Thought Patterns

Perfectionism is quite a common character trait, that affects about 30% of the general population and increases to almost 80% among the gifted population. Besides being pretty common, perfectionism is also on the rise. It can significantly interfere with your daily life and your stress response, so it is important to identify perfectionistic character traits and find some way to deal with them.

A perfectionist has often some common traits with a high achiever. Both are people who are often pushing themselves to their limits and strive for excellence. They are very much goal oriented. But while the high achiever is celebrating his achievements, the perfectionist is only focusing on his failures, and that he missed hitting the mark he was supposed to achieve. While the high achiever strives to be the best he can be, the perfectionist just wants to avoid looking stupid because he has made a mistake. He is driven to give more than he can because he doesn’t feel to be good enough. Achieving more, looking perfect, and pleasing everyone becomes a way to define his self-worth.

Perfectionism is an effort to get a sense of self-worth through achievements. The problem is, that a perfectionist is never reaching the point of feeling that his accomplishments are sufficient or adequate, so he constantly feels bad about himself.  Perfectionism is normally linked to limited self-esteem.

The cause of perfectionism is often found in childhood and could be caused by the following parenting styles:

• Having overly demanding parents, that expected their kids to be close to perfect, sometimes responding to any kind of shortcomings with some form of punishment. The child internalizes that it is only loveable if it is pleasing the parents and doing everything just right.
• Having perfectionist, goal-oriented parents, that children tend to model. Sometimes parents are praising their kids excessively for achievements instead of commending them for their effort.
• Having parents that were not emotionally available for their children, and the child trying to get the attention of parents with outstanding accomplishments or thinking to get appreciation by being perfect.
• Having dysfunctional parents that may not know how to treat their kids appropriately. The child may not understand the reason for his parents to be alcoholic or depressed or with some other mental problems and often sees himself as the cause of the problem. In an effort to help their parents to improve, the child may try to behave and perform perfectly, thinking this will resolve their parent’s problem.
• Growing up in a chaotical home, some children try to create an environment of control and predictability that is lacking in their home, by indulging in some perfectionistic rituals.

Perfectionists tend to hyper-focus on even the tiniest flaws. If you focus on the things you’re unable to do perfectly, you may end up doing nothing at all, out of fear of failure. When a minor setback feels like a major personal failure, that’s when perfectionism becomes a burden.

Perfectionists believe they’re committed to excellence, but they’re actually avoiding feelings of inadequacy. They define their worth according to their performance but are never satisfied with the result. Perfectionists aren’t trying to achieve something great. They’re trying to avoid failure. If you’re a perfectionist, ask yourself why. What do you gain? What does it cost you? Do you take pleasure in being perfect? How do you feel when you’re less than perfect?

Being a perfectionist has several disadvantages:

1. You waste a lot of time. Some things don’t require a high level of attention. To spend more time than necessary is a waste of an important resource: your time. If success is important to you, allocating your time wisely is an important consideration.
2. It creates a lot of stress. When you see only one way to be successful at something, there’s no room for error. Perfectionists aren’t happy people. There’s a constant anxiety that can’t be completely satisfied.
3. You lose sight of the big picture. Bogging yourself down with trivial details can limit your awareness of the bigger objective.
4. You can’t relax until you feel that everything is done and done perfectly.
5. You’re never happy with your results. You might be satisfied, but you’re never happy.

7 Signs That You’re a Perfectionist

There are some warning signs that could show that you have tendencies to perfectionism. If several of those apply to you, then you should work on your mindset and remove the root of perfectionism.

1. You take things too far. No matter what you do, you take it to the limit. Everything has to be done as well as possible, whether it’s folding the laundry, parking the car, or doing something more meaningful.
2. You long for your high school days. High school is perfect for perfectionists. The competition isn’t too great on average, and your achievements are witnessed by all. Your work is also clearly judged quantitatively. You know exactly where you stand.
3. You’re judgmental of others. Your standards of acceptability are so high that no one can consistently achieve them. If you find yourself with fewer friends than you’d like, your commitment to be perfect might be the primary cause.
4. You’re too hard on yourself. By the same token, you can’t live up to your expectations either. This leads to feelings of disappointment and shame. Are you more successful than most of the people you know, but less pleased with yourself than they are with themselves? Do you find it hard to be proud of yourself? Do you feel happy and proud when you’re successful, or do you merely feel a sense of relief?
5. You have a hard time accepting help, because you think you can do everything by yourself. And if you delegate something, you feel the other person does not do it right, so you prefer to do it for yourself.
6. You overthink any decision you need to make, to be sure you do the right thing.  You spend hours researching your options, decide on the best, and still regret it afterward if you find out there would have been a better option.
7. You procrastinate excessively. The need to be perfect creates anxiety and makes it hard to get started. You know you’re in for a lot of work and self-induced drama. Under those circumstances, anyone would be hesitant to get started!

