How Parents and Teens Can Embrace Imperfection

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How Parents Can Help their Teens Embrace Imperfection

 

I recently had a wonderful conversation with Nicole Burgess, LMFT, the host of the Launching Your Daughter Podcast, about ways parents and teens can embrace imperfection.

 

Below are some of the highlights.

 

How Parents and Teens Can Embrace Imperfection

  • Perfectionism contributes to stress, anxiety, depression, self-criticism, and a loss of self-esteem.
  • Parents can role model self-acceptance.
  • We tend to magnify and fixate on our short-comings and catastrophize about the results of failure. It’s possible to see ourselves more realistically.
  • Self-compassion can help us accept our mistakes and imperfections.
  • Part of growing up and maturing is learning to rely less on external validation, move away from people-pleasing and understand our own values and needs.
  • It’s important for teens (and all of us) to take risks, experience failure, and learn through the process.

 

Launching your Daughter

 

I hope you’ll take a little time out of your day to listen to the full interview. If you enjoy this episode, please consider subscribing to Launching Your Daughter. I know Nicole has a lot of great things planned for the podcast!

 

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©2016 by Sharon Martin, LCSW. All rights reserved.

Sharon Martin, a licensed counselor and psychotherapist in Northern California, specializes in helping adult children of alcoholics and others who struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, and self-criticism. She has a private psychotherapy practice in CA where she is available for online counseling. Sharon is also the author of The CBT Workbook for Perfectionism and write the blog Conquering Codependency for Psychology Today.

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