Anita Shimmins
speaker
415 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 10 Jul
Anita Shimmins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
did we have as children? And that's usually a lot to do with our upbringing. It's not parent bashing, but it's just understanding where that came from, that our needs were not met, our need for secure attachment and our need for feeling worthwhile and adequate independence. And then once we realised what needs were not met in early childhood,
that then informs what kind of schemas, which is sort of belief systems about how I operate in the world, what other people are like, my worth. And when we talk about perfectionism, perhaps a schema that forms is kind of, I'm not that lovable, I'm not that worthwhile, or I'm a little bit defective.
And then we develop coping strategies to try and deal with these beliefs. And perfectionism, we've talked about it being a strategy, can be a strategy to deal with that sense of defectiveness. But if we can correct and update that sense of defectiveness, we don't need to rely on that strategy so much anymore.
What also is a cool thing in schema therapy is that you can do a lot of inner critic work. So we almost, we think about, is that inner critic? Does it have more like a demanding quality where it's like, no, you've got to do well and so on, in which case, so can we start negotiating with it and setting some limits as to what it's demanding of us? Or does it even have a really kind of bullying, punitive tone? And if it is, you know, just an inner bully making your life hell, can we actually...
start banishing it altogether and we'll use chairs to work with. We'll put the inner critic on a chair and then put the chair outside because it's got no room here and once that's gone and that kind of really mean part is put outside, we can see what's left and can we heal those parts that never felt good enough.
And it sounds like as well, there's a lot of reframing and shifting like thoughts and beliefs, but also just that inner dialogue. So it's like, where does self-compassion come into all of this as well? It's a great thing that you raised. So in schema therapy, we would call this the healthy adult. And the healthy adult is kind of to replace that inner critic. And it is that much more balanced, kind, compassionate inner voice.
Imagine how different your life can be when you start replacing that harsh bullying or demanding inner critic with that more compassionate, kind, healthy adult.
So how do you support someone in your life that may be a bit of a perfectionist and you're wanting to support them but you don't want to come across as dismissive? It's such a good question. I think there's a few ways that have come to mind of how we can support someone in our life that we want to help become a bit less perfectionistic.
One thing is by modeling. So if I am showing you that I'm making mistakes left, right, and center, and it doesn't define my worth, and I'm kind of making you aware that that's another way of living, that can be an indirect way to kind of show a different path.
You can also be quite intentional with how you respond to that person. So if you know that they are very perfectionistic, try and see if you can start rewarding or paying attention to the process rather than the outcome. So maybe you can be like, I feel like today you, I really loved how like,
you know, how interested you were in what we were reading, rather than, you know, can you perfectly reiterate or regurgitate it? So can you, yeah, reward process over outcome, again, to start giving a bit of a different lens.
But then also I think the most important bit is can you stop being that compassionate voice for them that at the moment feels really hard for them to summon themselves? And then for them, they can start internalizing you, actually. So often my clients will say, then I heard kind of your voice being kind to me. Oh, that's nice.
can be that for for your for your loved one if you can uh be that show them what compassion can look like and then over time they can start they've got something to grasp onto because often that feels so out of the the realm of possibilities to be kind with yourself that when you have somebody in your life who is very kind to yourself i think it's it's a really good starting point to internalize it
Thankfully, the brain is fluid and can learn new patterns, but it takes some time to override this old pattern that's almost like built up like a highway in your brain and it's, you know, automatic and you want to try and create a new path. But first you're just like, you know, whacking through the bush.
Yeah, exactly. It's going to take some time to create a new path, but just stay at it compassionately, validate the underlying feeling and try and be patient with them. It's going to take a little bit of time.
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