How To Stop Perfectionism – Nervous System And Somatic Trauma Healing Training For Profitable Businesses

By the end of this episode

The connection between your perfectionism and nervous system state

The underutilised back door ways to calming perfectionism

The 1 question to ask to stop your perfectionism in its track

How Your Nervous System Affects Your Business – Poly Vagal Theory & Stress Relief Training. Listen to Part 1 of the 4 Part Series: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sheridan-ruth/episodes/38-How-Your-Nervous-System-Affects-Your-Business—Poly-Vagal-Theory–Stress-Relief-Training-Part-1-e293v70

Start regulating your nervous system in the moments of each day when you have little time, space and privacy.

Do this by downloading my Nervous System Regulation PDF where you’ll learn how nervous system regulation/dysregulation looks in your mind, body and habits, and exactly how to return to a grounded, calm space – so you can get it all done.

Download the Nervous System Cheat Sheet. https://pages.sheridanruth.com/nervoussystem

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] From one recovering perfectionist to another, these are the seven steps you need to know so that you can stop your thought loops, ground into self love, wisdom, and take action that will create profit. In your business. By the end of this episode, you will know the connection between your perfectionism and nervous system, the underutilized backdoor ways to calm perfectionism, and the number one question to ask to get you to stop your perfectionism in its tracks.

[00:00:27] Okay, so this episode is gonna be a quick one because I’m gonna give you seven steps that I want you to implement today. But before we can do those steps, invitation to look into how perfectionism shows up in your life.

[00:01:00] The ways that my perfection show perfectionism shows up in my life is I notice that sometimes I’ll be like doing a task.

[00:01:07] This literally happened to me this morning at a cafe. I’m doing a task and then I have to kind of, let’s, I was writing, , the FAQs for my, that are going to be on my website and. There was, I had asked myself, Oh, write this FAQ and I started writing and it was hard to answer. And so I just looked at my phone for six minutes and I realized at the end of those six minutes, Oh, I diverted my attention because my perfectionist is worried that I’m going to put some words on this Google document and they are going to be wrong.

[00:01:40] She’s worried. They’re going to be wrong. Okay. My perfectionism also tries to get me to stop doing things because she’s worried that I’m going to fail. Failure would be catastrophic in her mind. She also is really mean to me. I love her a lot, but my perfectionist part can kind of berate [00:02:00] me. And it holds me to really high standards, which is sometimes very helpful and sometimes not helpful because holding me to those high standards actually stops me from achieving.

[00:02:10] The high standards, , which is an interesting catch 22, it can be a lot of anxiety, a lot of procrastination, and a lot of tension. In the body. Yeah. Sometimes it’s difficult, but that’s okay. Because today we’re going to be looking at the things that I ask myself when my perfectionist part is very active, how I handle a perfectionist day.

[00:02:38] So the first thing that I do is I ask what nervous system state is this coming from? There is a difference between the flavor of my perfectionism, depending on my nervous system state. When my nervous system is regulated, my little perfectionist thoughts can pop in and I will actually love them. I will actually respond to them and be like, Oh my God, thank you for showing me this is so important.

[00:02:58] Thank you for showing me my,

[00:03:00] my values and my needs. Thank you. I love you. Oh my God. I love my brain. When I am in more of a fight response, my perfectionist is really mean to me. It’s like, she’s like fighting against me. She’s super critical and it can be almost kind of like these little micro paper like, um, what are those things?

[00:03:20] It’s like little, it’s like death by paper cots when I’m in that fire response. She is a mean fiery thing. She will say things to me that I will, I would rather not put on. This podcast and there’s the flight response when my perfectionist is in the flight response. It’s like I have to get everything done right now.

[00:03:38] Everything is urgent and it all has to be completely perfect and I can’t do that. So normally what happens is I don’t stay in that flight response very long. I often go to a freeze response and when my perfectionist is active, when I’m in that freeze response, holy moly, shame cycle, like let’s go. She’s, she’s mean, but it feels heavy.

[00:03:58] She’s mean, but it feels like

[00:04:00] I’m, there’s something wrong with me. Like I failed, like something is about to go horribly wrong and it’s about to be my fault. And, and, and everything, just my eyes feel heavy. My body feels heavy. It’s just this icky gooey, like I’m in quicksand. It’s awful. And so the first thing that I need to know is.

[00:04:18] What nervous system state is my perfectionist coming from now, I have a nervous system PDF that will be very helpful for you that I will link in the show notes. And I also have numerous different episodes on how to recognize how different nervous system state activations playing out in your business that I recommend that you listen to.

