So today I'm going to talk about the relationship between ADHD and perfectionism, in what will be one of several recordings I'll make on this subject. The two have long since been considered to go hand in hand with one another, I have to say from a therapist's perspective, I have not seen too many clients with ADHD, who don't have at least some perfectionist traits.

The term perfectionism in itself seems to grate with some people, so I apologize if that's the case, it's quite a pejorative term. Personally, it doesn't bother me, and if that's okay with you, I'm going to continue to use it through this recording, and others. Unrelenting standards might be another way of describing it. But to pitch ADHD together with perfectionism has often seemed to me to be a bit of an oxymoron in a way because ADHD is long since considered to be associated with a lack of attention to detail. Whereas perfectionism is often linked to being very detail orientated or very, over-controlled around detail.

If we are sort of told, as we're growing up, you know, that we make silly mistakes, or you need to do better, or we need to make sure we check or, you know, we're daft in some way for making those mistakes, we're soon going to learn, aren't we that we need to check and triple check, just being perfectly aware that we're capable of making silly mistakes. So checking behaviours seems to be a common behaviour associated with this. And it's really, really common in ADHD, in fact, so much so that it can mask ADHD. And I've met a lot of clients who perhaps initially thought they couldn't have it, because of just how organized they are, you know, they might make lists I know some people that carry a book around with them to write everything down in. I can speak personally and say that my wife has bought me numerous notebooks to do that. But of course, I always lose them, or just can't be bothered with the detail of that.

So I would probably say I make my life harder by not doing that, but I certainly do check more than perhaps some others would. So that's one reason why perfectionism can be linked with ADHD. Another reason is perhaps that, you know, our impaired executive functioning means that we have difficulty planning. So it might mean that we over-plan, which certainly might feed into some intolerance of uncertainty, which I have previously addressed in a recording, but I might do another recording on that later. So over-planning might be another aspect of it.

Another view I have as well though, is that it's also linked to core beliefs, and specifically, the negative ones, which we've already talked about, again, in another recording, you know, this whole "not good enough" or "I'm a failure" or "I'm stupid", can lead to over compensatory behaviours. If I fundamentally believe at my core that I am stupid or useless, which of course, as you now know, is likely to be centred in the past and school years or around learning, perhaps. I'm going to try to do what I can to not be perceived as stupid aren’t I? Or, if I don't feel good enough, I'm going to do my best to be seen as good enough or to feel good enough. So what might come with that is, you know overcompensation, which I think also feeds perfectionist behaviours.