Are you a “perfectionist” who is exhausted and tired of hustling for your worth? Or perhaps you have entered perfectionism recovery but remain in a long term battle with compulsive perfectionistic striving? Either way, this podcast is just the ticket for you! Take a listen to Lexi Giblin, PhD, Maggie Ritnour, LMHC, LCAT, ATR-BC, RYT, CEDS and Noni Vaughn-Pollard, NDTR, MHC-LP chat about the difference between perfectionism and excellence, the importance of celebrating achievements, and shame as the birthplace of perfectionism. Lexi, Maggie and Noni look through a radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT) lens to shed light on the topic. Along the way, you will get the inside scoop on the origin story of the Opal mascot: The Owl.
To find Noni and Maggie, go to: Roots Art Therapy at
https://www.rootsarttherapy.nyc/
@afroandappetite
@rootsarttherapy
Connect with Opal:
Thank you to our team…
Editing by David Bazzi
Music by Aaron Davidson: https://soundcloud.com/diet75/
Transcription by Rev.com
Lexi Giblin (00:02):
Welcome to the Appetite, a podcast brought to you by Opal Food and Body Wisdom, where we explore all things food, body exercise, and mental health. I am your host for today, Dr. Lexi Giblin. I’m a psychologist and executive director and co-founder at Opal, and we have two special guests today, Maggie Ritnour, who was our first milieu therapist at Opal, and so she has our hearts. She was there from the moment we opened and did some really intense hard work of helping us establish our world, our milieu world, and our treatment center at Opal. So we have a lot of gratitude and love for Maggie. I’d also say that Maggie is my partner in crime for our capture of the Opal Owl. The Opal Owl was across the street on the top of the building across the way, and Maggie and I, back in 2012, 2013, went over, got the owl from the building across the street and carried it on our shoulders back over to Opal, and it now sits in our dining room at Opal and has ever since. And that is our mascot, of course, is the Opal Owls. So that is Maggie’s one of many Maggie’s mini claims to fame, and then she’ll share her other claims to fame at the end of the podcast. And Noni is a colleague of Maggie’s. And so I’d love to hear just for both of you to share a little bit more. I don’t know Noni as well as I do Maggie. So share a little bit more about your work.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (01:56):
I guess I’ll go, I met Maggie actually I think back in 2018 when I was working at the balanced eating disorder treatment center, and I was a recovery coach there. And I was also trying to figure out too, if I wanted to keep going on the track of being a registered dietician or if I was starting to get more interested in becoming a therapist. And I just remember I would watch Maggie doing all of these really interesting things with art and karaoke and had a really just amazing energy in the center I’d never seen a therapist have before. And I was like, wow, I didn’t know therapy would actually be this fun. And so just working with Maggie and other therapists there just really got me interested in becoming a mental health counselor. So I went to Hunter, I got my master’s degree in that, and now I work with Maggie at her practice in Brooklyn Roots Art Therapy. And I’ve just been learning so much about R-O-D-B-T and perfectionism, and it’s really exciting to just keep working with someone who’s so inspiring.
Lexi Giblin (02:57):
Oh, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Maggie brings some great energy.
Maggie Ritnour (03:01):
Yeah, I remember meeting Noni and her expressing a lot of interest. My biggest memories are the turnover from cleaning up the art therapy space, and you’d be coming in with snack, I think, or you’d be flipping over breakfast and I’d be setting up for art therapy and then coming in for snack while I was striking art therapy. And you would be interested in what had happened and what I was doing or what we were doing that day. And I remembered what it was like to clean up spaces or set up spaces because of my milieu therapy experience. And I loved sharing with you and hearing how it might resonate with the work you were doing and then talking about the intersection between RD dietary and therapy. Because of my experience at Opal, the Seattle area had so many crossovers and therapists who were also dieticians, and I thought that was so lovely and cool. So I’m always tickled to think of those memories of first meeting you, Noni, and I love working with you. I mean, I could gush and go on. I know that that’s the point of our conversation.
Lexi Giblin (04:19):
And so Maggie, what’s your work right now? You’re in New York?
