Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How the Modern Epidemic of Perfectionism is Impacting Our Health | Will Storr #433

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Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 354 of the podcast with Will Storr, award-winning journalist and author of the best-selling book, The Status Game. Will argues that as humans, we're programmed to compare ourselves to others and to care about how we stack up. And in this clip, we discuss why perfectionism is becoming a modern epidemic and how we can start to overcome it. In your latest book, The Status Game, you make the powerful case that social perfectionism and

Starting point is 00:01:55 materialistic goal-seeking is linked to all kinds of problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal thinking. What's going on? Well, you know, as we go through life, we're trying to achieve a level of status, you know, with other people. And so we're trying to feel like we're, you know, good enough. We're trying to feel like we're valuable people. We all have this kind of bar that we're trying to meet. And the question is kind of, where is that bar? Like, how high is it? Who sets it? The bar is all around us. The culture sets the bar. Television sets the bar. Social media sets the bar. Taylor Swift sets the bar. You know,

Starting point is 00:02:36 Love Island sets the bar. Like we're surrounded by ideal selves. We're surrounded by these heroic figures. And so subconsciously, that's giving us this repeated message, this is what good enough looks like, this is what good enough looks like. And so that's stressful, especially for young people, especially for people who are kind of much more sensitive to those kinds of signals. If you think about male body image, you know, like Love Island, for example, the young men on Love Island, I mean, they're beautiful, their bodies are incredible, they're insane. No one looked like that when we were kids in the 80s and 90s. Like no young person looked like that. So that's an example of how in our lifetime, the bar for what's good enough,

Starting point is 00:03:15 the bar for what is high status or sufficient status has raised to kind of sometimes crazy levels. So is it this idea that we are constantly less than? So we've all got an internal ideal inside our heads. We've all got these stories about who we are, who we think we are, who we think we should become. And are you really saying that actually, if that bar is set too high, then no matter what you do, you will never meet that bar. And so the problem is you always feel inferior. And that's why we get stressed out on our mental health suffers. Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. What perfectionism is, is a sensitivity to failure in your environment. So when we're made to feel over and over again, like we've failed somehow, like we're too low in status, we're not good enough.

Starting point is 00:04:07 That's what it feels like to be a perfectionist because you're pushing yourself forward all the time trying to become more and more perfect. We live in a culture where the bar is unreasonably highly raised. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing this great kind of rise in negative mental health problems that people are having. And also, you know, life in general is getting harder. You've got to think about the economy too, and how it's harder than ever to feel good enough in an economic sense. The millennials are the first generation in history to be less wealthy than their parents. So for all these reasons, people are feeling history to be less wealthy than their parents. So for all these reasons, people are feeling that they're not good enough anymore. There's a level of status which they should be achieving, and they're not achieving it. And that's painful. If the culture is setting

Starting point is 00:04:59 our expectation of what is okay, of what is normal, and if that expectation is unrealistic for many of us, for most of us, no wonder rates of stress and anxiety and depression and eating disorders and, you know, keep the list going are on the rise because we're constantly feeling like we're not enough. We are less than. We're not meeting what we should be meeting. So it's really, really problematic, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And the way I think about it is, if you think about it in its most simple terms, and this is to me in its most simple terms, is that 99% of people in the UK and Canada and the US, they've got housing, they've got food, they're safe, they're not going

Starting point is 00:05:45 to get killed, you know, like most of us, we're fine. And so why aren't we happy? You know, like, if you think about rationally, it's insane, that most of us very often feel less than feel not good enough feel like we're not we're not achieving enough, when most of us are looking after our kids perfectly well are feeding ourselves perfectly well are looking after our kids perfectly well, are feeding ourselves perfectly well, are not at risk of homelessness or, you know, violent attack. You know, why is that? And as you say, it's because our culture is setting the bar, our social environment, our economic environment is setting the bar for what is good enough. Like it's good that we identify successful people and try to become

Starting point is 00:06:25 successful ourselves. That's how we develop as we progress. Where it becomes toxic is where the bar for what we consider successful becomes too high. I think the way to understand it is to think about our evolutionary history. So all this cognition, all this wiring that makes this, you know, copy, flatter, conform and interested in becoming good enough, you know, as you know, it all comes from the hunter-gatherer kind of era, that very long period in which our brains were evolving and we were becoming human. been that many people who were high status in the group because it was just you know it was a relatively small group of people and it was divided by gender so men would tend to mimic men and women would tend to mimic women and it was even would have even been sort of divided in terms of age you know like you tend to mimic people who are closer to you in age so the bar wasn't massively high because we're not living cheek by jaw with taylor swift and barack obama and you know and

