Therapy for High Achievers with Anxiety

IN WOODINVILLE AND ACROSS WASHINGTON

Rest in real excellence. 

You care a LOT about what you do...

… so much that you feel paralyzed by the pressure to do it well.

You’re driven to put your all into the tasks life throws at you. Working hard and doing a good job are some of your core values, and they’ve helped you build a life full of things you value – things like rewarding relationships and work, meaningful projects, big goals, and bigger dreams.

But when you look around at all these good things, you don’t feel joy and satisfaction. Instead there’s a looming worry – what if you can’t keep this up? The pressure to keep doing builds… if you can prove to yourself that you’re good enough, maybe it will keep the anxiety at bay. 

Wasn’t success supposed to quiet these doubts and fears?

If you’re a driven person, you see your work as a reflection of you, and you also feel stress about your work being “good enough” (ahem, perfect), you may be dealing with the anxiety+perfectionism duo. For many people, they’re the constant (unwelcome) companions of achievement. 

This combination can manifest in many ways, some more obvious than others. Here are a few signs you may be dealing with some unaddressed anxiety and perfectionism:

  • You’re  afraid of failure (and failure is anything less than 100%).

  • You take on new projects with a constant feed of anxiety. You can’t remember a time that you tried something new without feeling overwhelmed.

  • You’re unable to start new tasks. Even though you can envision how amazing the finished project could be, when it comes to taking the first steps you feel overwhelmed and put off starting at all.

  • Your self-esteem fluctuates alongside your appraisal of how you did this day/week/quarter/year. It also varies depending on how you think others perceive you, which is super fun.

  • You feel overwhelmed by the demands of your life – you just can’t keep up.

  • You’ve cared too much about too many things for too long, and you’ve got nothing left to give. You’re burned out.

  • You’re trapped in a worry loop about all the bad things that could ever happen in the future. This is also loads of fun.

And as if all that weren’t enough, that’s just the beginning.

The above list might be business as usual.

What’s led you to finally look for help is the spillover into the rest of your life:

  • You feel caught in your current position, whether it’s in work, in relationships, or in life generally. On one hand, you’re fearful of taking the next step and potential failure. On the other hand, you don’t want to regret missed opportunities. So, you’re holding back from the next job promotion, or move, or going back to school, or next step in a relationship, or thinking about having kids, or embarking on a new venture.

  • Your relationships are becoming laced with resentment and envy as you see friends and colleagues taking risks and finding success. You don’t like these feelings, and they’re not in alignment with how you want to be in relationship with others.

  • You notice that you’re feeling judgmental of others who aren’t burdened by your high standards. You know this judgment is unreasonable and suspect there is something deeper going on here.

  • You have a really hard time being in the moment and enjoying time with your partner or family.

  • You’re finding it difficult to do what you know is good for you: taking breaks, going on vacations, resting when you’re sick, asking for help, keeping up with medical appointments.

  • Perhaps you’ve noticed jaw tension, headaches, migraines, inflammation, digestive upset, out of control eating (and guilt spiraling afterward) or neglect of getting the nutrients you need, insomnia or worsened quality of sleep, flare ups in other medical conditions, etc.

All the above may be spot on… and yet no one in your life knows just how hard you’re struggling, because the very things you do to feel better from the outside look successful and put together.

And there may be a part of you (I’m going to assume it’s a big one) that is gripping white-knuckled to these patterns because it sees the ways they’ve really helped you over the years.

And that may be true. But there is also cost to them… and it can be enormous.

Helping you break free from perfectionism and find real success.

What if you could have it all?

Seriously – what if you could continue to work hard, find success, and dream big without the constant barrage of stress and self-criticism? What if instead of constantly fearing you’re not enough, in your core you knew you’re good? What if you took on challenges from that place?

Imagine feeling able to embark on new endeavors from a place of confidence and capable of giving to others, because your own cup is full.

If this was true, you’d be able to:

  • Set and work towards goals in alignment with what actually matters to you.

  • Complete projects without the anxiety roller coaster making them way harder than they need to be.

  • Say no without beating yourself up.

  • Take breaks when you need to rather than waiting for a crisis to force you to rest.

  • Give yourself respect, appreciation, and gratitude regardless of life’s inevitable ups and downs.

  • Celebrate others’ successes because they don’t feel threatening anymore.

  • Enjoy your successes.

How we get there:

ASSESS

We will untangle your relationships with success and anxiety, and get to the bottom of when perfectionism set up camp in your life.

ADDRESS

Using a combination of approaches suited to you, potentially including IFS and EMDR, we will help you heal the core wounds these patterns connect to. (You heard me right, I’m betting there’s some stuff down deep that really hurts.)

ASPIRE

You’ll connect to your passions and dreams from a place of authentic confidence. You’ll find freedom to take risks, aim for excellence, and build the life you want.

This process is not easy, and its result is transformation. But if you’re ready to lean in and commit to your growth, you’ll find the result is nothing short of getting your life back.