I guess you can see how a perfectionist is getting stressed out about any kind of mistake, because he is defining his self-worth by his achievements, and any mistake is considered to be fatal. If you are dealing with that problem, you need to find strategies to overcome your perfectionistic traits and define your self-worth in a healthier way.

If you are a Christian, be sure to define your self-worth by the worth that your Creator has put on you. Be sure to internalize, that you have a loving Heavenly Father that takes care of you, no matter whether you have achieved to live up to your perfectionistic expectations or not. Take some Bible Promises to redefine your self-worth, like for example:

I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

Jeremiah 31:3

As you develop a new foundation for your self-worth, you can start to get more relaxed about your mistakes and enjoy the process of becoming the best version of yourself. Because you deserve it to put the self-constructed stress aside and live a more fulfilling life!

When you think of things you might be addicted to, stress is never on your list, is it? Some people might put alcohol or nicotine, caffeine or even social media – but stress isn’t even considered.

The idea of stress addiction might seem rather strange, thinking that most of us hate feeling stressed. However, many people don’t realize it, but stress can become an addiction over time. It’s all due to the subtle scientific reactions within your body, when the stress hormone cortisol floods your system and allows you to deal with harrowing situations.

Your adrenaline increases and you find yourself powering through tasks and completing projects with ease. When you’re not under pressure, you find yourself dragging on, procrastinating and struggling to the finish line.

Some people laugh this off by saying they “work better under pressure,” and this is why. It’s an addiction to the stress from a chemical standpoint. It’s not just a mental preference.

The problem is, when you start suffering from chronic stress, it not only puts your health at risk, but it also affects your personal and professional relationships. Over time, your quality of life diminishes and you reach a point where you’re unable to accomplish anything without stress – a very sad way to live your life.

What Does It Mean to Be Addicted to Stress?

Stress is something that can give you a reaction in the brain that’s a similar feeling to what you get from taking drugs or drinking alcohol. This kind of high is a result of the brain releasing chemicals that make you feel good.

Some people may not realize their stress addiction until they start analyzing their habits. If you tend to procrastinate until something happens that puts pressure on you where you get a dose of stress and use it to fuel your productivity, that’s a stress addiction.

You feel good because have a lot of energy and your feelings are high. All of this occurred because of whatever stress that happened. You can also tell if you’re addicted to stress by what your life looks like.

There’s rarely any peace within it. In fact, your life is like an advertisement for stress. You’re rarely calm and you’re always frazzled. You don’t find it boring because there’s always something going on.

There are rarely any down moments because you’re too busy racing from place to place. It feels like you practically live in your car because you’re never getting any down time.

Relaxation isn’t something that’s in your vocabulary. You might think about it every now and then, but you don’t ever get to do it. Or, it could be that you’ve got a full load of pressure.

There’s drama and stress and it always seems like there’s a personal or professional fire to put out. You might be stretched too thin, feeling like you’re burning the candle at both ends, but it doesn’t really bother you.

Life isn’t bad, you tell yourself. It’s just hectic and when you handle all the stressors that come your way, you end up feeling empowered, like you’ve accomplished a lot. An addiction to stress also manifests itself by what you reveal about your life to other people.

One way that people do this is by putting stuff on social media. For you, social media isn’t really a place you go to in order to see how your friends or family are doing. It’s usually all about you – how other people made you mad, hurt your feelings or took advantage of you in some way.

You’re always posting that kind of stuff on social media and the topic centers around your stress – how hectic everything has been for you or what’s going on in your day and how that turned into stress.