Starting point is 00:07:24 serena william Williams and all these incredibly impressive people. We would never have come into contact with a level of perfection that insanely high. But today, we come into contact with those kind of levels of perfection multiple times a day. Yeah, I think a key point there for me, Will, is we can know with our rational brains that when I go online, people are presenting the best side of themselves. They're not presenting the dirty laundry or the dishes that are in their sink. They've gone to a different part of the house to post a nice photo where things look good. And I don't think we should really even be criticizing people for doing that.

Starting point is 00:08:02 I think that's human nature. But even if we know that's happening, I think our subconscious still takes in the message that that's their life. That's their life. That's their life. So we can read the book. We can read your book. We can read about it and go, yes, that is happening. That is not real. Yet, if you spend 10 minutes, only 10 minutes, scrolling Instagram, maybe you'll come across 50 posts. It's not unreasonable for some people. So that's 50 signals to your brain saying your life is not as good as someone else's life. I think you're absolutely right that we can consciously know something, but subconsciously it doesn't seem to make that much difference. And I think that's right. And, you know, I have that experience as an author. You know,

Starting point is 00:08:53 I only really use social media as a way to kind of promote my business as an author. Like when I've got a nice book review, I'll tweet that, but I'll never tweet the bad ones. You know, that's my perfectionist presentation. But, you know, when I'm having kind of down days or maybe I'm feeling bad about my career and I see other authors tweeting about their amazing book review and they're at the Hay Festival or whatever they're doing, it feels bad. It makes me feel, God, you know, I feel that too.

Starting point is 00:09:18 So even though I know the reality of their careers, it's probably a bit like, well, my ups and downs, you know, and sharing the good stuff. It's still like, well, we're like ups and downs and you're only sharing the good stuff. It's still like, oh God. So, you know, like, like I've muted, I've muted a whole bunch of, you know, friends who are minor writers because like, like it became too painful for me to see this constant river of success they were having. And it's, um, in a way it's embarrassing to admit, but actually I don't think it should be. I think that's what we should be doing to kind of protect ourselves. And also, I mean, I have a good idea that I've also been muted by lots of writer

Starting point is 00:09:48 friends. Like I get it, but like say if I, as a 48 year old man who've published six books and all that stuff, feel that pain, then what is it like for a 17 year old boy or a 17 year old girl? Like it's going to be worse, I think. Yeah. I mean, this is great world because I think this is a really practical thing that we all can do in the modern world because we do live in the modern world. We do live in the online world. Many of us spend a lot of time online each day. And I think we do need to understand that we got to take a bit of control here where we can. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that we shouldn't feel bad about muting. It is human nature to compare ourselves to other people

Starting point is 00:10:25 around us. That's how it works. That's how the status detection system works. It's automatic. You can't help it. So you should stay away from that which hurts you. And if you feel like it's hurting you, then mute. Mute proudly. I'm just pulling up the start of the status game, right? Because I think there's one particular bit that comes to mind. You put it here, as the psychologist, Professor Brian Boyd writes, we naturally pursue status with ferocity. We all relentlessly, if unconsciously, try to raise our own standing by impressing peers and naturally, if unconsciously,

Starting point is 00:11:00 evaluate others in terms of their standing. Now, well, I think many of us would like to think that we don't play that game. Okay. We don't try to raise our own standing by impressing others. We don't try to judge others and make an opinion of them based upon what they're wearing or how they're behaving. But in this book, you say, we all do. It's fundamentally who we are as humans. Do you still stand by that? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's human nature. You can't get rid of it. Like, you know, we play status games. So what is status? I think what upsets people sometimes when I talk about status is that they think, and what makes people think that's not me, is that they associate status with things like celebrity and money

Starting point is 00:11:53 and showing off and all that stuff. And it can be those things, but it isn't necessarily those things. Status is simply the feeling of being valued. It's the sense of I'm a valuable person so we used to think about connection being a fundamental human need and belongingness and that is a fundamental human need so we want to get along with people um but we also like so we want to feel loved and accepted but we also want to feel valued like we like like we have value to other people and that can be like a moral value we can be a courageous person or a selfless person, or it could be a competence based value, like good at