Maggie Ritnour (04:25):
Yes. I live in work in Brooklyn. I have an office in Park Slope. We share an office in Park Slope, Noni and I and another colleague. And since the pandemic, things have changed, but I’m an art therapist first and foremost, and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York. I predominantly see folks who have eating disorders. I am a certified eating disorder specialist, and I really love R-O-D-B-T, radically open Dialectical Behavior therapy. I’m a 2020 clinical scholar and on the road to learning more and becoming hopefully a senior clinician and have found that that treatment is a lovely crossover between art making and kind of the, for lack of a better word right now, I’m thinking woo woo aspect of not having words, but having experiences with folks, especially with eating disorders, but the treatment of R-O-D-B-T, having the evidence-based aspects and words that can go along with seeing progress, looking at increasing flexibility, decreasing rigidity in the application of art. So tangential. I live and work in Brooklyn and do mostly art therapy and some talk therapy with clients. It’s shifted more because of the pandemic,
Lexi Giblin (05:56):
But
Maggie Ritnour (05:56):
It was a lot of virtual and in-person stuff in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Lexi Giblin (06:01):
Cool. And then I know Noni gave a great talk in 2021 through it with Opal on perfectionism, and so we thought it’d be a wonderful experience for us to sit down and have a conversation about perfectionism and R-O-D-B-T since we’re all R-O-D-B-T people and work with eating disorders and perfectionism of course is such a core piece of what we’re working with on the daily with our clients. I’m wanting to open the conversation. I’m wondering if we might tackle the question, what is perfectionism when someone says I’m being perfectionistic, what are we trying to say here today? What are we working, what’s our working definition? I guess I was thinking about some of the differences between perfectionism and excellence. I know we talk a lot about that in the exercise and sport program at Opal. This difference between doing your personal best with excellence versus working towards an ideal that can never be achieved with perfectionism. So when we’re talking about perfectionism, I think we’re going to be really talking about folks who have, there’s a rigidity to their desire to achieve the top of whatever they’re doing or whatever it is that’s happening in their world in the moment. And there’s a clear product or destination and endpoint, and that endpoint is never satisfactory. So you get there and it’s not quite good enough, or it can never be perfect, so then you’re never satisfied because of course, nothing will stay as you think it should. Right.
Maggie Ritnour (08:04):
Yeah, I mean, it makes me think of being driven to be perfectionistic. Even if you do achieve whatever goal you might have put out there, it oftentimes doesn’t warrant, in my experience of perfectionism and experience of working with people, it doesn’t warrant slowing down and celebrating that excellence can so I really like the differentiation between the two. Noni. I wonder what your thoughts are.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (08:37):
Yeah, actually, I’ve not heard that often about distinguishing between perfectionism and excellence, but I think that’s a really good point to bring up because most of my clients who I talk to, I think for them that’s confusing as well, is what is being excellent at something and what is trying to be perfect at something. And I noticed, especially even in myself dealing with my own journey of perfectionism is what Maggie was saying, being able to slow down and celebrate those moments when you are doing things and you achieve something. But a lot of the times it’s so easy to just go, oh, that’s not that important, or, okay, I got that. Let’s change the goal now and make it more complicated or something else I need to strive towards. And perfectionism just becomes this obsession, it seems like, with wanting to be a certain kind of image or to please people or to create a lifestyle that might not be sustainable, but it keeps you feeling like you’re productive or you’re kind of getting on this productive treadmill, but you’re not really getting, I guess somewhere meaningful or purposeful for yourself.
Lexi Giblin (09:44):
This compulsive striving that comes with perfectionism. I love knowing what you used the word celebration, and I love that because I think about with excellence, you celebrate your end goals. When you achieve something, there’s a celebration and imper perfectionism, when you achieve your goal or your number, usually that goal just becomes more stringent. So I love thinking about excellence as being a space of celebration. I’m also thinking that the differences between excellence, I’m thinking one of the core differences between excellence and perfectionism is the emotional source of those behaviors of behavior, of excellence versus a behavior of perfectionism. So I’m thinking like perfectionism, your sourcing shame, and in perfectionism, the emotion is an interest and excitement about life and wanting to get the most out of life, very different feelings.
Maggie Ritnour (11:05):
That reminds me of teasing out in R-O-D-B-T. So not to jump into the themes, but teasing out the difference between admiration and envy of, I think that there can be a slippery crossover between excitement moving into the anxiety of how will I be perceived, or what are other people thinking that move from excellence to being more perfectionistic, which I believe often crosses over. I mean, I know I have to be careful for myself when I start to cross over between striving with excitement and then suddenly shifting into this autopilot where the end goals become more stringent or just become further away. That makes a lot of sense. The differentiating between the source of where it starts, which makes me, it connects to what you both were saying about the obsessions or compulsions that can be more associated with perfections when sourced from shame.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (12:13):
Yeah, I think especially the word shame comes into play for perfectionism. I think that causes a lot of, it causes just a lot of pain. It feels like for a lot of people, whether it’s any kind of self-harm, especially with eating disorders, it’s always, to me, seems like a punishment of not feeling like you’re a good enough person. You have to be punished for that in some kind of way, or even in just a lot of needs to please other people and not acknowledging your own needs, just wanting to feel like you’re fitting in or belonging, even if it means you’re going to burn out or exhaust yourself emotionally and physically. So that to me, I think is what makes perfectionism feel kind of like, I dunno if the word is icky, but it’s just like it doesn’t feel good now, I think as I’ve learned more about it, and I’m not trying to be that type of striver as a perfectionist, but it just feels like it comes from a lot of pain that you feel like it’s just never good enough and that you always have to be working on yourself in order for accepting yourself or order for other people to accept you.
