If your daughter cannot seem to be satisfied with anything, unless it's perfect. This episode is for you. We're talking about the perfectionist athlete and how to help your daughter through. If you feel like maybe she's got some perfectionistic qualities, and I know it can be hard as a parent to watch her beat herself up and be super critical of herself. So we're going to talk today about what to look for, some strategies that can help and what we can do as parents to help if we have an athlete who struggles with perfectionism. And if I have not met you, I'm Coach Bre. I am a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and this is the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. I'm excited that you're here, whether you are just getting going on your sports journey, or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt. This podcast is for you to help you know how to raise a confident and mentally strong girl athlete. Now, before we get into today's episode, which I know is going to hit home for. A lot of parents, because a lot of us as parents still probably struggle with perfectionism, which is why it's so hard to see it in our daughters. I do wanna give a shout out to a mom inside our community. So her name is Sarah, her daughter is going through our program, the Elite Mental Game, where we teach simple strategies to athletes to help strengthen their mental game and their confidence. So they don't hold themselves back in their sport and in their life. Sarah said something simple in our private group. She said, I'm seeing huge improvements in my daughter's perspective and recovery. Things that have would've absolutely wrecked her last year are just a blip. Now. I'm so thrilled and grateful, and this is what we love to hear because a lot of things that happen in our daughter's sports career. It can be things that devastate them. And you're like, what? That's normal. Why is that devastating? You, you know, and so seeing this mom's daughter be able to actually utilize some of the skills that she's learning, like her snapback routine, her breathing techniques, her pre-performance, routines, her perspective on what happens in her sports journey without letting it totally wreck her is huge. And I know that that ties into what we're talking about today with perfectionism because. One of the signs of perfectionism is that little things can absolutely crush them because if things aren't perfect, then they can't be okay with themselves. So let's get into it. The five signs that your athlete might be struggling with perfectionism and how we help athletes through these things, and also what you can do as a parent if you are noticing this. So, number one, she beats herself up after mistakes. And this one is probably the most common, and honestly, athletes who don't struggle with perfectionism might also exhibit this. But the number one way that we teach athletes with this is through our reset routine. Ours is called the snapback routine. So I go into depth in this. Inside our free training for sports moms. It's at train her game.com. I talk about how we help athletes develop this routine, but the snap pack routine is essentially a failure recovery system. And so way for athletes to get over mistakes in the moment without spiraling, because a lot of the reasons why athletes are afraid to make a mistake and why they don't feel confident going into a competition is because they're worried about mistakes, because they don't have a way to get over it all right? And so when athletes have a way to get over a mistake, then they can enter into a competition, feeling a little bit more confident because they're like, Hey, it's okay if a mistake happens. I have my snapback routine to get through it. Now, the snapback routine is. A combination of a breath to engage their parasympathetic nervous system because when they do make a mistake and start to spiral, their sympathetic nervous system kicks in, which is their fight or flight response, which is what you see when you see your athlete kind of panicking out there. And so that breath just helps engage the parasympathetic. The top of that breath, they say a reset word, which is custom to them. They find it based on best playing experiences from the past and also how they wanna feel in that present moment. And then on the exhale they do some sort of reset signal. So, I've seen plenty over the years. I will say that one of my athletes last night, so I coach volleyball, she shanked a pass. And what she did was. I saw her do her breath. She said a reset word to herself, and then she walked to the sideline of the volleyball court. Put our foot on the sideline and then walked back to serve, receive. That takes like two seconds. And the snapback routine is designed to be like two seconds or less, so that athletes actually have a way to get back into the present moment. So that is a really tangible skill that we teach and that really helps our athletes who struggle with perfectionism because now. They don't have to be wrecked after a mistake. Now, as a parent, what you can do is just, you can't overemphasize the normalizing of mistakes and just recognizing, and they probably already are getting a lot of this messaging from you and from coaches. Like it's okay to make mistakes, aggressive errors are okay because you're going for it, you're taking risks. But even having them reflect on like. What happened, you know, on that plane, instead of saying like, what happened? It's, what did you learn from that? Right? It's kind of this, this growth mindset that I know has talked about a lot being, you know, over the past several years, but. It really truly does come down to that because a lot of athletes, that struggle with perfectionism are so focused on the outcome. And if the outcome is a mistake, it's them tying that, I made a mistake, now I am a mess up, or I am a mistake. Like, they really do get that kind of intertwined. It's like it's no longer, I just made a mistake and I'm gonna learn from it and move on. Oof. I didn't do well. That means that I'm not good, like I don't actually deserve to feel good about myself, and I can't feel good about myself unless I had a perfect performance with not a lot of mistakes. And so that's really