they have, and not from a blaming perspective, but from a sense of, of agency ownership.

Um, well, I c- I, I, I can sort of continue on a little bit with what I was talking about in terms of the, one of the, one of the paradoxes of perfectionism, and there's numerous things that are very paradoxical, is in, in driving to try to fit to develop acceptance and caring and connection with other people, the person comes in with, "Well, if I'm perfect, then you will love me or you will care for me or, uh, you won't reject and abandon me." But of course, the perfectionistic behavior produces the distance because perfectionistic people tend to be either kind of prickly, uh, and, and, and sometimes quite hostile, uh, but, but prickly, uh, or they're very distant because they're so cautious and they're so hypervigilant for any sort of sense of rejection that they're just not available.

And so they create interpersonal-- That's the para- we s- uh, you know, we call it the, it's the neurotic paradox, where the person is striving to try to create acceptance and caring from other people, and their actual behavior that's designed to try to do that creates the disconnection itself.

Um, and then they're in a horrible bind 'cause they don't know where they're going.

Um, so, so that's a piece.

One of the, um, always, uh, uh, there's just a part of our research that is just really exciting to me that whenever we start to talk in here, I always wanna talk a little bit about it 'cause you guys are therapists.

Um, in one line of work we've done, [clears throat] we show that perfectionistic patients are quite difficult to work with.

So I'm, I'm curious what you see.

If imperfection is human, which it is, why does failure still feel so unbearable to so many of us?

Um, yeah, I don't know that we (laughs)...

Im- imperfection may be common.

I don't know that we embrace it, uh, in, in any sort of way.

And, I mean, even from religious teachings for, for thousands of years, it's been, you know, try to be more, uh, godlike.

But not become a god, but, you know, try to be more like Christ or try to be more like these s- de- deities that are there, or try to...

A- and it's always talking about the imperfection, but somehow there's a, there's the promise of something if, uh, when you attain perfection.

What are the most common interventions that you use to increase somebody's self-acceptance?