You might talk about why you feel so stressed out – because you didn’t sleep, haven’t eaten, aren’t making enough money at your job, had a fight with your friend and how you’ve always been the one compromising and not her or him.

Or you might mention how angry or anxious you are because of what you went through in the past or because of emotional issues now. On your social media, you get online and bemoan often in detail what’s going on in your intimate relationship or with your family or coworkers.

You talk about what awful thing was said to you or what bad thing you had to deal with, like you had to do more than your fair share of work. You talk about the pressure that put on you and how you worked late and rushed home and didn’t even get to eat.

Stuff like that happens to everyone because life itself can be hectic. But the thing about a stress addiction is that you post things like this all the time and it’s a huge deal to you. You talk about putting gas in your car and it becomes an effort comparable to running a marathon.

Or you mention going to the grocery store and what the store was out of and how someone cut you off in line or failed to return their shopping cart. You might talk about the effort it takes to pay the bills or get the dog to the groomer.

Nothing that you talk about is ever a simple task or enjoyable. There’s always drama and stress associated with it. Whatever you do can’t just be a normal thing. It always has to be bigger and more stressful than the situation calls for and much worse than what anyone else is dealing with.

What you don’t realize is that others on social media who also deal with stress will start to view you as a drama magnet. They’ll think that nothing in your life can ever be simple – that it always has to be bigger than it really is.

People who are addicted to drama are usually posting negative things or complaining non-stop about their life. When you talk to people at work or your friends or family, your life is all about the stress and you don’t really feel bad about all that because to you, your stress isn’t a bad thing.

It’s something that’s part of your life and you’ve become used to enjoying the high that it gives you to be a fighter. Be aware that when you begin garnering that kind of reputation, people will avoid you. This adds to your stress, but you’ll just use it to fuel your fire even more. 

Consequences for Failing to Break Your Stress Addiction

You know how life goes. There’s always something that interrupts your plans and it happens on the day when you can least afford to encounter a stressor. You might be on your way to work because you have to go over a project with your boss before the client gets there for a scheduled appointment.

But the next thing you know, you’re trapped in a traffic jam. There’s no way around it and you can’t turn back. You’re just stuck. When this happens, your body reacts and floods your system with stress hormones.

The reaction from your body is based on the fight or flight response and it’s meant to be a help to you. However, when the situation isn’t life or death, this response isn’t needed.

When this is an occasional circumstance where you get a flood or stress hormones, it’s not a big deal.

But you start to have it even when you’re dealing with a mundane stressor because you don’t know the right coping techniques to turn to. When your body is constantly getting this flood of hormones, it affects you by giving you that brain chemical high.

It’s easy to get addicted to wanting to get that boost of chemicals. You feel good to some degree when you first get it, but over time, this constant cycle of having a stress response within the body wreaks havoc on your physical health.

Over time, the overuse of your stress hormone starts to take a toll on your immune system. This happens because your body has something known as natural killer cells. These are designed to battle against serious conditions such as cancer, but these cells are also designed to fight things like bacterial or viral illnesses.

They work to protect your immunity. Stress weakens the ability of these cells to work the way that they’re supposed to, leaving you with little protection so you’re constantly catching whatever is going around.

It’s not just illnesses that you’ll face more often when you fail to break your stress addiction. You’ll be at a higher risk for developing conditions that are related to stress such as diabetes.

When you get stressed, it raises your glucose level – even if you don’t have the disease.

Stress can make you more likely to have a heart attack because when you’re stressed, your blood pressure goes up.

The flood of stress hormones that you get are supposed to temporarily narrow your blood vessels. But when you’re addicted to stress, these blood vessels can be constantly narrowed, which restricts blood flow and oxygen to the heart.

When you’re stressed, it can also affect your digestive health. You can develop nausea, stomach cramps and suffer from diarrhea or constipation. You can also suffer from heartburn.

People who are addicted to stress can develop reproductive problems. Women might skip a monthly cycle or they might notice that their periods last longer, while men can experience lower levels of testosterone, which is linked with impotence. 

But it’s not just your physical health that will show the signs of stress. You can also struggle with mental health. For many people, prolonged exposure to stress, such as with a stress addiction, can cause depression.

