Today we’ve got another necessary conversation for so many of us — we’re talking with Dr. Ellen Hendriksen about her new book How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists, which came out January 7. It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that feeling a lack of enoughness is a widespread problem, and Ellen’s book taught me so much about perfectionism — including that I apparently am one, even though I never would have thought that of myself. Perfectionism, as Ellen writes, can be used for good — it can help us have high standards, a strong work ethic, reliability, and a deep care of others — but it can also be used for ill, especially when it comes to our relationship with ourselves. Today on the show we explore the link between perfectionism and never feeling good enough; we talk about clinical perfectionism and where it stems from; how to stop putting our self-worth in the wrong places; seven shifts we can take to feel more enough; and so much more. Ellen has a Ph.D. from UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School; she is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders and, in addition to How to Be Enough, she also wrote How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. You might have seen her work everywhere from The New York Times to The Washington Post, BBC News, New York Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Guardian, Goop, O: The Oprah Magazine, and more, and she’s here to help us stop being so hard on ourselves already. 

How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists by Dr. Ellen Hendriksen