Title:
How to be enough : self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists
Author:
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Date:
2025
2024
Publication Information:
New York : St. Martin's Essentials, 2025.
©2024
Physical Description:
viii, 309 pages : illustrations, charts ; 25 cm
ISBN:
9781250291875
Abstract:
"Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with this clear and compassionate guide. Do you set demanding standards for yourself? If so, a lot likely goes well in your life: You might earn compliments, admiration, or accomplishments. Your high standards and hard work pay off. But privately, you may feel like you're falling behind, faking it, or different from everybody else. Your eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector highlights every mistake. You try hard to avoid criticism, but criticize yourself. Trying to get it right is your guiding light, but it has lit the way to a place of dissatisfaction, loneliness, or disconnection. In short, you may look like you're hitting it out of the park, but you feel like you're striking out. This is perfectionism. And for everyone who struggles with it, it's a misnomer: perfectionism isn't about striving to be perfect. It's about never feeling good enough. Dr. Ellen Hendriksen-clinical psychologist, anxiety specialist, and author of How to Be Yourself-is on the same journey as you. In How to Be Enough, Hendriksen charts a flexible, forgiving, and freeing path, all without giving up the excellence your high standards and hard work have gotten you. She delivers seven shifts-including from self-criticism to kindness, control to authenticity, procrastination to productivity, comparison to contentment-to find self-acceptance, rewrite the Inner Rulebook, and most of all, cultivate the authentic human connections we're all craving. With compassion and humor, Hendriksen lays out a clear, effective, and empowering guide. To enjoy rather than improve, be real rather than impressive, and be good to yourself when you're wired to be hard on yourself"-- Provided by publisher.
Contents:
Part 1. Introducing perfectionism. How we see ourselves -- The many salads of perfectionism -- The beginnings of things -- Part 2. The seven shifts. Shift 1: From (self-)criticism to kindness -- Beyond the inner critic -- The outer critics: us and them -- Shift 2: Coming home to your life -- From labels to values -- Our forgotten baskets -- Shift 3: From rules to flexibility -- Rewriting the inner rulebook -- Why we turn fun into a chore -- Shift 4: Mistakes: from holding on to letting go -- From "Failure" to the human condition: releasing past mistakes -- From exam to experiment: compassion for future mistakes -- Shift 5: From procrastination to productivity -- It's not about time management -- Shift 6: From comparison to contentment -- Hardwired but not Haywire -- Shift 7: From control to authenticity -- Rolling back emotional perfectionism: being real on the inside -- Rolling back perfectionistic self-presentation: being real on the outside -- Epilogue: Self-acceptance for self-critics
Language:
English