I recently started working with several clients who were bothered by work stress – one of them signed off work for 2 weeks. All hold significant roles and are finding delivering against expectations ‘too much’.  When I started working with these high performing people it became clear they had a long standing pattern of high anxiety at work and mostly they were ‘managing’ year after year without previous therapy, without medication, without any help – just holding on the edge of the cliff as one said vividly.  The personal cost was high and the price rising.

These people went beyond high standards. They were perfectionists – nothing less was good enough.  They had to do it right and be praised and if not, they would be criticised and would have failed and be a failure.  Admitting they struggle with anxiety – was a clear indication of failure.  Not being on top of their jobs, not being a great leader, not being liked were all indicators of failure.  My guess was that they felt these things a lot.  And I wondered whose expectations they were really fulfilling?

Working with these people reminded me of past colleagues – many in fact – working in a high pressure, high expectation environment where people get a lot done, go the extra mile and are impressive.  Organisations love and promote them.  However, people often don’t like working for them – as they never stack up to the standards demanded.  There is a cost in the unsustainability of it all – in stress, in burnout, in anxiety, depression, turnover, broken relationships.  The roots of perfectionism lie in earlier life, and it is not easy to unpick this and shift to a ‘high standards’ perspective where one delivers very well AND accepts mistakes get made, people stumble, need to regain energy and take time for a more rounded, sustainable life.   Humans are not perfect – ever. We all stumble, make mistakes, have some people not like us, find we cannot do everything.  Working ever harder will never make us perfect.

Usually, I ask these clients if they had ever seen this pattern earlier in life (and there almost always is).  One client talked about moving around a lot across cultures and languages as a child and teenager due to his father’s job.  Each time he said he sought out the coolest gang and made sure he got into it and stayed there.  However, like clockwork, he had to do it again and again and again.  All of this he described dispassionately.  He could not fail. Failure meant being alone – on the outside. And at home he could not express his challenges or fears – he just got on with it mostly alone.  He had dissociated from the high stress and anxiety of the past and yet he was repeating this pattern every time he moved into a new role and was clearly in anxiety now.

My job with all of these clients will be to help them understand and accept their anxiety and be better able to manage it while learning about mistakes, about failure, about criticism, about not being perfect and to accept themselves as they are – imperfect.   I want them to care less about work, but I do not want them to be careless. They could each be more mindful and accepting of their humanity and through that release themselves from a lifelong pattern of caring too much about ever greater success and other’s opinions and move toward being more caring of themselves.