Maggie Ritnour (13:20):
And with shame, there’s often the secret component. It thrives in secrecy. And so a lot of perfectionism now, I mean in the age of social media, I feel like I’ve noticed it more, and that might also be just the age that I am in life and the work that I’m doing, but it seems like it’s more insidious. It’s everywhere that’s pressure to be perfect, and yet people are kind of talking about it, but they’re still struggling with it. We as humans are all struggling with it, and we’re also clinicians and the secrecy that becomes part of that. I’m not going to tell people that it’s something that I’m struggling with and I am struggling with. It can be part of the problems of being reinforced by society or by family or culture or different environmental pressures to, it can be reinforced and therefore become, I think we’ll probably talk about maladaptive coping, which just kind of leads to this vicious cycle of keeping it hidden, but also really struggling with it and feeling so isolated and ashamed that you’re not actually achieving the thing that you want, which is now far distance away.
Lexi Giblin (14:43):
Right. I love thinking about perfectionism, the birthplace of perfectionism being shame, and then as you said, the hiding that comes with shame and this feeling that there’s something wrong with us and this perfectionism as a way to try to hide the truth, this inadequacy that we see in ourselves when we’re in that space. And I can think of times in my life where I’m working from a perfectionism place and it is just I’m feeling really low about myself, and so I develop this perfectionistic kind of plan of like, okay, here’s how I’m going to take care of, I’m going to address all of these problems in this particular way and has a very different feeling from just feeling like, where do I want to go in my life next? I’m curious about where I’m headed and I’m going to be and how I’m developing and growing.
(15:49):
The feeling that it comes from is one of a lot of hurt and pain. And I’d also say unwarranted shame as we talk about in R-O-D-B-T, this is usually the birthplace of shame, the birthplace of perfectionism and shame is usually unwarranted shame in that the person, there’s actually not anything wrong with them. So this is a false positive of shame. So the person’s actually okay, but they don’t believe that to be the case. Also, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about why it’s so important to appear perfect is or to be a certain way. Why is that so important from an RO perspective? Why do humans care so much?
Maggie Ritnour (16:48):
Because we don’t want to be alone. I mean, from an R-O-D-B-T perspective, rro talks about the evolutionary evolutionary hard wiring and our brains of these old communities or tribes that we were historically a part of, and how our social ostracization would mean certain death for an individual. And we still function from those places, and it feels like that. I mean, we feel like that when we’re definitely in that kind of preteen, adolescent, teenage brain stage of not wanting to be alone. But I’ve also seen it currently in the uncertainty, in the pandemic of feeling so isolated and a spike of perfectionism because I wonder if people are feeling have felt so isolated and alone. Anyway, I’m tangenting. The question was from an R-O-D-B-T perspective, why would people not want to feel this shame or why would unwarranted shame happen?
Lexi Giblin (17:59):
Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it with that, Maggie, just that this is at its core about belonging and avoidance of loneliness.
Maggie Ritnour (18:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
Lexi Giblin (18:17):
So it’s sort of perfectionism as an attempt at belonging and finding people.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (18:23):
Yeah. Oh, sorry Maggie, if you wanted to go. I’m actually just thinking about my cat right now because my cat is very vocal creature, which is very unusual for cats, and we were trying to figure out why he was put up for adoption because his last owner said he was aggressive. But I think just having this conversation about why people try to be perfect is not wanting to be rejected. I mean, if my cat had a more complicated brain, maybe he would feel more shame about being a pretty vocal cat and not like other cats, but because he is not like that, he’ll just be himself. But I think for most human beings, like what Matthew was saying, we don’t want to feel rejected by the larger community or society. So we’ll do things that we think are socially acceptable, not showing a lot of feelings or emotion, not being a person who’s needy or clingy. I hear clients say that all the time, especially about dating. I don’t want to seem clingy. I don’t want to see needy, so I won’t say what I want to this person. But that’s the only way you know what your community is or who’s part of your tribe. Like what ARO talks about with finding your tribe is if you actually express vulnerable parts of yourself. But I think we just are brought up a lot, especially in western culture, to be pretty inauthentic in order to connect and belong in a group.
Lexi Giblin (19:45):
Yeah, inauthentic is the word, isn’t it? Because perfectionism drives you to not be yourself. So then whatever you’re putting out there is not actually a true representation of yourself, so you’re not going to feel connected because what you’re putting out there isn’t actually you.
Maggie Ritnour (20:06):
Yeah. And you said something a little bit ago, Lexi, about when one is feeling perfectionistic, it might be a superficial or catchall for other stuff that’s going on. When I heard your words, that made me think of uncertainty. What is the direction of my life? And I know for me that is generally where I feel more perfection coming more. I want things to look a certain way and be a certain way when I have uncertainty happening. And I just lost my train
Lexi Giblin (20:41):
Of thought. Well, that really segues us nicely into, it’s talking about the over control temperament because uncertainty and over control are very much so related, right? Let’s talk about why over controlled folks. And for those of you who don’t know about over control, the over control temperament, we’re talking about a temperament that tends to be more emotionally inhibited, behaviorally inhibited as well, perfectionistic risk averse. Let’s see, lots of other things, but commonly can be thought of as sort of a type A personality, someone who’s just neurobiologically prone to function in the world from a more inhibited kind of place. How would you all think, how can we think about why Overcontrolled folks or maybe more prone to perfectionism, because I’m sure under controlled folks are also perfectionistic, but why is this more of an OC thing?
