Honours+ Workshop: Perfectly Imperfect; Rethinking Perfectionism

  • Do you keep rewriting an assignment because it could still be better? Put off starting because you’re worried you won’t do it perfectly? Spend far too long on small details, compare yourself to others, or feel like your achievements are never quite enough?

    Perfectionism can be both a strength and a struggle. High standards can motivate you to work hard, pay attention to detail, and strive for excellence. But when the pressure to get everything right starts causing procrastination, self-criticism, stress, or fear of failure, perfectionism can get in the way of the very success you're working towards.

    In this interactive workshop, you'll explore how perfectionism shows up in your own academic and personal life. You'll learn to recognise the difference between healthy striving and unhelpful perfectionistic patterns, identify behaviours that may be holding you back, and experiment with more flexible ways of approaching your goals. The workshop combines short theoretical insights with individual exercises and reflection, so you can work with the topic in a way that feels relevant to you.

    ✅ Understand how perfectionism can help you and when it starts working against you.

    ✅ Recognise perfectionistic thoughts and behaviours in your everyday life.

    ✅ Identify patterns such as procrastination, overthinking, excessive checking, or fear of making mistakes.

    ✅ Explore how to set high standards without putting unnecessary pressure on yourself.

    ✅ Develop practical strategies and personal behaviour goals for dealing with unhelpful perfectionism.

    You don't have to stop caring about doing things well. The goal is to learn how to pursue excellence without needing everything to be perfect.
    Available sessions:

     

    • Wednesdag 17.02.2027, 13:30-16:30 hrs.

       

    The “Perfectionism” workshop will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X. Participants will receive a reminder with the exact location two days prior to the session.

     

    Register here for this workshop.

     

     
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  • Why?

    For Honours students, perfectionism can become a barrier to taking intellectual risks, experimenting, and learning from mistakes, especially in a demanding academic environment. If you’re used to setting yourself high standards, it can be difficult to recognise when perfectionism is helping you excel and when it is holding you back. This session gives you practical tools to manage that pressure, take risks, learn from mistakes, and keep growing without feeling that everything has to be perfect.
  • Rena Gatzounis

    Your Workshop Host: Rena Gatzounis (Dr. Gatzounis Coaching)

    Rena is a professional and experienced coach with a strong background in health psychology and behaviour change, and has work experience both within and outside academia.

    Having previously co-designed health and wellbeing coaching programmes for a digital health app startup and currently coaching and mentoring high-performance university students, I have accumulated lots of experience in helping people change. I also teach about behaviour change in my work as a University Lecturer. 

    ​My qualifications include a PhD in Psychology from the KU Leuven (Belgium) and a Professional Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring from Kingstown College (Ireland).

    ​In my private work as a coach, I blend coaching methodologies with evidence-based methods from the fields of cognitive-behavioural and positive psychology. The focused coaching programmes I design are carefully crafted, based on the scientific literature.