This happens because the stress hormones linger, and you don’t get that break from them that you’re normally supposed to get. It’s common for stress to have an impact on your emotions and when you constantly get that flood of stress hormones, it brings out negative feelings such as grief, which can lead to depression.

Anxiety is another consequence of not dealing with a stress addiction. You don’t have to have an anxiety disorder to develop anxiety. This is something that happens as a result of whatever stress you have in your life.

When you have anxiety, it can show up as both physical and emotional symptoms. When it has to do with your mental health, the anxiety that you experience usually reveals itself through a feeling of dread.

You might feel nervous at random times or consistently. Sometimes anxiety can show up as feeling like something is just off. You feel wary. This mental reaction can happen whenever you’re about to face a situation or when you think about that situation.

It can also happen because you fear the results of a situation. When stress is what’s behind your anxiety, then what you’re experiencing lingers and doesn’t just go away. Not dealing with stress can also lead to panic attacks.

A panic attack is what happens when you get a feeling of overwhelming fear or you experience a deep anxiety. Panic attacks can happen with or without physical side effects.

Many people who have stress and develop panic attacks have these because of something in the past that they haven’t dealt with, stress addiction, or something that they’re afraid of that might occur that hasn’t happened yet.

A panic attack is a sense of impending doom, even if nothing bad is going on at the moment or they’re not in any danger. These attacks are a clear sign for the person who has them that something needs to be treated so that it can end.

When a panic attack disrupts your daily routine and you have difficulty being able to carry on, this a severe episode and may need professional treatment. As a result of your mental health suffering because of stress, you can start feeling dissatisfied with life.

You just feel like something is missing. This can happen when you’re not happy with the person you are. You might experience self-doubt along with this dissatisfaction. You might also have low self-esteem and you don’t like what you see when you look in the mirror.

You don’t like your job, your relationships, or where you stand in life. It’s at this point that many people start turning to coping addictions to try to fill the void and feel better about themselves and their lives.

Just an addiction is not going to help you to get anywhere in life. It is not going to resolve your problems, but just adding to them. You may feel good being addicted to stress, but it does not get you anywhere. If you find that you are having a stress addiction, you need to learn techniques to deal with your stress in a more constructive way. Download the free 10 Minute Guide to Stress Management to start your journey in learning how to dominate your stress.

Do you ever think about your thoughts? Most of us don’t. But evidence indicates that how we think can impact our feelings, our behavior, and even our bodies. If you were to one day record all of your thoughts, what would you discover? You might be surprised at what you found. What we think reveals much about who we are. This is why the wise man Solomon stated thousands of years ago that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”(( The Bible, Proverbs 23:7, KJV.)) Professionals and laypeople alike are learning more about thoughts and their effect on how we live and who we are. Let’s look at some specific areas in our lives that are directly linked to our thinking patterns.

Thoughts and Emotions

Our emotions are directly related to how we think. When I was in private practice, my clients would frequently say that they “felt” a certain way because of what someone said or did to them or because of a certain situation or event that had occurred in their lives. Many of us have uttered statements such as “He made me feel mad” or “I felt sad because she wouldn’t do such and such.” It is true that as human beings we do have an impact on one another’s feelings. However, the idea that other people or situations “make us” feel a certain way is not completely accurate. Simply put, it is not what happens to us that controls how we feel, but our thoughts about what happens that affects our emotions. For example: an acquaintance who typically speaks to you passes by you without acknowledgement. How you feel about this situation is not determined so much by that person’s behavior, as by what you tell yourself about his or her behavior. If you say to yourself, “I can’t believe that she didn’t speak to me!” or “Why is he ignoring me?” you are more likely to feel hurt, angry, or rejected. However, if you give the person the benefit of the doubt and choose to consider that maybe he did not see you, or perhaps she was preoccupied with something, you will be less likely to experience negative emotions. Psychologists and other mental health professionals apply this principle with a treatment known as cognitive behavior therapy, a method that teaches individuals how to identify and replace their distorted thinking patterns with healthful ones. When we experience anger, sadness, happiness or excitement, we can ask ourselves, “What was I thinking that might have contributed to this emotion?”