Maggie Ritnour (21:50):
Folks who are over controlled are more risk averse. The evidence shows that in the research that there’s more of a threat sensitivity and more of a, so they’re likely to be more hypervigilant in their environment because of their biology, predisposed biology, and more aware of discrepancies and minor things that are off reading things as a threat when they’re not necessarily a threat, when they might be an ambiguous signal, which can make folks more prone to thinking before they act. And able to do that in a way that sometimes we need to learn how to think before we act in life, and we teach our kids to do that. But it can become for people who are, their brains are already kind of hardwired to in those ways, to not act in those ways. It can be more problematic, especially when there is reinforcing in society or families environments that says, yes, we don’t want you to be the squeaky wheel or the vocal cat Noni example.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (23:05):
Yeah, I am still a beginner of ro, so even Lexi, when you brought up that under control, people can still be perfection. I was like, oh, really? It’s interesting. I didn’t know that before. And I guess that’s not who I usually work with. So I don’t always think of that, I guess in that case. But I think also what Maggie brought up about especially the biological component of someone who has an OC temperament, I think when I was learning about ro, especially from Maggie, I was trying to figure out, well, is it my family environment or was it growing up in the city that I don’t know, some of the time period I was born that kind of fed into that OC for me a little bit, but I also recognized that I identify as a highly sensitive person. I didn’t know if that was for a very long time until I started seeing my therapist.
(23:55):
And I think being highly sensitive just made me more aware and actually risk averse. I don’t like taking a risk, and I always think about all the different factors that go into a decision before I make a choice. So then I realized, yes, that is part of my biology. My nervous system is different. I just pick up on things on environment. Even if it’s not threatening me, I might think something is a threat. And then I find it interesting too that a number of my clients identify as being very sensitive people. So they will pick up on things and dialogue that they think is a threat, maybe just based on tone or the speed of something that something is said. And they might go, oh, wait a minute, am I being threatened right now in that situation? But it’s just interesting how we all have different ways of reacting to things, and that feeds into us being over controlled, I guess, or under controlled
Lexi Giblin (24:50):
Noni. I wonder also, it sounds like, as I understand it, one of your areas of interest is perfectionism and the intersection between perfectionism over control and black women. Could you speak a little to how you see that intersection playing out, what that looks like?
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (25:13):
Yeah. I remember I was talking to Maggie about how learning about RO was a huge paradigm shift for me. It was so different than how I was raised as a young black girl growing up in New York City. I mean, New York City is already a pretty intense city to live in, but just being a black girl or a black woman, I was taught, you’re not supposed to be vulnerable. You’re not supposed to express certain parts of yourself. You’re not supposed to trust certain types of people. So when I was learning about RO and how to actually change your physiology in order to show that you are open to making connections, that was like, wait a minute. But that’s so different than how I was taught to engage with the world. But I think it was also, it was just such a nice way too of getting permission to be more of myself being more authentic, because authentically, I’m very open and warm, but I was always taught not to be that way.
(26:12):
So I think learning about RO was just such, I don’t know, it was such a nice relief, I think, from how I was raised and taught about how to show up in the world. And I also have clients of color who always talk to me about how they don’t even trust white clinicians in the medical field because of their experiences. And it’s just really interesting having that conversation about we can be successful people, especially as black women or women of color, but not to the point where we’re actually hurting ourselves or sabotaging our health in a certain way. But I think that’s, we’re always raised that we have to look out for ourselves that we’re not usually comfortable with being vulnerable in other relationships.
Lexi Giblin (26:57):
I love that it RO gave you permission to share yourself. It kind of said, this is how to be connected in a way that was in conflict with the messaging you’d received growing up. Yeah. Love that. What about the impact on relationships, perfectionism and relationships? Let’s talk about it. I’m thinking about what perfectionism looks like from a social signaling perspective. What does it look like to be perfectionistic to the fly on the wall? What do we see and how does that impact our social realm?
