perfectionism are more susceptible to distress during triggering stressful events. Likewise, physicians with self-oriented perfectionism are more likely to experience symptoms of burnout in the form of emotional exhaustion. 

Because so many veterinary professionals self-identify as perfectionists, it is important to discuss perfectionism candidly in relation to the signs, consequences, and strategies for limiting its impact on our lives. In this episode, I answer the questions: How do you know if you have perfectionism? Is perfectionism good or bad? When is perfectionism a problem? How is perfectionism linked to burnout? And how can perfectionism be lessened in ourselves? 

Resource

If you struggle with procrastination because of your perfectionism please listen to Episode 23 - Seven Strategies for Preventing Procrastination: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2011463/11254172

Research

Perfectionism as a predictor of physician burnout (article): https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-022-08785-7 

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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Reviving Vet Med. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about perfectionism, which is something that many of us in the veterinary profession struggle with on a regular basis. My perfectionistic tendencies have definitely led to difficulties in my own life, not the least of which are burnout, relationship issues, and even mental illness in the form of depression and anxiety. So, in today's episode, I will be sharing how to recognize perfectionism, what the consequences are, and some strategies for changing it. Just a note on the irony of this episode being on perfectionism, I made an error in recording this episode in that I forgot to select my mic for the recording.

And so, you'll notice that the sound quality is not the best, and I apologize for that. And I gave myself permission to let this go and share the episode in its original format. So, with that said, I'm really excited to share this information with you. I hope you enjoy the episode. This is the Reviving Vet Med podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Marie Holowaychuk.

My mission is to improve the mental health and well-being of veterinary professionals around the world. So you might be thinking that you have perfectionism if you feel like there is no room for mistakes in the work that you do, if you like things done in a very specific way, if you feel that when you can't do something well or perfectly, you don't wanna do it at all, if people tell you that you're very hard on yourself, if you feel depressed or anxious when you do not achieve your perfectionistic standards, and if sometimes you procrastinate so that you can only do things when you know that you can do them absolutely perfectly. So many of you who are listening right now might be thinking to yourself, well, gosh, you know, perfectionism has always served me well. It got me into vet school or tech school, or it's got me this amazing job. It's helped me to succeed.

And the reality is that perfectionism in a healthy way when used, I should say, in a healthy way or what we refer to as adaptive perfectionism can be good. This is what allows us to set standards for ourselves, and to strive for reaching goals. And as long as those standards are realistic and as long as we can accept when we fail to achieve them, then that is perfectly okay. Okay. Maladaptive perfectionism is the form of perfectionism whereby we set unrealistic standards for ourselves.

And when we don't reach those unrealistic standards, we overreact, or we have a very strong need to meet those standards in order to be in control of situations. And so very often perfectionism shows up where we want to control how people perceive us or how situations in our life are going to unfold. We tell ourselves, well, if I can just be perfect and do everything perfectly and act perfectly, then x y z will unfold. And as most of us can recognize and accept, that's just not reality. And so, the big concerns when we have this maladaptive perfectionism are that there can be mental health consequences for us.

So, there is research looking at maladaptive perfectionism among, medical students in the human health care field. And what they found is that among those med students with maladaptive perfectionism, there was a higher risk of depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, hopelessness, burnout, psychological distress, and lower self-confidence. So, perfectionism, you know, does not come without its consequences. And I think very often we fail to recognize when perfectionism is a problem. And certainly, for me in my life, I've known when perfectionism is a problem when I start to feel distressed, when I am not able to be perfect, or when I have these perfectionistic tendencies showing up in a way that is creating these unrealistic standards for me.

And that trying to reach those unrealistic standards is leading me to neglect, you know, other areas of my life, whether they be relationships, whether they be my own self-care, or my own mental health. So really, really important to keep this in mind and understand the potential negative ramifications of perfectionism. So, then another question to be asked is, well, what is the link between perfectionism and burnout? And I mentioned that among medical students, maladaptive perfectionism has been linked to burnout. And interestingly, we see the same thing, perfectionism has been linked to burnout.

And interestingly, we see the same thing amongst physicians in the workplace. So, there was a recent study that looked at, physicians in The United States and they scored them in terms of their burnout and also scored them in terms of their perfectionism. And what they found is that high self-critical perfectionism does predict high emotional exhaustion burnout. So emotional exhaustion is just one of the symptoms that we can see with burnout. The other two symptoms being cynicism and low personal accomplishment.