[00:04:36] If you haven’t listened to, you need to listen to these episodes. I will also link them in the show notes. By having that education and plus the awareness that you have of yourself, you’re going to be able to answer what nervous system state your perfectionist is coming from when they activate. Then we’re going to look at what does my body need to balance so once we’ve identified the nervous system state You’re going to

[00:05:00] use once again, you can use the nervous system PDF to balance it.

[00:05:05] So I’m just going to speak for today my And like the, it’s like the, almost like an A, D, H D type distraction that I ended up my, my in. So I was like working and my perfectionist comes in and I distract myself. And that’s very typical of a flight response. It’s like, let’s just distract because I know that if I’m gonna be in this space, it’s gonna be too overwhelming to me.

[00:05:30] I’m gonna like get away from the threat, which was my laptop at that point. And so, What does my body need to balance? I noticed that and I kind of asked myself. Okay flight response. Yep That makes sense feeling a little bit of anxiety. Okay, cool. I’m gonna do some really long exhales. I was in public I was sitting that very close next to a group of men that were having a wonderful time and I did some really deep exhales deep exhales put my feet on

[00:06:00] the ground soles on the ground Okay, here I am.

[00:06:03] I grounded because I was flighty I grounded and then I asked the question, is this protecting me from any emotion? A lot of the time, perfectionism is protecting us from feeling something very inconvenient to feel. So this morning it was kind of protecting me from, honestly, it was protecting me from It thought that it was protecting me because it thought that it would be protecting other people because it felt like what I was about to say was going to be too bold and it was protecting me from feeling the fear of being bold, of saying something that would cause an impact in somebody else’s life because for parts of me, very small inner child parts of me, it was very scary.

[00:06:58] To call it just

[00:07:00] to see people so deeply and to say certain things because it would mean that they would have a reaction and sometimes that reaction, uh, was difficult for me to experience as a young child and that’s why my people pleasing came up and so it was like this perfectionism that wanted the people pleaser to write that answer, but I don’t want to write things from a people pleaser space anymore.

[00:07:22] So it was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t people please as I was writing on my website. And so then the next question comes in, which is, what is the story that the body is telling you? So for some people that’s going to be, well, if I get this perfect, I get praise and love. And for me this morning it was, well, if I can make my language small or if I can downplay the power of my work, then I will be safe.

[00:07:48] That’s what my body was telling me in the moment. And the next question that I asked myself was, Okay, well, what is a new empowering belief that can replace this [00:08:00] story?

[00:08:04] The one that I landed on is not a new one. This is a work that I’ve, I’ve been doing. And so all of this happened in less than 60 seconds in the middle of a cafe this morning. And I came back to my belief. And at the moment, the thing that I’m working on is it’s safe to be bold. It’s safe to be bold. And so I felt that safety in my body and I resourced and I remembered the other day I was dancing and I had a really wonderful friend of mine say to me, Oh, you’re so bold.

[00:08:31] And she, she was admiring my boldness and you guys sometimes admire my boldness too. And I know that I, I’ve struggled with this, like I’m human. So I grounded into that. I felt that in my body, I used my resourcing tools until that felt true until the parts of me felt nourished. I did not bypass myself.

[00:08:51] And then I said, what action will reinforce that belief? And I started writing again, and then I took the action. And that was it.

[00:09:00] And that like, I did all of those things in 60 seconds. Yes, I’ve been practicing them prior, but you can literally re you can completely flip and stop your perfectionism in its track in 60 seconds when you ask yourself these seven questions.

[00:09:17] And when you do it so many times over that it becomes automatic. It’s worth mentioning. It takes 300 repetitions of something to To create a habit. And it takes 3000 repetitions of something to embody it. This is a part of the integration. So I’m going to ask you to practice this 300 times. Yay. Go play.

[00:09:42] I’m going to repeat the questions back to you so you can write them down or you can just like mark this little. It’s part of the podcast and come back to it when you’re, you’re feeling the things. The questions are what nervous system status is coming from? What does my body need to balance and regulate?[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] Is this protecting me from an emotion? What story is the body telling? What is the new empowering belief that I can replace the story with? What action will I take that will reinforce this belief and then go take action. I love you. Have fun. Make sure that if you haven’t already, you have looked at the resources that I mentioned, the podcast that I mentioned.

[00:10:25] It’ll be in the show notes, big kisses, big hugs.