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (27:42):
I think what I find fascinating about, especially if you’re someone who’s pretty perfectionistic, how it comes up in relationships is that it makes it very difficult for someone to be vulnerable and then to actually connect with other people. I didn’t think I would talk so much about relationships as a therapist as much as I do now. I thought like, oh, I didn’t study marriage and family therapy, so that’s not really going to come up. But it comes up every week with every client about, they ask me, how do I get closer to this person? I don’t feel like I’m really connecting with people, or they’re just really frustrated that even though they are very, I guess, type A personalities, they’re still not having relationships that are very intimate and satisfying for them. But I think I am probably the need to look like you can keep your composure, that you’re not dependent on other people in order to survive, which is very backwards. We all need that, but I think that’s definitely what comes up with people who are dealing with perfectionism, is trying not to need others in order to be seen as being very independent, very self-sufficient people. But in the end, it makes you very lonely and isolated. And so that just goes against who we are as human beings. We’re social. So this idea of having relationships but not wanting to depend on people just doesn’t really go together.
Maggie Ritnour (29:09):
Yeah, Lexi, when you first asked the question, I was thinking, well, if you do it perfectly, if you socially signal perfectly, you’re not going to have any problems. And that might be a thought a lot of people have, or not even a thought, but this unconscious belief, a lot of there is such a, people are so lonely. There’s such a desire to not be alone from folks who are looking for relationships and how they’re presenting themselves on a dating app, that there is this strive toward what picture and comparison with other photos that are out there or previous photos of themselves in all for hopes of being more connected to another person or comparing yourself to other people’s social media feeds. Even the amount that one is posting or the likes that can happen. Loneliness is such a part of it. We strive to, we talked about this earlier, not be lonely.
(30:16):
And a lot of what kind of interplays in the clients that I’ve seen, especially folks with eating disorders, is this desire to not be a burden, to not share more about what’s really happening, because you don’t want to burden someone else with the extent of how you feel emotionally or what’s actually happening in your life behaviorally or interpersonally. And often it comes from this place of being sensitive, I think, with not having an understanding as a person who’s sensitive, that your feelings will impact someone because you feel so much on your own and how that impacts socially and signal wise, this kind of masking that can happen. So with clients, with people, it can happen with both the masking of saying, not saying anything, being very superficial in conversations, saying everything’s fine when it’s not. And sometimes people believe that sometimes loved ones are like, oh, everything’s fine with this person, or It looks like everything’s fine because of X, Y, and Z grades, how the hygiene is what’s happening with activities of daily living, and this person is showing up to work even working really hard. Or a person can say, I’m fine. And there’s this edge of, it doesn’t seem like they’re fine, but they’re saying it. Masking could look like smiling and nodding and really feeling like you’re falling apart, you’re crying on the inside, or that you will cry later that day behaviorally with folks with eating disorders, not eating what you would prefer to eat in front of specific people based on what you believe somebody else would say. It’s just
Lexi Giblin (32:13):
Huge.
Maggie Ritnour (32:14):
Yeah, it is. It resonates out,
Lexi Giblin (32:19):
And I appreciate both. I think that that is the core. It’s what it looks like is not being real about what’s happening for you and in various ways your vulnerabilities. It’s not putting the truth out there. And I am thinking about times when I’m around highly perfectionistic people, or even folks at Opal, clients at Opal, where there’s this strong perfectionism kind of vibe in the room and how that impacts me. I often feel like if I’m around someone who’s highly perfectionistic, I’ll often find myself more inhibited around them as well, because I don’t want to do the wrong, I try to also be perfectionistic. I don’t want them to judge me about mistakes I might make. So in the social realm, it seems like it kind of breeds this inhibition all around the person, not just the person’s expression of themselves, but those around them. There’s a social signal of we all need to be very careful here to not let ourselves be known. That’s dangerous. Let’s keep it on the surface. Let’s stay aloof and distant and let’s critique ourselves. And with that, this assumption that when we critique ourselves, I’m also critiquing other people. So I often think of that the perfectionism, like the group perfectionism vibe and how uncomfortable that is and how little play there usually is in those scenarios as well. There’s not a lot of fun, flexibility, risk-taking happening, genuine, guttural, laughter.
(34:25):
Those are the places where you’re free and letting yourself just not be too concerned.
Maggie Ritnour (34:32):
Yeah. Gosh, Noni, it’s reminding me of the conversation we had the other day about feeling fatigued in this work and sometimes feeling like we’re not doing enough, and that that’s such a real place. And sometimes that’s our own barometer saying that’s not necessarily about us talking about our own perfectionism, but it’s oftentimes this reaction or response to what’s happening in the quote room with the client or with people who are engaging in perfectionism.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (35:08):
Yeah. I’m actually just, I’m thinking of too, when Lexi, you were talking about being in a group and how that comes in the energy of the group. I did a group with some teen girls about perfectionism, and it was really funny how I thought it was going to be really difficult. Okay, these are girls who are pretty controlling and they might not want to talk too much or might want to just seem very, like what you’re saying, aloof that these girls had so much to say, was hard to just cut at time whenever they would just be talking. But they just wanted to connect with someone else to know that they’re not alone at a very young age that they’re going through this. But I’ve been in groups with older adults, and it’s a very different energy. It’s like, I don’t know what it is. Maybe developmentally people just are more aware of keeping their composure or an image in front of other adults, but it’s a little more serious, I think, when I’ve been in groups with adults and the perfectionism is a lot more open in the air than I think with the younger people
Lexi Giblin (36:13):
And with the younger people. And by the way, I just got off a one week vacation with two teenagers, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, one week solid, just me with them. And the intensity of the self consciousness is, it was up there, and I guess it’s probably, there’s some perfectionism and it also just seems like a normal developmental stage, noni. But the thing that really connected with me with what you just said is once you get them going, if you can get one of them to start to share something vulnerable, then they will start. They just are really wanting to connect in a real way. It’s about feeling like it’s going to be okay to do so, but if you can get that going, it’s amazing to watch the openness happen and the relief that comes with, oh my gosh, I’m not alone. And they’re also fallible and feeling inadequate.
