Commitment: Why did you write this book? Do you think perfectionism is a plague of our time?
Alice D. Domar, Ph.D.: I do believe it is a plague of our time. The reason I wrote the book was that I have been on this mission for 20 plus years to try to help women in this country be healthier both physically and psychologically. I started by teaching mind body skills, then moved on to self-nurturance and finally realized that women would not take better care of themselves until they could ease up on themselves. Until women can become less perfectionistic they are not going totake the time to adequately take care of themselves.
Commitment: What is perfectionism? Isn't it healthy to have high expectations of ourselves?
Dr. Domar: It is healthy to have high expectations, but there are two ways it can be unhealthy – to have high expectations in every area and when it crosses a line and it becomes the need to be perfect, rather than simply being really really good.
Commitment: Why are we as women so hard on ourselves? Why can't we ever just feel good about who we are, imperfections and all? Can you explain the history of why we have gotten to the point of perfectionism that exists among women today?
Dr. Domar: There’s no record of women being hard on themselves until the later part of the nineteenth century when women learned to read and publishers began to create booklets and books on how to be better wives, mothers, cooks, bakers, and homemakers. If you look at every magazine out there, the entire focus is on how to ‘be prettier’, ‘be a better mother’, ‘be a better listener.’ ' how to work out more' , how to make the perfect cupcake/pot roast/apple pie/casserole'.
The message women get every single day is ‘you are not okay the way you are.’ The message I want women to hear is that you are fabulous the way you are.
Commitment: What are some things a woman can do who wants to break free of her perfectionistic tendencies and unrealistic expectations that are making her unhappy and stressed?
Dr. Domar: There’a quiz in the book, one of the most popular parts of the book actually, called ‘how perfectionistic are you?’, with questions about your home, relationship, job, etc. . The idea is to figure out which areas of your life are you the most hard on yourself. I have to tell you, I wrote the quiz while writing the book, and I took the quiz about six months later. I was personally shocked; I had thought I was hard on myself at my job and as a Mom. But on the quiz my highest scores were home and body. If you looked at my house right now, you would know for sure that’s clearly NOT where I put the most pressure on myself!
I’m a BIG believer if you want to change your behavior and get healthier, start with something you are going to be successful at.
For most women, becoming less perfectionistic is highly anxiety provoking. One of the first things to do is learn some relaxation techniques, which can help you with the anxiety that is going to come up when you walk in your house and it doesn’t look perfect. The third thing is to ask ourself: how important is this? What is going to happen if you don’t dust everyday? What is going to happen if you each a piece of chocolate cake? Is it really that big a deal?
Commitment: You wrote that one of your patients, who lives a very happy, successful, life, said, "every time I open a drawer or closet and see the clutter, I feel like a miserable failure." Why does the condition of our homes define us so much and make us feel so worthless? How can we start making our homes a source of comfort, rather than a source of stress?
Dr. Domar: I think we have to lower our expectations of what our home needs to look like and what we need to do to keep our home looking like that. If you live with other people, there is no reason you should be the only one keeping your family from living in a pig sty. I have a husband and two kids and I’m on a big campaign that I’m not going to be the only one who keeps it clean. Maybe you want your house to look a certain way when you have a party, but it doesn’t have to look that way every day.
Commitment: Has Martha Stewart's vision of home and entertaining been dangerous for women? Is there a way to get Martha's holiday table visions out of our heads?
Dr. Domar: I think Martha Stewart has been a bad influence on women because she IS perfection. Everything she does and represents is perfection. There is nothing wrong with doing some things very well. I went to a party once and the hostess served these amazing cupcakes and she refused to give me the recipe because it came from Martha’s Stewart Living and she was embarrassed. I personally use some of her ideas. She has a different way of boiling eggs and it is a better way, and she has a lot of really good ideas. I’m not saying she is bad or her ideas are bad, but what she portrays is unrealistic.
You can’t have everything be perfect, and the fact is when she shows the Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving special it takes dozens of people to pull it off. I read once that one of her specials took four days and ten people to cook. When I cook Thanksgiving, I have to pull it off in one day by myself. That is what she has to own up to. On the Today show, she says something takes half an hour, but she has little bowls with foods preminced and pre-cut, which is a solid hour of preparation. Rachael Ray is another example. My husband gave me her 30 Minute Meals cookbook. There is no way in heck you can do it in 30 minutes with so much chopping, mincing and preparing unless you own a chopping/mincing fairy--that book went into the cellar.
Commitment: What are some common cognitive or mental distortions that make it difficult to accept our bodies and our looks?