Therapy for high achievers with anxiety can help you:

  • Gain insight around the root causes that contribute to your anxious striving

  • Heal your relationship to achievement

  • Distinguish healthy goals for growth, success, and excellence

  • Clarify your values and priorities and make decisions that support them

  • Uncouple your sense of self from your achievements using healthy self-esteem and self-compassion

  • Set healthy boundaries and bring harmony into your relationships

You do not have to keep running ragged trying to prove yourself.

Let’s get you back in the driver’s seat so you can navigate your life with confidence and satisfaction.

Frequently asked questions about therapy for high achievers with anxiety:

  • Great question! I hope you have people in your life who you can talk to when things are hard and that you do in fact choose to lean on them when you need support (although I have a suspicion that’s difficult at times). But if you do, wonderful. The tricky thing with friends and family is that you have your role in each of their lives to maintain, and sometimes these roles can get in the way of you being able to take up the space you need. Especially if you often find yourself in the role of the supportive friend, the good daughter, the strong partner, the caring mom, or the put-together role model, for example, it can seem impossible to find a way to voice your own fears and struggles.

    In therapy, you get the undivided attention of a trained professional whose sole focus is helping you along your journey. Our relationship is centered on you and your struggles, fears, strengths, goals, and dreams. This is a space where you can show up fully with no fear or concerns about taking care of anyone else. I show up with my specific training and skills to help people like you create the changes you want to see in your life. Many of my clients have specifically reported the added value they find in having an impartial perspective outside their other relationships, to better understand themselves and their experience.


    If you feel relief (and maybe a little nervous) at the prospect of having the space to take up space, therapy for high achievers may be exactly what you need!

  • At some point you may have received feedback basically to the effect of “you’re too busy, if you do less you’ll be less stressed.” It can be really frustrating when others, especially loved ones who mean well, don’t understand your choices or assume your busyness is a pathology rather than something you enjoy (well, most of the time…).


    In therapy, you are the expert on your life, your priorities, and how you want to use the invaluable resources of your time and energy. I’m the expert on the process of helping you clarify what these values and priorities truly are and get out from under the barrage of stress that may be clouding your ability to connect to them. I can help you gain new perspective and insight into these patterns in your life and find healing where there is hurt, so that new options and paths forward emerge for you. I will offer my reflections and curiosities, but I will never tell you what you “should” do.


    Now, if you don’t resonate with this question and instead have a gut feeling that it might in fact be true that you need to slow down – that could very well be true! We can follow that hunch and see if there’s wisdom it’s offering you, and what steps you’re sensing you need to take.


    Finally, if you feel torn between these perspectives – you don’t want to be told what to do, you don’t want to slow down, but you have a sinking feeling that might be what you need – and you don’t know what’s right for you, then welcome. This too is normal. We can help you untangle and sort through your experience, so you feel ready and confident to take the steps you need to find balance and peace in your life.

  • Stress is a normal part of life. At a biological level, the stress response is an adaptation that’s helped humans survive. In the practical day to day, stressful situations are a given. And stress can even be helpful for problem-solving and gaining new skills. But the ups and downs of living in our 21st century world, and the situational and circumstantial stresses that often accompany it, are just that - situational, circumstantial, they come and go.


    If you’re experiencing a persistent low-grade anxiety that comes and does not go away, but instead hangs around like unpleasant background noise in your life - that’s not stress. That’s chronic anxiety. This anxiety may increase and decrease throughout your day or week or month, but it never truly goes away. Some people experience this anxiety as multiple concrete worries or fears that take alternating turns occupying the forefront of their mind. Others experience it as a constant sense of unease that doesn’t ever find a concrete target beyond the vaguely foreboding future. Still others experience their anxiety as constant tension, muscle pain, stomach upset, never really feeling they can relax.


    Common across all these manifestations is the experience of anxiety intruding on your day to day and getting in the way of you living your life. When anxiety is constantly running the show, there’s an enormous energy toll and burden on your mental, emotional, physical, and social well-being. While everyone encounters stressful situations, stress is designated to be a temporary state that we experience and take steps to find relief from. If anxiety feels more like the rule than a temporary state, your body may be experiencing anxiety in ways it was not designed to and can be impacted negatively by.


    If you’re experiencing more than occasional anxiety, you may benefit from talking to a trained professional to identify the causes of anxiety in your life and learn skills that put stress back into its proper place as a temporary experience rather than a regular state of being.

  • No! I provide specialized care both around experiences of faith and around experiences of anxious achievement, and I support people from a variety of backgrounds. If you’re here because you want to find a better relationship with success and get a handle on your anxiety, you’re in the right place, regardless of what faith looks like for you. If faith and spirituality are topics you want to address in therapy, cool! I’m here for that. If not, great! I’m here for that, too.

  • If you think that therapy for anxiety and perfectionism is what you need in your life, your next step is to reach out and schedule a free 20-minute consultation. We will talk about what you’re experiencing and how I can help! If you’re ready, click “Let’s Get Started!” above!