Maggie Ritnour (37:23):
Yeah, absolutely. I even have felt that way as an adult listening to podcasts. I mean, especially this podcast, why I love the Appetite is because y’all share real examples of your life and it feels like, oh, they’re real people. They’re people who I admire, not just the podcast, but what you’re doing as a profession. And they’re opening up and it allows permission. I mean, it makes me think that you probably gave that to the group noni with the kids, and that’s likely what started the fire. And when one person does that, and we can do that as clinicians, it’s almost like it’s sometimes harder in real life. Sometimes it often feels harder to do that in real life. It is a risk.
Lexi Giblin (38:21):
Yeah. I mean, there’s a reason why on Friday mornings that in facing fears, every time we do karaoke, there’s a reason I start it off. There’s a reason I do the first song, and it’s not because I want to, it’s because I know somebody’s got to break the ice. And then maybe my social signaling will invite others to be playful and put themselves out there and show their goofball side some true side of themselves for that hour. But no, I think that’s such a big part of it. Someone’s got to start the chain of sharing. Okay. All right. So this is great. This is great, Maggie. You just learned that your sound quality is not going to be perfect on this podcast. How are you doing?
Maggie Ritnour (39:21):
I’m feeling self-conscious because I can’t hear, I don’t know what the blurb sounds like. I know that it’s pudding to others, so I’m more self-conscious that it’s impacting what might be a desirable outcome. I don’t feel any pressure to change on my end. I don’t have any options to change, I guess I don’t think, should I do something different? Is there something different I can do on my end?
Lexi Giblin (39:58):
I don’t know of anything you could do on your end, Maggie. I think we have to live with it.
Maggie Ritnour (40:03):
Oh, gosh. I’m imperfect and I have to live with it.
Lexi Giblin (40:06):
Yeah, I think that’s the case. But Maggie, I love how you were just real with how you felt about it.
Maggie Ritnour (40:17):
Yeah,
Lexi Giblin (40:18):
Appreciate that.
Maggie Ritnour (40:20):
Thanks for telling me what was going on. I actually heard it go
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (40:25):
Out, but I was like, well, don’t know if I should jump in. Maybe it’s my own perfectionism too. Should I fix this for Maggie? But then I thought maybe it’s fine on the other end, so I didn’t do much about that.
Lexi Giblin (40:43):
Yeah. Well, I think one of the powers of being imperfect in front of each other and talking about it, and now Maggie, this is not something you have any control over anyway, is that we can Noni, and I think we’re all cool with you still, Maggie. No, we’re not going to reject you or anything like that for this imperfect microphone. So you’re still totally in with us.
Maggie Ritnour (41:16):
Thank you for letting me know. I mean, the social signaling was there, but it’s validating to have the words.
Lexi Giblin (41:26):
Okay, good, good. Okay. So this helps us segue actually to treatment. What do we do? How can we help ourselves and each other and our clients with perfectionism? From an RO perspective, what do we do?
Maggie Ritnour (41:43):
Yeah, this is the part. I wonder if I just had the blurb. Well, I said that this is the part about RO that I really like. It talks about kindness and pointing out potentially problem behaviors in our clients. But before that, we talk about problematic or maladaptive coping that manifests and targeting things that the client identifies based on the different themes. Lexi, you kind of mentioned them earlier, aloof, distant envy, social comparisons, rigid rule, govern, disingenuous, overly cautious, hypervigilant, and how these different themes manifest in a person’s life. But aside from that, further on in treatment, we really talk about being in a room or being face-to-face in some capacity with masks off with the metaphoric or figurative masks off, or talking about those masks that may be getting in the way. Maggie, I’ve been noticing, I mean, this was a great example of you’re here for this podcast today, but your sound is a little off.
(43:01):
Could that potentially be a social signal? Is that something that you’re aware of? It could be offputting. I mean, depending on the blurp sound, the bloop sound, it may really, what if it were like a screech? It could really be offputting and keep people from wanting to listen to a conversation that I think is, I believe we all agree is a really important one. So talking to clients about and targeting parts of their behavior that may be keeping them from joining or being fully authentic in a way that is the life that they want to have, the life that is in line with their valued goals of connecting with another person or with multiple people.