And with emotional exhaustion, this is where we have this sense of inability to care about our patients. Just lack of energy when it comes to thinking about the work that we need to do. And so, again, what they found is that those who had high levels of self-critical perfectionism, meaning you are being hard on yourself. You expect yourself to be perfect and to achieve these unrealistic standards of perfectionism that you are more likely to experience high emotional exhaustion burnout. So, all of this to say, if you do experience perfectionism, you're maybe, after listening to this, thinking about, well, how can I pull myself out of this?

What can I do to alleviate these feelings of perfectionism? And if you listen to much of my work and, hear me speak long enough, you'll definitely hear me, say how much I think mental health professional, care can be of benefit. And so, if you have not already connected with a mental health professional, I strongly recommend it. It's certainly been a very important resource for me in coping and managing my perfectionism, coping with it and managing it or lessening those symptoms. And so, I urge you to consider linking up with a mental health professional, as well.

So, one of the other things that I want to mention about perfectionism in the context of veterinarians is we also have research looking at veterinarians in Australia and specifically those who have perfectionism. And what the research demonstrate is for those who have traits of perfectionism, when they are in the midst of triggering stressful events, so an owner declines referral or gold standard care or, chooses euthanasia for financial reasons. During these triggering stressful events, especially when we are in these moral or ethical dilemmas, there is a higher vulnerability to distress in those situations among those veterinarians with perfectionism. And what we know about moral stress is that those situations over time can build up and lead to a moral residue which can, you know, ultimately result in compassion fatigue and other consequences. So, there is, you know, a lot to be gained from mitigating this sense of needing to be perfect, needing to offer gold standard care to all of our cases, needing to save every single patient that walks through the door.

So with this in mind, I do wanna share with you some strategies that you can use to, potentially mitigate some of these signs that you might be experiencing and to help you to, you know, see a way out of your perfectionism because this is definitely something that I, like I said, am continuing to work on as I progress in my career and also in my life. So, first of all, you definitely want to focus on the areas of your life where perfectionism is more of a problem. And so, I hear this a lot from the individuals in my online programs and with my coaching whereby they say to me, well, I, you know, I don't really care if all of my cases aren't managed gold standard or, you know, if I make a mistake at work, like that's part of the work that I do. But where my perfectionism marriage to look perfect or whatever it might be. And it might be opposite for, you know, some others of you who are listening.

So whether you experience perfectionism in your relationships, in your work life, you know, in other aspects of your life, you want to identify those areas and you want to recognize whether these standards that you're setting for yourself in those areas are beneficial and realistic high standards or whether they are more harmful, unattainable, perfectionistic standards that only can be met at the expense of other people or other areas of your life. Now what you also want to do is sit and recognize as well where you might be feeling things that we know to be associated with perfectionism. So, if you experience depression, if you feel a lot of frustration or anxiety, if you notice that you have a lot of self-criticism or negative self-talk, have a bit of self-awareness and take a step back to see, is this showing up because of some perfectionistic thoughts that I'm feeling? So perfectionistic thoughts can show up as black and white thinking, where, for example, anything less than perfect is a failure, or catastrophic thinking, for example, if I make a mistake, my career is gonna be over, Or probability overestimation. My team isn't gonna wanna work with me anymore if they see me make a mistake.

Or should statements. You know, I should be able to save every patient. I should be able to convince every owner to pursue gold standard care. So, I also urge you to try to recognize perfectionistic behaviors that you might notice come up for you. So, if you notice that you procrastinate a lot, are you procrastinating because you need things to be just so or always perfect?

Do you have difficulty following through with tasks or do you give up easily? Are you overly cautious or exceptionally thorough with tasks? Again, there's nothing wrong with having high standards and being thorough unless it is compromising your health and well-being. Do you do a lot of checking, proofreading, for example? Are you constantly trying to improve things by redoing them, even when you know it's not necessary?

Do you agonize over small details? Do you avoid trying new things? You know, I talk to a lot of people where I might say, you know, I I'm as a as a certified yoga teacher, I love practicing yoga. It's a lifelong practice for me. And when I recommend it to some individuals, they say, oh, no.

No. No. You know, I definitely can't practice yoga because that's, you know, that's not something I would be good at. So, I don't wanna do that. And, you know, it just again, if you find that you are avoiding experiences in your life because you're fearful of how good you are going to be at it or that you will not be perfect, that's an area to look at as well.

So ultimately, what we wanna do is we wanna consider the cost and the benefits of changing our perfectionistic tendencies in each of these areas. So, once it's determined that the benefit of letting go of the perfectionistic tendency outweighs the cost, I. E. Your mental health, your well-being, your relationships, etcetera, then you identify how you are going to overcome the problem. And normally, overcoming it is about adjusting our standards.

