How Can I Help Myself?

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been found to be a highly effective treatment and provides relief from that disabling sense of not being good enough. CBT helps you to understand what causes your perfectionism, and what keeps it going. It is important to identify and monitor the real problem areas in your life, and then you can build a toolkit of skills to help you target those problem areas. That might involve what are known as ‘behavioural experiments’ where you test your beliefs and predictions for what might happen if you don’t see something through to the degree you would consider ‘perfect’. Would things turn out as badly as you predict?

CBT also helps you get away from ‘all or nothing’ thinking, learning to be more flexible in your approach. It can help you to change your thinking style, to be more positive and kinder on yourself, and to overcome common problems with time management and procrastination.

Free evidence-based resources for understanding and treating perfectionism can be found here.