Therapy for Perfectionists in Chicago and across Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida

Perfectionism Treatment

Common symptoms of perfectionism include:

  • Paying extreme attention to detail

  • Getting upset when a mistake has been made and ruminating about it

  • Fearing making mistakes and seeing them as failures

  • Nothing achieved is good enough (or difficulty celebrating achievements)

  • Obsessing over what you should have done better

  • Excessive worry about being judged by others

  • High anxiety about embarrassing yourself

  • Seeing things as absolutes (right or wrong)

  • Being a high achiever but feeling like a fraud (Imposter Syndrome)

  • Feeling inadequate or incompetent, even when evidence suggests otherwise

  • Self-doubt and worry about measuring up

  • Setting excessively high goals/expectations (and being unable to achieve them)

  • Micromanaging others

  • Having difficulty delegating tasks to others or feeling disappointed in the results

  • Experiencing burnout because there’s too much on your plate

Perfectionism Therapy

Are you a perfectionist? The desire to succeed requires a healthy sense of ambition that keeps you motivated, but what happens when it reaches another level? It can cause you to procrastinate and miss out on opportunities because you can’t bear the idea that the outcome could be anything less than flawless, or maybe it’s not the “perfect” time.

It can be debilitating to your daily functioning because you waste so much time trying to get something “just right.” This creates a great deal of anxiety and can pertain to all facets of your life (professional, academic, relational, perceptions of self, etc). This is where perfectionism actually becomes self-sabotaging.

How can therapy for perfectionism help?

Green leaf on the side of a white background.

I'll help you identify some of the root causes of your perfectionism and assist you in understanding the role being a perfectionist has played in your life.  I will assist you in recognizing that failure is part of the human experience and actually facilitates growth. I will aide you in seeing the plethora of gray area that exists between the black and white extremes of polarized thinking, which ultimately leads to perfectionism. This will be a process, and developing a deeper, more specific awareness is the first step. You can then understand this is part of your brain’s automatic behavior and gain some distance from it, which gives you the opportunity to examine and question the validity of your thoughts.

I will use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help you change the way you think in order to change the way you feel.  This method of treatment has been proven to yield high success rates in regard to shifting perfectionistic tendencies.  Most people are unaware of the degree to which their thought patterns are impacting their emotions.

I use additional methods of treatment to supplement CBT: 

  1. Mindfulness - focused on remaining in the present moment and accepting what is out of our control

  2. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - based on values and goals

  3. Client-Centered Therapy - focused on the therapeutic relationship and providing a non-judgmental environment 

  4. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) - developing skills/tools for dealing with highly emotional situations

  5. Internal Family Systems (IFS) - based on the idea that our parts (sub-personalities) function as a system and react to other systems

  6. Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)

Clients who have engaged in perfectionism treatment report more acceptance of self and others, the ability to acknowledge positive traits, more realistic expectations, less anxiety, and the ability to celebrate accomplishments.