Perfectionism & self-criticism
Therapy for perfectionism, self-criticism, and never feeling like enough.
You shipped the thing, and within the hour your mind had moved to what was wrong with it. The praise didn't land — it never quite does — but the one piece of criticism is still with you a week later, word for word.
The deal you made
Perfectionism is a bargain struck a long time ago: if I judge myself first and hardest, nobody else's judgment can touch me. If nothing I do is ever quite enough, I'll never get complacent, and if I'm never complacent, I'm safe. It's a real strategy, and it has probably paid you real things — promotions, and a reputation as the one who doesn't drop balls.
But look at the tax. You can't start things that might not be excellent, so you procrastinate on exactly what matters most. You can't delegate, because someone else's 90% costs you more anxiety than your own 130%. Rest feels like falling behind. Compliments bounce off; mistakes go in deep and stay. And the standard rises the moment you meet it — you've noticed the finish line moves.
The work
We don't do affirmations. You'd see through them, and the problem was never a shortage of nice thoughts about yourself anyway. The work is figuring out where the standard came from — whose voice the critic is actually using, what it believes it's protecting you from — and then testing the core theory: that the criticism is the reason you succeed. In my experience, it's usually the thing you've succeeded despite.
It's also practical. We pick real situations — the report you can't start, the feedback you can't hear, the task you delegated and quietly took back — and change how you move through them, one at a time.
Common questions
Won't I lose my edge?
Every perfectionist asks this, and it deserves a straight answer: the drive and the cruelty are separable. The drive is yours — it was there before the critic and it stays after. What you lose is the procrastination and the days of recovery after every imperfect outcome. Most people find their output improves, which is annoying, given how many years the critic took the credit.
Is perfectionism a diagnosis?
No, and you don't need one. It's a pattern — often woven into anxiety — and patterns are exactly what therapy is for.
How is this different from just having high standards?
High standards evaluate the work. Perfectionism sentences the person. If a weak draft means the draft needs work, that's standards. If it means you're a fraud about to be found out, that's the pattern we're talking about.