Specialty
Therapy for perfectionism
From the outside, it looks like excellence. From the inside, it's a supervisor who never clocks out: grading everything you do, moving the finish line the moment you reach it, and treating rest like something you have to earn but never quite have.
How it tends to show up
Perfectionism gets praised so often that it can take years to recognize it as a source of suffering. It reads as high standards, conscientiousness, drive. But high standards feel like choosing. Perfectionism feels like being chased.
It also lies about its own usefulness. Most of my clients believe the critic is the engine of their success, and that without it everything would fall apart. In practice it is usually the biggest obstacle: behind the procrastination, the burnout, and the quiet refusal to let anyone see a draft.
Where it comes from
The critic was hired for a reason.
Perfectionism usually begins as a strategy: a way to stay safe, earn love, or hold things together in an environment where mistakes were expensive. Somewhere along the way, being good at things stopped being something you do and became the condition for being worth anything at all.
In our work we get to know the critic rather than just fighting it, and we look at what it has been trying to protect. Alongside that deeper work, I teach practical skills from ACT and self-compassion practice: unhooking from the commentary, finishing things at good-enough on purpose, and letting your worth stop riding on the outcome. Self-compassion is not lowering the bar. It is what finally makes the bar survivable.
Book a Free ConsultationSessions are held by secure telehealth from anywhere in Texas or California. Also see people-pleasing and codependency, which often travel with this pattern.