Starting point is 00:12:29 something like a great tennis player, um, a great, you know, hunter, or if you're in the hunter gatherer context or, you know, so, so yeah, it's, it's simply the feeling of being valued to, to a limited extent. We know we, we, we can feel kind of kind of good in, you know, intrinsically about the stuff that we do. But ultimately what we want is, ultimately that's just a rehearsal for what we really want, which is the status from our tribe. You know, we're a tribal animal. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, we want to feel of value to the tribe and then the tribe lets us know and that's the status. no and that's the status. You also make the case that one of the reasons we're so stressed and unhappy is because the status games we play now are just so enormous. We haven't evolved to play status games on this scale. And if you're playing them on the scale, that's probably why you're

Starting point is 00:13:23 struggling. Yeah, exactly. We've evolved in the context of small groups. And so we've evolved to play small status games. And I really believe that the reason why all this safety and security and comfort that we have in the West hasn't brought us reliable happiness is because of the status game. It's because we're constantly, we're playing these enormous games now with people incredibly, sort of vastly higher above us on that, you know, ladder of status.

Starting point is 00:13:53 And it's just not natural. I mean, you know, like, if you think about the companies that we work for, these enormous organizations, like how far away is the CEO from you? Like it's galaxies away. I mean, one of the amazing statistics I found when I was researching the book was, you know, when we was talking about, you know, about, about how corporate our status games are these days,

Starting point is 00:14:14 is that 69 out of the hundred biggest economies in the world aren't nations, they're companies. Like that's, that's amazing. You know, like that's how big and powerful the companies that we work for are. And a company is a status game. You know, if you're working for Apple or Microsoft or Walmart or, you know, or wherever it might be, like that is a, you know, that is a big scary status game to play.

Starting point is 00:14:40 I started thinking about previous patients of mine who were maybe not getting status from their work. Or for whatever reason in their life, they felt as though they weren't achieving or doing enough. Maybe they came to see me with mental health problems. We know the benefits of volunteering are huge. They're profound. I've written in previous books about how patients of mine, when they started going to parkrun, not necessarily to run, just to volunteer, their lives would start to change because suddenly they had a community. People would

Starting point is 00:15:17 miss them. They felt a value. If they didn't show up, people would ask, hey, listen, you know, we really miss you last week. You know, there's something felt as they belong. So I guess that's community, but probably also status as well. So my question is, Will, if someone doesn't feel they are getting adequate status in a certain element in their life, can they compensate for that by getting status in another area, i.e. for working for a charity or volunteering? Yeah, 100%. I mean, and actually it's one of the things I recommend at the end of the book is like, you know, play multiple games. You know, I think that's... Play multiple status games.

Starting point is 00:15:57 Play multiple status games. Absolutely. Because, you know, the research is crystal clear and that's the more groups people belong to, the happier they are, the more stable their kind of emotionality. So it's really good for us to be members of multiple groups. And for me, you know, a big part of that is that you've got multiple sources of status.

Starting point is 00:16:17 And absolutely, I mean, in our kind of success-focused world that we live in, you know, volunteering can be, you know, a fantastic way of just creating a new status game for yourself, creating a new source of that signal to your subconscious brain that I am of value to other people. We've talked a lot about perfectionism, status throughout this conversation. I always love to leave the audience with some practical takeaways if possible that they can

Starting point is 00:16:46 think about saying, yeah, I understand the concepts. I get why it's problematic. What is it I can actually do now in my life to start addressing some of this? Do you have any final words of wisdom for people? Recognizing that you're not competing with everybody in the world. So, you know, like that was the big takeaway my wife took from this. And she still talks about it now is that, because she's, you know, she's a very successful business person. And she, you know, I think she felt that she, for a while that she was competing with everybody else in the world. And then just that understanding that you're not, you're playing a little status game has been sort of very liberating.

Starting point is 00:17:19 So bring it right down, make it local. Yeah, make it local. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Make it local. Stop feeling like you're competing with like the King of Thailand or whoever it is because you're not, you know, focus in. And if you feel that you're kind of, you know, lacking in status, then, you know, I think one of the liberating things for me was that we always think about money, money, money, money, money. It's money that drives the world. It's money that's the root of all evil. It ain't. You know, status is way more important than money. You don't need to be rich to be happy. You don't need to be rich to feel like you're of value. You just need status. And actually, it ain't that hard to come by. Just find something that you're quite good at and you'll get it.

Starting point is 00:18:00 Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How the Modern Epidemic of Perfectionism is Impacting Our Health | Will Storr #433

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