Lexi Giblin (43:48):
I mean, it’s so going opposite to shame, just instead of hiding yourself.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (43:56):
Yeah, I was just going to jump in actually, when Maggie’s talking about the values, and I mean, one of my biggest values I think as a person and as a professional is humor and laughter and joy. And I try not bring that into my sessions with my clients. My clients can be very serious about everything, but it’s really fun, especially with my clients who are adolescents. I work with a number of younger clients, but they are, especially in high school, it’s about looking cool. You don’t want to seem like an awkward person. So I always ’em, you could just laugh at yourself if you do something that’s kind of weird and awkward, like humor can help to lighten it up. And it becomes funny because all of a sudden we’re laughing in session about different awkward moments and how do you handle that? But even with my older clients too, because I think sometimes there’s this idea that the older you get, the more serious you need to be in order to handle being an adult.
(44:54):
But I just keep reminding people, you can have fun. It can be funny if something doesn’t go a certain way or if you react in a certain way that seems not socially acceptable. It helps just to relax your body and your mind if you’re having a good time. But if you’re in a social situation, I can’t ever look like I’m doing something wrong or I’m awkward, or I’m the weird one. I don’t know. You’re not really present in situations. So that’s something I do a lot with my clients to help them is adding more humor and laughter into things and not taking everything so seriously. They normally do
Lexi Giblin (45:33):
Such a huge one. I love that one, laughing at yourself and playfulness. I also think about self-inquiry. This is something, this is self-inquiry. I just love self-inquiry and I think about how impactful it can be to intervene in the original emotion before you start down the perfect perfectionistic project list. Holding a moment for yourself to explore the unwanted emotion that is at the heart of that urge to do better or do something differently, do something perfectly. Sitting in that emotion for those three to five minutes, of course, with self-inquiry where we ask ourselves the question, what’s the learning here? Rather than going to a solution, the solution of perfection, considering what’s the learning of this emotion and discomfort rather than what’s the way to solve the problem of me? It’s such a different way of going. So I think self-inquiry is such a rich tool for perfectionism.
Maggie Ritnour (46:59):
Yeah, absolutely. I love that you said that you love it. I think a lot of clients that I work with don’t love self-inquiry, at least at first. And that’s because there is no perfect answer in self-inquiry. And sometimes you don’t have an answer. I mean, that is what the goal of self-inquiry, to have more questions, which in itself is a kind of exposure, a dismantling, an exposure to imperfect, not having an answer feels imperfect. And that process of being with that for three to five minutes is life changing. I mean, it really can change our physiology to be exposed to that for short amounts of time.
Lexi Giblin (47:46):
I mean, I know when I’m in a perfectionistic mode, when I figure out how to solve the problem of this inadequacy that I’ve identified in myself, there’s an automatic decrease in my anxiety. Like, oh, it’s going to be better soon. I’ve got the problem is solved now I just have to execute. And such a different space than the self-inquiry space where you’re just, it’s chaos and ambiguity and there’s no answer, and you actually feel worse when you’re done. It’s not a closed regulating practice at all. Of course, inherently. So I do think of perfectionism as being so rewarding in that way. The immediate decrease in anxiety, oh, I’ve got the problem solved. I don’t have to be inadequate forever. And that’s part of what makes it so challenging to let go of, right? It is so soothing at first.
Maggie Ritnour (48:52):
Absolutely. It’s harder. I mean, because it’s intermittently rewarded. Sometimes you can achieve all the boxes on your to-do list are checked or all the emails are answered, and it feels so nice to just have the things put away. But that’s not, life is chaotic and uncertain and full of imperfect and times that don’t feel easeful. So to practice on a regular basis, which can be a way to practice feeling dysregulated is the way out, and it’s so uncomfortable.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (49:37):
Yeah, I agree with that. When I first learned about self-inquiry from Maggie, I didn’t really understand it because I’m so used to adrenaline for a very long periods of time to ruminate and figure things out. So when she was saying, oh, three to five minutes, I was like, that’s not enough time to really figure your life out in three to five minutes a day. But I think the more I practice it, the more I started getting more comfortable with that uncertainty and the unknown. I don’t like feeling like I don’t know certain things, but I think that’s a real challenge. And also the reality of life, like you both were saying, you’re not always going to get all the answers at once, no matter how organized or structured of a person you are. And can you lean into that and actually just use it as an opportunity to learn more about yourself or your relationship with anxiety and the unknown.
(50:32):
And I do some self-inquiry sometimes with clients, like the actual formal journaling practice. And then with other clients, it’s more about asking them questions to get them to that edge of am I challenging myself of not needing to have an answer? A lot of my clients are like, oh, yeah, great. I got it. That’s fine. I’m going to try that and it’s going to work out great. Or, oh, this is the perfect relationship. I don’t need to look anymore for anybody else. It’s like, it might not be, you can keep exploring and see what comes up. And you can always change your mind too if something is not resonating with you or it’s not going in direction you feel comfortable with. You can change direction. But I think especially if you’re a perfectionist, you feel like there’s only one way to handle things, and even if it’s not working, you have to stick it out anyway.