what's happening in the brain of a perfectionist athlete. And so giving them a really tangible skill to get over a mistake is really, really useful. Okay, that's sign number one. Okay. Not being able to get over mistakes and beating herself up. Sign number two. She's never satisfied. Even after wins. Now, I will put a little caveat on here, because there is a good side to perfectionism. We actually don't wanna get rid of perfectionism fully. In fact, we can't because there is a good side to it that allows your athlete to strive to become better. It's actually a good thing to never be satisfied and never settle. You know, in that sense that, I'm always trying to get better. I'm always trying to improve from yesterday. But the downside to this, right? There's a good part to perfectionism that we do wanna keep, we wanna keep that striving, we wanna keep that like growth mindset of, I always wanna get better. But what happens is they're never satisfied even when it's a good performance, even after wins. Right. Even after like, wow, that actually was like a pr. And they're like, no, it's not good enough. It's this constant criticizing themselves, their performance. And so what we help athletes with is. We actually have them bring them back to gratitude. We have them do a daily mindset routine within the program called 3, 2, 1, brave, and, the three and the two, and the One Stand for something. And then the brave is a visualization. And the one in 3, 2, 1. BRAVE stands for one thing that you're grateful for today. There's a lot of research around gratitude, and when we help our athletes really set their mind on things that they're grateful for in their environment, that impacts how they show up, it impacts their cognitive like framing of situations. Because right now your daughter's brain is probably so focused on every single little error, every single thing that went wrong, and so forcing her and developing the habit of. Hunting the good in her environment and finding things to be grateful for is actually one really simple way that we help athletes do that. What you can do in this situation is you can celebrate effort and progress. You can actually change a lot of, when we fall into this trap of like praising outcomes because it's so easy to do in sports, but that can actually make perfectionism worse because they're already focused so much on the outcome. And then when that's getting reinforced from their parents and their coaches and all of that. That's really hard to replicate. It's really hard to replicate some of those like external outward accomplishments and prs and things like that. But what they can replicate is the effort that went into it. The intentionality, the goal setting, the coachability, the ability to be a good teammate, like all of that. Like I love how hard you hustled. I'm so proud of how dedicated you are. Like all of that, they can replicate and that can lead to more confidence. So you can actually reflect back to them like, you know, what are you proud of from today? You can create a gratitude practice within your household. We do that at dinner, we go around, we do Rose, thorn, bud, and Grateful. So my kids have added on. It used to just be Rosen Thorn and they're like, what about Bud and Grateful and all these other things. But just that practice of like. You know, forcing your brain to find the good in your environment, because our brain has a negativity bias that will cause it to focus on the not good for the most part. So that can be, a really helpful practice as well. Okay, sign three. She avoids risks or plays it safe to not mess up. So she's always doing the safe thing because she doesn't wanna make a mistake and if she's swinging aggressively or. Going for it, then that increases her risk to making a mistake. And the way that we help athletes with this inside our program, first of all, there's some deeper work that needs to be done. So a lot of this comes down to like feelings of self-worth and that if I mess up, then I'm gonna let people down. I'm gonna let myself down. I'm lot of this tying, like I said, her performance to how she feels about herself. So there's kind of some undoing. That we help them with in the program. And that's a very strategic and intentional process. But the other thing that's really helpful is just creating low stakes environments for her to practice. Taking risks and also praising her for going for it. Like, Hey, I do that as a coach too. It's like. When I see a player who can have two choices when they play the ball over the net and tucking volleyball, they could either free ball it or they're in a position where they could attack it. And when they choose to attack it, even if they attack it and it's in the net or it's out, like I am, like, yes, way to attack, way to go. Like, I'm not even worried about where the ball went because I know eventually that ball's gonna go in and I want them to develop that, that mindset of I'm always going to attack rather than play it safe. So praising that, the bravery, not just the outcome. You know, sometimes sharing stories of like where you took risk, what you learned can be helpful as well. But, this risk taking comes from like developing that muscle and, exercising that muscle of risk taking. And the work that we do in the program that gets a little bit deeper is like, what are the beliefs that you're holding onto and the thoughts you're holding onto that is keeping you from taking that risk because you're afraid to let people down. And so we kind of go deeper into that and we challenge those thoughts. We're like, what if you did take a risk? What's the worst that would happen if you took a risk and swung aggressively? What's the worst that would happen? And usually they're like, well, I would make a mistake. And then I challenge that a little more, and I'm like, well, okay, so you made a mistake. What's, what's the worst that could happen there? Ooh, my coach is mad at me. Okay. What's the worst thing that could ever happen with your coach being mad at you? I'm my coach, yells at me. He's disappointed. Can you handle that? You know, and I challenge them and usually they're like, yeah, I can handle that. How long would it take you to get through that? Like, oh, it might take