Now I'm not suggesting that you get rid of all of your standards and just, you know, put a garbage effort into your cases or, you know, your life or your goals or anything like that, but that you find that sweet spot whereby you're doing good, you're doing well, it's good enough, and it's not at the expense of your mental health and well-being. Remember that just because you lower your standards, it doesn't mean you have no standards. It just means that these standards are attainable. They're realistic. And remember, when you're looking at adjusting your standards, don't look at what everybody else is doing.

Okay? Limit comparisons to people who you know very well, who are very transparent about what's going on in their lives, and don't try to measure yourself against, you know, the people that you see on social media or people whom you work with who've been doing this for twenty years longer than you have. So, another way that we can help change our perfectionism is to replace our self-critical thoughts with some more realistic and productive statements. So, for example, saying things to yourself like, nobody is perfect, all I can do is my best, everyone has a bad day sometimes. Nobody is liked by everyone, and everyone makes mistakes.

And this becomes habit that you speak to yourself this way so that when things do go wrong or you do make a mistake, that you're treating yourself with that compassion, that realistic self-talk rather than berating yourself or being hard on yourself and expecting that a mistake would never ever be made. And if it helps you to think about talking to yourself like you would talk to a good friend who had just made a mistake or, you know, failed to do something that they were striving to do, you know, that's something that I would often do. I often remind myself, you know, what would I say to a good friend of mine that was in this situation? And that is how you want to speak to yourself. It often helps people who, struggle with perfectionism to also avoid getting bogged down in the little details or worrying about all the little things.

So, asking yourself, you know, does this really matter? What's the worst that could happen? If the worst does happen, will I survive, and will this even matter tomorrow, next week, or next year? K? So, putting things in perspective.

And, you know, I often use the analogy when I talk about perfectionism that having a problem with perfectionism is like having a phobia of mistakes. So how do we treat noise phobia in our canine patients? Well, we expose them to noise in a gradual controlled manner. So, I urge you to expose yourself to mistakes or to imperfections in a gradual controlled manner. Maybe for some of you that's going out in public without makeup on or wearing an outfit that's not perfectly put together.

Whatever it looks like for you, could you even just start by sending an email that you do not proofread and maybe it has a mistake. And what's the worst that can happen? Well, maybe someone emails you back and says, hey. I didn't quite understand the statement in your email. Could you clarify?

And you can laugh it off and say, oh, oops, you know, I made a mistake, and you fix it. Who's even gonna remember that tomorrow? And, you know, at the end of the day, mindfulness in so many places in our lives, not the least of which is perfectionism, is incredibly helpful. So just noticing those perfectionistic thoughts, those feelings, those experiences that you're having, and to respond with compassion and not judging yourself, just accepting this is where I am. This is something I'm working on.

I often use the statement, you know, that I'm a recovering perfectionist. I'm in the process of improving my perfectionistic tendencies. Right? So having that growth mindset, that positivity towards this. This is not who you are.

This is a tendency that you have or a trait that you have now, and that trait can be changed. Recognize too that procrastination is a coping strategy for perfectionists. So, if you missed my episode on procrastination, I urge you to check it out. And I share in that episode strategies for overcoming procrastination, which is something that many of us deal with, especially if we are perfectionists. So, can you get yourself out of that tendency to perfectionism and break down a large task into small manageable steps or set small goals and deadlines for yourself?

Really even just deciding in advance, I'm only gonna spend thirty minutes doing this, and whatever I get done is what I get done, and that will be good enough. Because at the end of the day, if we can never let perfect be the enemy of good enough, I think we will all be much better off in this profession. So that's it for this episode of Reviving Vet Med. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this information on perfectionism helpful and that you will consider some of the ways I suggested to reduce your perfectionism in your professional and your personal lives.

If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to send it to a colleague or a friend. I would also appreciate it if you would subscribe to the podcast so that you can get the episodes as soon as they drop. I'm also excited to announce that my eight-week online program from burnout to balance will be running again February to March 2023 and is now open for registration. And I share that with you because one of the weeks during the program is focused on strategies for mitigating perfectionism. So, if you know that this is an area that you struggle with and you believe that this could be contributing to burnout for you, then this program could be very, very beneficial for you as well.

To learn more about the program or to register, please visit my site marieholowaychuk.com/burnout. I want to thank my amazing assistant Jamie for producing this episode and I want to thank all of you for listening. Until next time, take care of yourself. Bye now.