Demanding Standards: Living Well With Your Personal Rules

A comprehensive guide designed to support individuals in understanding and addressing demanding, perfectionistic standards.

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Workbook (PDF)

A workbook containing elements of psychoeducation and skills-development.

Overview

Demanding Standards - Living Well With Your Personal Rules is a guide written for clients who have high or perfectionistic standards which cause them distress. It provides clear information about what standards are and how they are maintained, as well as exercises with step-by-step instructions to help clients identify, monitor, and address their perfectionistic standards.

Why Use This Resource?

Striving to meet standards that are extremely demanding and difficult to achieve can lead to serious difficulties, including anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and eating disorders.

Describes what standards are and why people set them.
Explores how and why standards become demanding and perfectionistic.
Outlines practical strategies for addressing problematic standards.

Key Benefits

Clear

Clarifies the origins and impact of demanding standards.

Insightful

Enhances clients' understanding of their demanding standards.

Practical

Provides step-by-step exercises for addressing demanding standards.

Supportive

Written in a friendly and accessible manner.

Who is this for?

Perfectionism

Individuals whose self-esteem is tied to meeting high standards.

Anxiety

Worry associated with meeting demanding standards.

Depression

Diminished mood and self-worth due to unmet standards.

Eating Disorders

Perfectionistic standards related to shape, weight, or food intake.

Integrating it into your practice

Assess

Identify clients who may be struggling with demanding standards.

Offer the guide to clients who might benefit from it.

Impact

Use the content to inform clients about the impact of demanding standards.

Reflect

Discuss each client’s personal experiences with high standards.

Address

Utilize the exercises in the guide to help clients address their standards.

Theoretical Background & Therapist Guidance

Standards play an important role in both personal development and societal functioning. However, when individuals strive to meet excessively high and often unattainable standards - sometimes referred to as 'perfectionistic standards' - this can lead to significant psychological difficulties, including clinical perfectionism, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and eating disorders.

This guide is designed to support clients who are struggling with perfectionistic or overly demanding standards. The guide aims to help clients develop a clearer understanding of what standards are, when and why they become perfectionistic and problematic, and how to address them.

What's inside

Introduction to demanding standards.
Guidance for introducing and using the resource with clients.
Key references for learning more about demanding standards and perfectionism.

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FAQs

Demanding standards are excessive and often unrealistic expectations individuals set for themselves which can have a negative impact on mental health and functioning.

It offers effective strategies to understand and address demanding standards, helping improve clients' mood and well-being.

How This Resource Improves Clinical Outcomes

By using this resource in their clinical practice, therapists can:

Identify individuals who may be struggling with demanding standards.
Help clients better understand their difficulties and what maintains them.
Encourage hope and optimism about change.
Address demanding standards using a variety of effective tools and interventions.

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References And Further Reading

Fennell, M. (2006). Overcoming low self-esteem self-help course: A three-part programme based on cognitive behavioural techniques (part three). Constable and Robinson.
Flett, G. L., Hewitt, P. L., Oliver, J. M., & Macdonald, S. (2002). Perfectionism in children and their parents: A developmental analysis. In G. L. Flett & P. L. Hewitt (Eds.), Perfectionism: Theory, research, and treatment, (pp.89-132). American Psychological Association.
Ellis, A., & Harper, R. A. (1975). A new guide to rational living. Institute for Rational Living.
Shafran, R., Cooper, Z., & Fairburn, C. G. (2002). Clinical perfectionism: A cognitive-behavioural analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 773-791.
Egan, S., Wade, T. D., Shafran, R., & Antony, M. M. (2014). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of perfectionism. Guilford.
Hamachek, D. E. (1978). Psychodynamics of normal and neurotic perfectionism. Psychology, 15, 27-33.
Ashby, J. S., & Rice, K. G. (2002). Perfectionism, dysfunctional attitudes, and self-esteem: A structural equations analysis. Journal of Counseling and Development, 80, 197-203.
Limburg, K., Watson, H. J., Hagger, M. S., & Egan, S. J. (2017). The relationship between perfectionism and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 73, 1301-1326.
Sherry, S. B., Mackinnon, S. P., & Gautreau, C. M. (2016). Perfectionists do not play nicely with others: Expanding the social disconnection model. In F. M. Sirois & D. S. Molnar (Ed.), Perfectionism, health, and well-being (pp. 225-243). Springer.
Lloyd, S., Schmidt, U., Khondoker, M., & Tchanturia, K. (2015). Can psychological interventions reduce perfectionism? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 43, 705-731.
Suh, H., Sohn, H., Kim, T., & Lee, D. G. (2019). A review and meta-analysis of perfectionism interventions: Comparing face-to-face with online modalities. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 66, 473.

A Guide To Emotions

Demanding Standards: Living Well With Your Personal Rules

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Workbook (PDF)

Overview

Why Use This Resource?