me, you know, an hour. We kind of go deeper into it. They realize like, Ooh, okay, the worst case scenario actually isn't that bad and I can get through that. And so that allows them to subtly and maybe baby steps, take some more risks. Okay, so that's three, recapping so far. Number one, she beats herself up after mistakes. Number two, she's never satisfied even after wins. Three, she avoids risks or just like plays it safe a lot. Four. She has big emotional reactions to mistakes. Okay. And this can be tough to watch because it's like she kind of, again, it goes back to she's linking her self-worth and how she goes about herself to her performance. And so the emotional reactions make sense because. Because she made a mistake. It is not just a threat to like, oh, we might lose the game. It's a threat to her identity and her acceptance and her love and all of those things. And that goes deep. She might not be able to consciously recognize what's going on at this point. And so some strategies that we teach beyond just kind of that deeper, belief work and thought work is emotional regulation. So deep breathing, you know, some visualization strategies beforehand. Mindfulness of being able to come back to the present moment, you know, building that self-compassion, that feelings are valid. Not all reactions are, or reactions and feelings are valid, but not all behaviors are. A lot of pre-planning is also useful in this. Like when you do get into a situation that triggers you, or you do get into a situation that you know can result in a big emotional response, what is going to be your response instead? And I literally have athletes practice that ahead of time for you, be your child's, calm in the storm, be her anchor, you know, remind yourself that. You're the pilot of this ship and you can, you can stay steady even if there's lots going on around you. Even if there, if you, if your daughter is not, and validate those feelings that she's having. Like I know that was frustrating. I know that was disappointing before redirecting her and trying to fix things. Because we also know from research that the more that we can just be with validate, hold space for our daughters when they're having emotional reactions like that, or even just having a tough time with what happened out there in the game. Without trying to like process it faster, that actually allows them to emotionally regulate better and process faster. When you just allow her to be okay, allow her to vent to you, reflect back what you're hearing, you don't have to agree with her, especially if she's beating yourself up. But you could say things like, you and I both know that's not true, but it would be really hard to feel that way. And so language like that is actually really helpful when, she's having those emotional reactions. Okay, number five. This last one I've hinted at it like. Lots of times, but she ties her self-worth through her performance. And the signs that you can look for around this is if she has a bad game, she feels like she's down in the dumps for hours, days, and it's just like, it's okay to be disappointed and athletes should, feel bummed when they really want something and they don't get it. And all of that is very normal. But if it's like beyond that and she just can't enjoy anything in life, for a couple of days, even after a bad performance. And so we help athletes with this by creating affirmations and I am statements and you know, that's part of our daily mindset routine for the 3, 2, 1 brave is that they are constantly writing down I am statements that they have prefo based on the athlete that they wanna be in competition. So that is a really simple mental training skill that we give athletes because their brain is always listening. And what they're inputting into their brain is what's going to come out on the court. And you know, I am statements like I am adaptable. I am more than my sport. There's all sorts, like over the course of the years and the thousands of athletes that have come through the elite mental game, I've seen thousands of affirmations that are so supportive and empowering because we tell athletes, your loudest, most influential coach in your whole life. Is the one inside your head, and that voice inside your head can be rough sometimes, and it can sound less like a supportive coach and more like a really mean bully. And we have to be able to train that coach. We have to be able to train that voice to be that supportive coach that you need in that moment so that you're not. Beating yourself up and tying your self worth and how you feel about yourself to your performance. You can care about your performance without letting it weigh you down and feel like it's a threat to your identity. And so parents can also reinforce this by very simple things. I love watching you play. Right. That's a common phrase. t That's, hat cannot be over said, I'm proud of, you know, things that are related to their effort and their, process that went into their performance, not just their performance or the outcome. Encourage balance. What is she doing outside of being an athlete? So all of those things can be a really good place to start as a parent. So if you want more strategies like this as a parent. Head to our free training for sports parents. It's where we break it all down. That's at train her game.com. We also give you a little insight into what our program is, the Elite Mental game where your daughter can develop these skills as well to help her with perfectionism, help her, you know, perform how you know she's capable of, and we give a little discount when you are on the training for the elite mental game. So that's at train her game.com. Alright, parents, I hope that this was helpful. Know that I see you if you are. Raising a perfectionist athlete and we don't wanna get rid of it because there's a lot of good things about perfectionism, but we do wanna get rid of the self-deprecation and the qualities that make it really hard to live as a perfectionist that's just kind of suffocated by the feelings of not good enough all the time. So it is possible, and I hope that this episode is a really good start for you to, to help your athlete athlete out in this area. I'll see you in the next episode.