Maggie Ritnour (51:22):
And that’s such a signal to other people. This being willing to not have the answers is such an openness that it’s a clear, I mean, as Noni is sharing, it’s a clear connection between intimacy and this vulnerable connection of being imperfect and in the moment. So I get so focused on, I had the answer. And so there’s no other way of wild how hard it is to actively engage in self-inquiry.
Lexi Giblin (52:01):
One of my favorite questions when perfectionism is coming up in self-inquiry for myself, and I’ll throw it out to others if at times as well as, what are you trying to hide? Because perfectionism, I think of as an attempt to hide something at its heart.
Maggie Ritnour (52:24):
I’m going to write that one down.
Lexi Giblin (52:26):
What are you trying to hide from me? Or what are you trying to hide? I love that one for myself. Okay. Is anything else that you two would like to be sure to get in?
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (52:40):
I think there was one thing about, especially people who have eating disorders and relationships. There was one thing I wanted to share.
Lexi Giblin (52:47):
Yes, please.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (52:49):
Something I find really interesting, especially with the clientele I work with who have or live with eating disorders, is that they are, a lot of them are trying to create new relationships that are more intimate, but they’re also trying to hide the fact that they have an eating disorder from someone new. And just the whole conversation we were having about how shame thrives in secrecy, it’s just interesting how a lot of them are trying to figure out, how do I keep this secret and also build a bridge with another person, which it’s confusing for them, but then ultimately I tell them, you might want to disclose that that’s something that you live with because it will affect the relationship. But it’s interesting how that fear of vulnerability is, how do I keep certain secrets from people and still pretend that I can connect and be fun and intimate with this person, even though there’s a Pandora’s box that I just do not want to open? Because what if I do and then I’m rejected and I lose this person? So I think that’s something I’m learning a lot about in this work that I didn’t really know about before.
Lexi Giblin (53:57):
Thanks for that. Because yeah, eating disorders are there and there’s so much secrecy involved. And then how does that get in the way of connectedness? Well, you are more under controlled, which is one of the things I love about you, Maggie. And with that, I know that you’d probably be willing to give us a little comfy pants dance.
Maggie Ritnour (54:22):
Yeah. I am going to move my table. I hope it doesn’t make a noise.
Lexi Giblin (54:26):
Okay.
Maggie Ritnour (54:29):
I feel like I should do the video. I should share. I mean, hopefully you can see me.
Lexi Giblin (54:35):
So noe’s never seen this.
Maggie Ritnour (54:37):
No. And that’s why I feel like I want to make sure she,
Lexi Giblin (54:41):
You want to make sure she can see the full, she can see the whole thing.
Maggie Ritnour (54:50):
I dunno if you can see. You can’t see my feet. Okay. This is my comfy pants dance. Comfy pants. Comfy pants. Comfy pants. Comfy pants. Comfy, comfy, comfy comfy. Com, com. Com. Comfy comfy comfy com. Comfy com Comfy.
Lexi Giblin (55:11):
Yes. I love that.
Maggie Ritnour (55:15):
It can go on, but I feel like it’s not necessary right now.
Lexi Giblin (55:19):
It can go on and on and on, and it’s gone on in my mind for about 10 years now. So thank you for that gift of the Comfy Pants dance, because I’ll put my comfy pants on and do a little Maggie comfy pants dance.
Maggie Ritnour (55:32):
I’m glad I wore them.
Lexi Giblin (55:34):
Yeah, perfect, perfect.
Maggie Ritnour (55:36):
It would be inappropriate to do the comp nce about No.
Lexi Giblin (55:39):
Yeah. No, you can’t fake
Maggie Ritnour (55:40):
With anything else.
Lexi Giblin (55:41):
You can’t fake it. You got to have them.
Maggie Ritnour (55:43):
It would be social signaling that just wouldn’t match. No,
Lexi Giblin (55:46):
No.
Maggie Ritnour (55:48):
The words.
Lexi Giblin (55:49):
Well, I loved my time with both of you. Noni, great to meet you. And Maggie, good to spend time with you. Thank you for this conversation. You’ve brought up some great ideas and have my thoughts bubbling.
Noni Vaughn-Pollard (56:05):
Thanks. Thanks so much. It’s always fun. I love talking about perfectionism because it’s such a serious topic, but good to bring some light too to it
Maggie Ritnour (56:14):
As well. Yeah. I love talking about perfectionism when I’m doing it imperfectly you so much for inviting
Lexi Giblin (56:24):
Us. Yeah, it was really fun. Okay, thanks for joining us today on The Appetite. We’re back. And for more information on Maggie and Noni’s practice, go to Roots Art Therapy. We will link it in our show notes as well. Until next time.
