How Stress Contributes to Anxiety and Panic Attacks - Part 2 : Perfectionism
Yesterday we began looking at the ways that stress contributes to anxiety and panic and at the thought patterns that can increase stress in your life. By addressing these thought patterns and making changes in the way you look at life you can dramatically decrease the amount of stress in your life and as a direct result decrease your anxiety and lessen your chances of having a panic attack.
The first thought pattern that we looked at yesterday was negativity. Today we will address the second thought pattern that increases stress, which is perfectionism.
Factor #2 - Perfectionism
Along with thinking predominantly negative thoughs, perfectionism can greatly increase the amount of stress in your life. In fact, there have been studies done that have proven that perfectionism is directly related to increased cortisol levels and stress-induced bodily responses.
Are you wondering “am I a perfectionist?” Let’s take a closer look at just what it is so you can see if you can spot these perfectionist traits in yourself and the way you view life.
Perfectionism is the idea that doing anything less than perfect is unacceptable. If you are perfectionist you may find yourself constantly pushing to do better but never feeling like anything you do is good enough. You may worry that if you don’t do things “just right” you will have failed. It can be a feeling that if you don’t do something perfectly then you are a loser.
Perfectionism can also influence your view of others, making it nearly impossible for people you work or live with to live up to your impossibly high standards. You may even limit yourself from doing things you want if you don’t feel that you will do them well.
Perfecectionism can lead to low self esteem and to much higher than normal levels of stress and anxiety. Constantly worrying that what you do, what you attempt, or who you are will not be good enough can eat away at your from the inside and make day to day life miserable. You may find that you feel hopeless because it seems that there is nothing you can do right so there is no reason to even bother trying.
Overcoming Perfectionism to Reduce Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks
The good thing about perfectionism is that it is a thought pattern that you have learned over your life. Since it is a learned behavior that means it can also be “un-learned”. When you start to free yourself from perfectionism your stress levels will fall and along with it so will your anxiety and the chances of having panic attacks.
Until you are aware of the times that you are being a perfectionist it will be impossible for you to change. That means that your first step in overcoming perfectionism is to begin to recognize when you are having these thought patterns.
Start by beginning to notice when you are thinking thoughts of perfection throughout the day. You may want to keep a notebook with you to jot them down as they happen, or you may want to sit down each evening and think back through the day looking for times they occurred.
The more you do this the more you will become aware of the thoughts as you are having them. When you do find yourself acting in a way that has perfectionist tendancies, stop and ask yourself if you are being realistic. Will the world really end if you don’t get that report done on time?
Will you truly be a loser if you don’t make a certain phone call or get to the store to pick something up today? When you step outside yourself and try to look at things from a broader perspective you can get a more complete picture of the situation and spot thoughts that are not based in reality. Over time if you persist with this you can let go of perfectionism and reduce your stress.
Pay attention to the good things you do and the good aspects of your work and life. Even if what you have done is not ideal, there are no doubt good points to it. Focus on those good points and make an effort to ignore any parts that you feel don’t measure up. By shifting your attention to all the positive things you accomplish you can get a more realistic view of who you really are and how capable you are.
Listen to your self-talk. Each of us has a little nagging voice in our heads that tells us we aren’t good enough, we’ve done something wrong or that we are failures. Paul McKenna, a best selling author and one of the World’s leading hypnotists and self-help experts, advises changing the sound of the voice in your head to make it so it has less impact.
For instance. he uses the example of making the voice sound like Mickey Mouse so it is squeeky and insignificant. Just doing this simple trick can dramatically decrease the impact that your negative self-talk voice has on your and your feelings. I would highly recommend checking out some of Paul McKenna’s work if you are serious about changing the way you think and living a better, richer, more full and rewarding life because of it.
Begin trying to accept yourself as a human being - not a machine. Forgive yourself when you make mistakes. When you fail, don’t throw up your hands in defeat and think that it is impossible. Instead, get right back into life and try again. Start setting realistic goals for yourself. Setting smaller goals that you can actually accomplish can be a great way to enhance your confidence and to allow you to see all the good that you do get done.
Begin learning to love yourself and acknowledge that you deserve good things. Be willing to reassess your goals if they are unrealistic and set new goals that can be reached.
By working on each of these aspects of yourself you can decrease your stress levels and at the same time decrease your anxiety and lessen the odds that you will have a panic attack.
Now that we have covered negativity and pefectionism, tomorrow we will move on to the final part of this series where will will look at the third factor that contributes significantly to stress…obsessive analysis. Until then, I hope you will start trying to implement some of the ideas from the first two parts of this series into your life right away. See you tomorrow!
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[...] at how stress can contribute to anxiety and panic attacks and how negative thought patterns and perfectionism increases stress. We also talked about ways to begin thinking more positively and to begin getting [...]