Dr. Domar: When women look in the mirror, they say ‘I’m fat’, ‘I’m a slob’, ‘I look terrible’ ‘I have no self-control when it comes to eating.’ These are all things women think when they look in the mirror. I see a lot of patients who have cancer, they really appreciate the good things about their body and I don’t think we should have to have a terminal disease before we appreciate what our body can do. Our bodies are amazing, if you think about what our bodies do and what they provide for us, they hang in for 75 to 80 years and how much we abuse them, and all you see is the cellulite.
Look at that beautiful healthy skin and think about your heart and lungs working right. It is a good thing our bodies can’t hear us or maybe they can because all they do all day is get insulted. Why can’t we look in the mirror and see the cup as half full rather than half empty?
Commitment: How can we reign in our perfectionist tendencies at work, especially working mothers who may feel stressed and pulled in many directions?
Dr. Domar: We have to prioritize. I wrote a piece for the New York Times that came out a few weeks ago on this. A couple of things happen with perfectionists; if their boss gives them three things to do, they very likely spend so much time on the first one, they won’t get to the second or third one. Understand what your boss needs and frequently good enough is what you should aim for. I would far rather an employee hand in something on time that is pretty good than two days late that is excellent.
Commitment: How can we retrain our brain to stop expecting perfection in our relationships? Can you explain how mental filters, overgeneralization, disqualifying the positive, and magnification can hurt our friendships and family relationships?
Dr. Domar: I think you have to listen to what your mind is saying to you. All those labels of what we do are very accurate, but you have to recognize what you are doing. I give a lot of talks and I open with a women talking how critical she is of her husband. Half the audience starts to cry because they see themselves and they look at the pressure they are under that makes them this way. There is a huge amount of flak about Barack Obama admitting that he smokes. I wrote a blog on this: I think everybody has to have a vice. I would far rather a person smokes a few cigarettes a day than drink alcohol irresponsibly or beat their wife or abuse their children.
Some vices are bad ones because they can negatively impact others and some are only negative because it affects the person. We have to stop expecting people like politicians and celebrities to be perfect and nobody is. My vice is chocolate. I’m very cognizant of that. If you have a vice that hurts somebody else, that is not okay. If your vice is to cheat on your spouse, that is not okay. Expecting yourself to have perfect behavior and habits all the time is very unhealthy.
Commitment: How can we get back to enjoying our children, rather than trying to be perfect parents who are able to raise perfect children in perfect happiness?
Dr. Domar: I think it is interesting because I live in a town where the amount of pressure on the kids is unbelievable. My kids can’t get play dates during the week because other kids are scheduled five days a week and on weekends. On weekends, we will call friends, and they all have activities. I think one thing we have to do with our kids is back off and stop projecting our issues on our kids.
Secondly, be mindful; if you are always pushing your child for future success, you are going to miss the amazing moments. I spend so much time with my kids snuggling and talking and my motto with my kids is, ‘I don’t care what grades you get or how you do in school as long as you can tell you me you did your best’, and if they mess up, they mess up. It is not the end of the world.
Commitment: Can being a perfectionist hurt our children? If so, how? What messages do we as parents send them when we are perfectionists?
Dr. Domar: I think a perfectionistic parent can be extremely harmful to a child. I see it all the time, a lot of my kid’s friends parents are extremely perfectionistic and I see the kids feel they can never measure up. They feel enormous pressure to meet their parent’s expectations and they live in fear. And so what you find with children is that either become a perfectionist or they rebel and go to the opposite way.
Commitment: How can we finally say goodbye to the guilt and shame that perfectionism triggers? How have you been able in your own life to let go of perfectionism and yet still set goals and be a very successful woman with many impressive achievements?
Dr. Domar: I’ve learned the hard way. Sometimes my husband will say, ‘how important is it?’ He once said to me, ‘if something happens that upsets me, how important is this gonna feel in a day, a week, six months and a year.’ I had a fight with my boss two weeks ago, and I was completely hysterical, I thought ‘my boss hates me’ but it was a misunderstanding.
But I thought to myself that in all likelihood this won't matter in a month. And now a few weeks alter, I can barely remember what the disagreement was about! You have to put things in perspective. Your kid didn’t get invited to a birthday party, are you going to remember in six months that they weren’t invited.? If a friend drops in unexpectedly and sees your home is cluttered, did they drop by to see your house or spend time with you? I still struggle. My house contains two kids, a husband, me, and a dog and it is cluttered and at times, it really bugs me. But I ask myself- Do I want to spend the next 30 minutes cleaning up or watching ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ with my girls. Answer-- no contest.
Alice D. Domar, Ph.D. is executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Boston; director of mind/body services at Boston IVF; assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School; and senior psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She serves on the board of experts for LLuminari, a women’s health education company, and on the editorial advisory board for Parents and Health. She is the author of the national bestseller Self-Nurture, as well as Healing Mind, Healthy Woman and Conquering Infertility.
Alice Lesch Kelly is a freelance writer specializing in health and psychology. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Shape, and Woman’s Day.
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