How to Be Enough, Ellen Hendriksen
How to Be Enough, Ellen Hendriksen
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How to Be Enough
Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists

Author: Ellen Hendriksen

Narrator: Ellen Hendriksen

Unabridged: 9 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/07/2025


Synopsis

“Psychologist and therapist Ellen Hendriksen has a likable, easygoing narrating style that holds together the impressive amount of useful information in her latest audiobook.”—AudioFile

This program is read by the author.

Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with this clear and compassionate guide.

Do you set demanding standards for yourself? If so, a lot likely goes well in your life: You might earn compliments, admiration, or accomplishments. Your high standards and hard work pay off.

But privately, you may feel like you’re falling behind, faking it, or different from everybody else. Your eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector highlights every mistake. You try hard to avoid criticism, but criticize yourself. Trying to get it right is your guiding light, but it has lit the way to a place of dissatisfaction, loneliness, or disconnection. In short, you may look like you’re hitting it out of the park, but you feel like you’re striking out.

This is perfectionism. And for everyone who struggles with it, it’s a misnomer: perfectionism isn’t about striving to be perfect. It’s about never feeling good enough.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen—clinical psychologist, anxiety specialist, and author of How to Be Yourself—is on the same journey as you. In How to Be Enough, Hendriksen charts a flexible, forgiving, and freeing path, all without giving up the excellence your high standards and hard work have gotten you. She delivers seven shifts—including from self-criticism to kindness, control to authenticity, procrastination to productivity, comparison to contentment—to find self-acceptance, rewrite the Inner Rulebook, and most of all, cultivate the authentic human connections we’re all craving.

With compassion and humor, Hendriksen lays out a clear, effective, and empowering guide. To enjoy rather than improve, be real rather than impressive, and be good to yourself when you’re wired to be hard on yourself.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press Essentials.

About Ellen Hendriksen

ELLEN HENDRIKSEN is a clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She is the author of How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC News, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, and Psychology Today, among others. She lives in the Boston area with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Catherine on February 08, 2025

**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Ellen Hendriksen for an ARC of this book!** "Perfectionism doesn't make you feel perfect; it makes you feel inadequate." - Maria Shriver If you can relate to this sentiment on ANY level...consider this book the wise, warm, and insightful therapy sess......more

Goodreads review by Erin on November 06, 2024

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date: Jan. 7, 2025 Have you ever been labeled “very Type A?” Perhaps “anal retentive”? Or, on the positive side of things, “reliable”, “organiz......more

Goodreads review by Saltygalreads on September 17, 2024

How to Be Enough is a self help book for perfectionists. There is a societal misconception that being a perfectionist is a great thing and something to brag about because it means you get things done and done well. That might be true, but it also causes a great deal of mental anguish. The author disc......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on October 28, 2024

How to praise this book perfectly enough? How To Be Enough is inspiring, funny, endearing, deeply relatable and is everything I’ve needed for YEARS. This book on perfectionism is so incredibly helpful, it’s all I’ve been able to talk about for a week. I had no idea how multifaceted perfectionism is,......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on January 06, 2025

Reading How to Be Enough is like having a therapy session with your wisest, most compassionate friend—the one who calls you out and hands you a donut afterward. Dr. Ellen Hendriksen gets it. She knows what it’s like to aim for the moon, only to spiral into a shame galaxy when you miss. (Spoiler: The......more