Perfectionism & Anxiety

Ongoing Individual Therapy

For when doing your best never seems to be enough

You have probably been working incredibly hard to manage this, and it's no longer working

Am I a perfectionist?

Perfectionism is often misunderstood as simply wanting things to be perfect. For many people, it is much more complicated than that.

Maybe you set incredibly high standards for yourself and still feel like you're falling short. You may spend a lot of time overthinking decisions, checking your work, preparing for every possible outcome, or replaying conversations long after they're over. Perhaps you're much more forgiving of other people's mistakes than your own, or find it difficult to rest without feeling like you should be doing something more productive.

Sometimes perfectionism is tied to achievement. Other times, it's about being liked, needed, or in control. It can be hard to know where healthy ambition ends and anxiety begins.

If you recognize yourself in this, you're not alone—and you don't have to stop caring about the things that matter to you in order to feel better.

What anxiety looks like

Anxiety doesn't always announce itself as fear. It can look like persistent worry, racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping, physical tension, or feeling constantly on edge.

It can also show up through avoidance: putting off things you want to do, avoiding situations because of fear, or organizing your life around preventing something uncomfortable from happening. For some people, anxiety means panic attacks or fear of having another one. For others, it may involve a specific phobia or the ongoing worry and tension associated with generalized anxiety disorder.

And anxiety can be exhausting. You may be going through your day while privately feeling overwhelmed, crying yourself to sleep, or wondering how much longer you can keep managing everything on your own.

The goal isn't to care less

I don't want to help you become less ambitious, less conscientious, or less invested in the people and things that matter to you. Those qualities may be deeply connected to your values.

Instead, we'll work on recognizing when those values are guiding you and when anxiety has quietly taken the wheel.

There is a difference between wanting to do something well and believing you have to do it perfectly. There is a difference between caring about someone's opinion and believing you cannot tolerate disappointing them.

The goal isn't to care less. It's to have more freedom in how you respond to what you care about.

Dropping the rope

One of the ideas from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that I return to often is the image of a tug-of-war.

Anxiety is holding one end of the rope, and you're holding the other. You pull because you want the anxiety to go away, so you try harder: more thinking, more checking, more preparation, more reassurance, more avoidance.

What happens if you drop the rope?

Dropping the rope doesn't mean that anxiety disappears or that you stop caring. It means that getting rid of anxiety is no longer a requirement for moving forward.

You can feel uncertain and still make a decision. You can notice the thought that you're going to fail without having to solve it. You can experience anxiety in your body without treating the sensation as a warning that you need to escape. You can do something imperfectly, allow someone to be disappointed, or face something you've been avoiding.

We're not trying to go around the difficult parts of being human. We're learning how to go through them with more willingness, curiosity, and choice.

Is this the right kind of treatment for me?

This work may be a good fit if anxiety or perfectionism has started to feel like it is running more of your life than you'd like.

You might be:

Constantly worrying, overthinking, checking, preparing, or seeking reassurance
Exhausted from trying to get things right or prevent something from going wrong
Hard on yourself when you make mistakes
Struggling to tolerate uncertainty
Avoiding situations because of fear or anxiety
Experiencing panic attacks or worrying about having another one
Organizing your life around a particular fear or phobia
Finding it difficult to rest, slow down, or say no without feeling guilty
Feeling trapped by the pressure to perform, achieve, or keep everyone happy

I work with adults experiencing generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, and clinically significant anxiety and perfectionism that may not fit neatly into one diagnostic category.

If the strategies you've been using to manage anxiety are no longer giving you the life you want, therapy can offer another way forward.

You don't have to get rid of anxiety to live differently.

Anxiety can become so consuming that much of your energy goes toward trying to prevent it, quiet it, control it, or make sure you never feel it again. ACT offers another way forward: learning to make room for difficult thoughts and feelings while choosing where you want your life to go.

Weekly or Biweekly Telehealth Sessions — A long term therapeutic partnership

How it Works

The Basics

Understanding the cycle

We'll start by getting curious about how anxiety and perfectionism show up for you. We'll look at the thoughts, physical sensations, behaviors, and expectations that keep the cycle going, as well as the strategies you've developed to manage it.

Rather than viewing these patterns as something you've done wrong, we'll work to understand what they have been trying to accomplish and where they may no longer be serving you.

The Commitment

Showing up for the work

Individual therapy typically consists of weekly or biweekly 55-minute sessions. We’ll use that time to understand the patterns keeping anxiety and perfectionism going and, importantly, begin practicing new ways of responding to them.

This may mean tolerating uncertainty, doing something imperfectly, facing something you’ve been avoiding, setting a boundary, or making choices based on your values rather than fear. Change often involves some discomfort, but you won’t be expected to figure it out on your own.

We’ll start where you are and work from there.

$200 — 55-minutes

The Tools

Therapy with an ACT lens

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy provides the foundation for this work, while other evidence-based approaches may be incorporated depending on what you need.

Our work may include mindfulness, cognitive defusion, values clarification, exposure and behavioral experiments, acceptance and willingness practices, self-compassion, and psychoeducation.

The tools aren’t another list of things you have to do perfectly. They're there to help you develop a different relationship with anxiety—and more freedom to choose how you respond.

Inquire about Therapy