Work now, Play later?!
Jen, a mom of 2 who works full time, describes not being able to relax in the evenings after work. Now that the province is re-opening, after work is once again filled with picking the kids up from their activities, and a quick errand if she can fit it in. Dinner is eaten, kitchen is cleaned, kids are in bed, laundry is started…yet Jenny feels restless.
Jen knows most people, including her partner, crash on the couch and binge Netflix in the evening. Yet she feels guilty about the thought of “wasting” a whole evening.
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Emily is a 20-year-old who never stops. Her life is filled with school, work, and friends. She plans her days by the hour, so something fills every spot. She describes a vague sense of an underlying sadness or anxiety. Emily says if she stops for too long, it’ll catch up with her. She recently stopped doing yoga because she’s started to feel an inexplicable sadness during them, and cried her way through the last class.
A common theme among my clients who struggle with overthinking and overachieving is the tendency to work too much or be overly productive. They work, stay busy, or are productive all day long and collapse into bed exhausted at night. And yet…they never feel as though they have done enough.
Why is this? Why can some people close their laptop at 5 and enjoy their evening or can finish an assignment and take the evening off? Meanwhile, the overachievers keep working. You can generally find three things going on for the overachievers.
Feeling Unworthy
At some point in Jen and Emily’s learning history, they likely associated work or productivity with their self-worth. It could be that they were praised for their work ethic or success, and shamed for making mistakes or low productivity. Or, they may have watched others being shamed for mistakes or low productivity and swore it would never happen to them.
Do these statements sound familiar to you?
School is a common place for this to happen. Imagine a bright and conscientious student who is anxiety-prone. They get attention, praise, and even love for being smart, hardworking, and getting good grades. “I am a diligent worker and get good grades,” becomes part of their identity.
Anxiety trains them to seek the balm that will soothe it. Each time the student worries about getting a good mark (I need to feel worthy), and overworks to ensure it, the sense of relief they feel when they see the “A+” reinforces the behaviour of working hard. An A+ (or the attention received by a success) is like exotic fruit scented balm that soothes the itch (until the next evaluation comes up).
You can see how this pattern could continue through life. The external validator/reinforcer ( the A+) morphs into age-appropriate one. The A+ turns into the scholarship at the best school, which becomes the honour list or other academic award, which becomes a well-paying job, which becomes accolades or promotions at the job. There is always a next step, a new place to prove yourself, a way to show yourself you have worth. High performance is desirable; however, the difference is that the high performer without perfectionism goes to bed at night aware of their value beyond their successes.
2. Inflexible Demands on Self
Emily and Jen have extremely high and rigid standards or expectations for themselves. They believe, “if I can achieve this standard, I am a worthy/good/competent/successful person.” Yet, what we see in overachieving, is that as overachievers achieve, they raise their standards, always keeping them just out of reach (or really out of reach!).
And, overachievers allow themselves zero excuses for lesser productivity or performance. Had a bad day and didn’t perform your best? Migraine and the house cleaning didn’t happen? Nope, not acceptable to the overachiever. “You failed today” goes through your mind, “You gotta step it up.” This means working harder, being more productive, and increasing the rigidity of the rules around what is expected of themselves.
Overachievers typically have some inflexible thinking patterns. Often, things are viewed as all or nothing (e.g. I failed/I succeeded). There is a focus on personal failures and a discounting of personal successes. And, there is the perception that others are dissatisfied with you or disapprove of you. These are awesome thinking strategies when you want to motivate yourself with self-berating, but we’ve seen where that can get you.
3. Avoidance of Difficult Feelings
An overachiver doesn’t want to be alone with their thoughts – it’s way too painful. Thoughts of making mistakes, appearing lazy, failing, not being good enough - ouch. The worst is the self-criticism – it’s never good enough, and your mind tells you all the ways you’re not measuring up.
No wonder Emily and Jen stay so busy. Busyness allows them to avoid the painful thoughts and feelings arising from these thoughts. And working hard and being productive, allows you to have short-term relief from the fear of failure and self-criticism (remember that A+?). It’s like a pause button for that chatty inner critic.
When you’re staying busy or being productive, you’re attempting to reach those high standards, so you’re doing okay in this moment. Until you’re not busy or working. Then, like Jen who feels restless or Emily whose emotions tumble out during yoga, you are faced with the thoughts of self-criticism, lack of worth, failure, and painful feelings that go along with these.
Overall, perfectionists have learned and internalized that they do not have intrinsic value. You have to be contributing, working, earning money, studying, being successful or being productive to stave off criticism and prove that we are worthy of love and acceptance. Overachieving became an excellent solution to this problem: You will maintain and strive to reach super high standards (to avoid criticism) and work hard and succeed (to prove we are worthy and avoid failure).
How do we untangle this? Jen, Emily, and you can make adjustments to keep your performance high, yet feel like you are enough at the end of the day. To summarize the therapeutic approach to a ridiculously simple level:
1) We need to discover we have intrinsic value. We are worthy of love and appreciation regardless of our achievements or productivity.
2) We need to rethink our standards and expectations of ourselves.
3) We need to become aware of our internal dialogue.
4) We need to learn to be okay with our feelings.
Kira
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