Killing the Perfectionist Within: A Self-Help Guide for Women Suffering from Perfectionism, Anxiety, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

By Honor Jane Newman

Release high expectations, reduce anxiety, and come to accept yourself completely as you are right now. Honor teaches us the beauty of being average through her fun and accessible writing style and practical workbook exercises.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen Culture Solutions
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638127697

Honor Jane Newman

"Honor Newman is a world-renowned thought leader on empowerment for women.Honor is a particular expert in helping women beat their perfectionistic mindsets that are getting in the way of their dream lives. Honor's mission is to help women overcome perfectionism in all its forms, enabling them to craft lives of their dreams and make a positive impact on the world.Combining her background in mental health counseling with practical personal and business advice and grounded knowledge of spiritual and energetic principles, Honor is a unique entity.She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her two children,husband, cat, and two goldfish."

Book preview

Killing the Perfectionist Within

A Self-Help Guide for Women Suffering from Perfectionism, Anxiety, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Copyright © 2023 by Honor Jane Newman

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63812-768-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63812-769-7

All rights reserved. No part in this book may be produced and transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The viThe views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. It hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Published by Pen Culture Solutions 08/09/2023

Pen Culture Solutions

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1-800-950-458 (Australia)

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Killing the perfectionist within: A self help guide for women suffering from perfectionism, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.

By Honor Newman, M.A, Psych

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: What is perfectionism anyway?

Introduction

Meet your perfect friend…

Perfectionistic parenting: critical and over indulgent

The critical parent: Mummy, Daddy do you approve now?

Workbook exercise 1: Do you have high expectations?

The over indulgent parent:

The larger critical parent

The yes/no monster

Unhelpful thinking styles

Social anxiety

Burnout and chronic fatigue

Perfectionism in intimate relationships

Guilt

Isolation

Perfectionism and suicide risk

Part 2: How to live a joyously flawed life

I’ll let you in on a little secret…..Happiness is a learned skill, follow me and I’ll show you how….

The beauty of being average

Workbook exercise 2: How do you feel about being average?

Self-awareness

Workbook exercise 3: Improving self-awareness for mind, body and soul:

Positive self- talk

Work book exercise 4: Improving your self- talk

Self- esteem building or cultivating a good relationship with YOU

Self- esteem practices:

Work book exercise 5 a): To aide awareness of areas that need inner growth:

Body Image - The great female struggle

Workbook Exercise 6a: Improving body image by reflecting on its miracle

Workbook exercise 6b: Improve body image by accepting flaws

A self -marriage ritual

Work book exercise 7: A self -marriage ritual:

The art of mindfulness

Workbook exercise 8: A Mindfulness practice:

Rest

Workbook exercise 9: A restful practice

What are your pleasures?

Work book exercise 10: Practice your pleasures

Femininity and going with the flow

Work book exercise 11: Practicing feminine flow

Creating networks

Managing guilt

Part 3: You are not Peter Pan; you cannot lose your own shadow!

More on guilt and shame love and money

Your energy field

How I became a perfectionist - updated story

Have you ever heard of the burnt chop syndrome?

The mask and neurodiversity/autism

On codependency.

Conclusion: Where to go from here…..Living the dream

Workbook exercise 11: Clarifying your dream

A final word on self- care and relapse prevention

Epilogue

One last thing…

Bibliography

Articles:

Books and chapters:

Masters and doctoral theses:

Journals

Movies and Clips

About the author

APPENDIX 1: My Pleasures

APPENDIX 2: List of workbook exercises

1. Quiz- Do you have high expectations?

2. Reflection exercise: How do you feel about being average?

3. Three exercises to improve self -awareness for mind, body and soul.

4. Improving the quality of your self- talk.

5. A) raising your awareness of where you need inner growth.

b) Improving your own self –acceptance.

6. A) Improving your body image by reflecting on its miracle

B) Improving body image by accepting flaws

7. A self- marriage ritual.

8. A mindfulness practice.

9. A restful practice.

10. Practice of feminine flow.

11. Clarifying your dream.

Appendix 3: Multidimensional Perfectionism scale

Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt, P.L., & Flett, G.L. (1990). Perfectionism and depression: A multidimensional analysis. Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality, 5, 423-438

Preface

The greatest perfection is imperfection – Lucillo Vanini

The inspiration for this book came about after my own personal experience, research and client work. About 10 years ago I found myself in the midst of a personal health crisis. I was struggling for energy almost constantly. No one in the medical profession could give me a straight answer as to why. So I had no other choice but to embark on my own healing journey. I started with diet and counselling. I made a tree change, moving my inner city lifestyle out to the leafy, slower paced outer suburbs. I experimented with lots of different ways of eating including macrobiotic, vegan and raw foods. These all helped a lot. However I still felt like I was on the verge of being diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. At the time I had been eating out quite a lot, and had been undergoing some quite intensive psychotherapy. This psychotherapy had been very helpful, however the length and duration of emotional purging of past traumas had, coupled with me trying to complete a Master’s Degree, working part time as a psychologist and planning a wedding had left me feeling extremely burnout. I remember at the time being completely lost and confused as to why I was tired. I had no concept of how much was a reasonable amount of things to have on my plate or how to really truly care for myself properly. I then got pregnant. My husband and I moved house and I had a bit of a melt-down. I was told quite sternly by my partner to stop and take it easy. The pregnancy was a blessing in a way (apart from the obvious reasons) because it caused me to cut down and then stop work and think about my wellbeing more. The year after my baby was born I was a vegan and by the time she was one, I was extremely physically healthy, yet still tired, after being back at my university course (lucky she was a good sleeper!!) So the long and the short of it was that I slowly learnt, through counselling and taking better care of myself nutritionally, why I had reached that point of burnout. There was certain things about the way I was viewing the world that were affecting my interaction with it and causing me to overburden and stress myself to the limit on a regular basis. I learnt that these were patterns that had developed over the course of my young life to become personality factors. These personality factors are what I want to talk to you about. How they are formed and how they can be undone. As part of my Master’s thesis I also met and interviewed 10 people with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia about their experiences with these illnesses. I saw that these people had common behaviours and personality characteristics. I started scratching my head. I also saw lots of clients in my practice who present with anxiety and had these same characteristics underneath this symptom. Then I began helping them to get better. This book is about that. How I helped myself, my clients and how I can help you too.

Revised Introduction

Since I released this book in 2015, I have learnt many new things about perfectionism in terms of the causes and treatments. That is why I have decided to release this new and updated version. To talk about all the things that I did not know then that I have since discovered. I understand more deeply what it takes to treat perfectionism, so I have added some new chapters on shadow integration, guilt, shame, love and money, energy fields, neurodiversity and more …juicy hey.

Enjoy.

Part 1: What is perfectionism anyway?

"Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a big fat mess every