Thoughts and Behavior

“Sow a thought, reap an action …..” This simple proverb accurately describes the connection between our thoughts and actions. What we tend to plant in our minds, will germinate, grow, bud, flower, and bear fruit—in word and deed! To illustrate, let’s refer back to the example just given. If we believe that the person who didn’t speak to us is ignoring us, we may choose to ignore her the next time that we see her. Or, if we decide to put the kindest construction on her actions, and consider that she may have been preoccupied or experiencing some difficulty, we may instead say a prayer for her or give her a call to see if we can be of help in any way.

The understanding that our thoughts affect our actions is also applied by those in the mental health field. For example, during the time that I worked with sexual offenders, an important part of their treatment program involved teaching them how their thoughts contributed to their acts of sexual molestation. With the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy, we would help them to identify the thoughts that had led them to commit acts of abuse, and then teach them how to replace these thoughts with more healthful ones. This principle is also used to address other psychological concerns such as depression, anxiety, and even relational issues of the marriage, family, workplace, classroom, or otherwise.

Thoughts and the Body

Consider the following: “Every time you think an angry thought, an unkind thought, a sad thought, your brain releases chemicals that make your body feel bad and activate your deep limbic system in the brain …. Think about the last time you were mad. How did your body feel? When most people are angry, their muscles become tense … the heart beats faster … hands sweat …. Your body reacts to every negative thought you have.”(( Amen, D., Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Three Rivers Press, NY, 1998.
It should be noted that the current author does not agree with all the concepts promoted by Dr. Amen.)) 

This quote describes how thoughts can affect our bodies. And if they impact our bodies, then it stands to reason that they will also affect our physical health. We are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that many of the illnesses from which people suffer are related to the activity of their minds, and especially, how they think. One inspired writer tells us that “few realize the power that the mind has over the body. A great deal of the sickness which afflicts humanity has its origin in the mind ….”(( White, E., Counsels on Health, p. 349.)) This connection is clearly seen in the area of stress. One person expressed it well when he stated that “What we think is killing us.”(( Howard, M., Seminar on “Burnout, Stress, and Fatigue.”)) In most situations, we experience stress not because of the situation or stressor itself, but because of how we react to the situation. Often times, uncontrolled stress can contribute to physical disease. A case in point is the example of a woman I knew who spent years thinking about and mulling over the death of another family member. This woman, even though she had a relatively healthful lifestyle, eventually died, perhaps prematurely, of cancer. One might wonder if her ongoing negative focus might have weakened her health. I may dare say that if she had recognized the power of her thoughts and chose to avoid negative ruminations, she might have been able to live a longer and more productive life.

The Truth of the Matter Regarding Thoughts

We are told that we “need to place a high value upon the control of our thoughts.”(( White, E., In Heavenly Places, p. 164.)) How can we do this? Psychology and other branches of mental health have made contributions in the area of thought control. But, as a psychologist myself, I must admit that the field of secular psychology offers only limited help. Any attempt that we make as mere humans to know and understand what is going on in our thought processes can only take us so far. This is because “the heart (hence, the mind) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”(( The Bible, Jeremiah 17:9, KJV.)) In order to truly understand our thinking patterns, we must ask God to reveal this to us. And, beyond that, in order to change how we think, we need to address the root of the problem—the heart. Jesus tells us that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”(( The Bible, Matthew 15:19, KJV.)) True, we can put forth human effort that may help us to be somewhat successful in changing our thoughts. But real, lasting change can only occur when our hearts are transformed and renewed by the Spirit of God. As did the psalmist David, we must ask God to “create in (us) a clean heart and renew a right spirit within (us).”(( The Bible, Psalm 51:10, KJV.)) If we do this, we can be assured that our thinking patterns will change for the better—from the inside out!

We are told that “many thoughts make up the unwritten history of a single day; and these thoughts have much to do with the formation of character.”(( White, E., Messages to Young People, p. 144.)) This quote reminds us that the motivation for achieving good thinking habits is not only to gain optimal mental and physical health, but to help us develop right characters for this life and the life to come. And, lest we get overwhelmed with this reality, we must remember that with God’s power, all things are possible. He will provide the strength needed to think rightly. With this in mind, we can confidently ask God to help us follow the apostle Paul’s admonition: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise think on these things.”(( The Bible, Philippians 4:8, KJV.))