Dawn Ascanio
Therapist + Therapeutic Coach
Perfectionism keeps you pushing long after you need to stop.
Perfectionism goes beyond wanting to do things well. It can mean consistently pushing yourself toward a task, outcome, or result at a significant cost to your own wellbeing. Whether it shows up as perfectionism, over-achieving, over-performing, or over-functioning, you may find yourself constantly striving, pressuring yourself to get things right, and expecting more from yourself than you would ever expect from someone else.
These patterns can look like conscientiousness, ambition, responsibility, or simply being the person who gets things done. But when they become excessive, they can start to feel driven by anxiety, urgency, and a need to manage outcomes. You may feel like you’re always grading your own performance, looking for what could be improved and trying to get an A+, or telling yourself that what you’ve done still isn’t enough.
For many women, these patterns show up everywhere: at work, in relationships, at home, and in caregiving roles. Over time, all that pushing can leave you exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected from your own needs, and with very little energy left for rest, enjoyment, or yourself.
Perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning can look like:
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Holding yourself to extremely high standards and feeling constant pressure to do more, achieve more, or get things “right.”
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Treating almost everything you do as a high-stakes endeavor, with difficulty tolerating mistakes, mediocrity, or anything less than your best effort.
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Taking on too much responsibility, including tasks that aren’t really yours, because you know you can do them better, faster, or more reliably.
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Pushing past your limits and having difficulty resting, stepping back, or deciding that something is good enough.
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Trying to manage people, tasks, and outcomes so thoroughly that it becomes hard to let go, ask for help, or allow someone else to do things differently.
Over time, these patterns can take a real toll on your energy, emotional wellbeing, and sense of self-worth, especially when your value starts to feel tied to how much you accomplish, how well you perform, or how much you can handle.
You can keep your high standards and find more balance.
Therapy can help you hold onto the conscientiousness, ambition, and high standards that serve you while developing a more flexible, sustainable way of approaching your responsibilities and goals. You can learn to recognize when striving has crossed over into pushing too hard, over-controlling, or expecting more from yourself than you can reasonably sustain.
Benefits
This work can help you:
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Listen to your own limits and know when to stop, so you can work hard and accomplish what matters to you while protecting your time, energy, and wellbeing.
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Manage anxiety with greater flexibility, so the need to control outcomes, manage everything, or keep pushing feels less compelling.
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Let “good enough” be good enough more often, with greater tolerance for mistakes, imperfection, and times when you simply aren’t performing at your best.
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Develop a deeper sense of self-worth from within, so your value feels less dependent on how much you accomplish, how well you perform, or how much you can handle.
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Build your capacity to rest, relax, and play, giving yourself permission to turn down the responsible, conscientious part of you sometimes and make space for other parts of life.
The result is more time, energy, and mental bandwidth for taking care of yourself and focusing on the people, experiences, and priorities that matter most to you.
How I Help
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness-based approaches, and compassion-focused work, I’ll help you learn practical skills for noticing self-critical thoughts, beliefs, and self-talk, recognizing them as products of your mind, and choosing how much influence to give them. We can also learn to understand your inner critic differently, including the ways it may be trying to protect you, so you can respond to yourself with greater awareness and choice. At the same time, we’ll actively strengthen a kinder and more accepting way of relating to yourself. With practice, self-compassion and self-kindness can begin to take root and become increasingly natural.
What Sets Me Apart
What makes me uniquely qualified to help you with self-doubt and self-worth
Helping people overcome self-doubt and build a solid sense of self-worth is one of the areas of therapy I care most about. One of the most important things I’ve developed in my own life is self-compassion, which has led to a deep and lasting sense of self-acceptance.
To me, self-acceptance means that you’re still okay with yourself at the end of the day, even when you’ve made mistakes, struggled, or haven’t lived up to your own standards and expectations.
Self-esteem and self-confidence naturally rise and fall depending on the day and what’s happening in our lives. Few of us feel good about ourselves or confident in our abilities every second of every day. A lasting sense of self-acceptance gives us a foundation to land on when life gets difficult, we fall short, or we disappoint someone else or ourselves.
From the foundation of acceptance, a deeper sense of self-worth can grow and support us as we navigate our lives.
Professional Experience
I bring nearly two decades of experience as a therapist to this work. My approach draws heavily from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), compassion-focused approaches, and mindfulness-based practices, which offer practical ways to work with self-judgment, a harsh inner critic, and deeply held beliefs that you aren’t good enough. I’ve found this combination of approaches especially helpful for working with self-doubt and developing a more compassionate, accepting relationship with yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is perfectionism, and how do I know when my high standards have become a problem
Perfectionism is a pattern of becoming overly focused on doing things exceptionally well, getting things right, avoiding mistakes, or meeting very high standards. It can show up at work, at home, in relationships, and in the expectations you place on yourself. It often overlaps with over-achieving and over-functioning, where being highly conscientious, responsible, and driven can lead to taking on too much and pushing yourself far beyond your limits. High standards, ambition, and striving for excellence can be valuable qualities. They become costly when the pattern grows rigid, excessive, or difficult to step back from, especially when achievement and outcomes repeatedly take priority over your own needs and wellbeing. If you’re regularly sacrificing rest, relaxation, enjoyment, or your physical and emotional health in order to keep performing at a very high level, the balance has likely tipped too far.
What’s the difference between perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning?
Perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning are not completely separate patterns. They overlap quite a bit, and many people recognize themselves in all three. At their core, they tend to involve some combination of pushing, striving, putting pressure on yourself, and doing more than is sustainable. Perfectionism is most focused on performance and standards: doing things exceptionally well, getting things “right,” avoiding mistakes, or holding yourself to very high expectations. Over-achieving is more focused on accomplishment and productivity: continually striving to do more, achieve more, take on more, or reach the next goal. High standards may still be part of it, but the emphasis is often on how much you accomplish. Over-functioning is more focused on responsibility and management: handling everything, keeping things running, taking charge, and becoming the dependable person who can always be counted on. It often includes taking on responsibilities that could belong to someone else or doing more than your share. The specific pattern may look a little different from person to person, but all three can become exhausting when they leave little room for rest, flexibility, or your own needs.
How are perfectionism and anxiety connected?
Fear and anxiety often play an important role in perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning. Trying to control outcomes, prevent mistakes, stay on top of everything, or make sure things are done “right” can become ways of managing uncertainty and helping yourself feel more secure. For some people, these patterns developed in environments that felt unpredictable or stressful. Taking charge, being highly responsible, doing everything well, or focusing on achievement may have created a greater sense of control. Over time, those strategies can become automatic, even when they’re no longer necessary or when the amount of pressure they create starts to outweigh the sense of security they provide. Therapy can help you notice when anxiety is driving the need to control, push, or over-perform, and develop more flexible ways of responding to uncertainty without having to manage everything so tightly.
Can therapy help with perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning?
Absolutely! Therapy can help you understand where these patterns came from, what keeps them going, and what may be driving them now. Often, perfectionism, over-achieving, and over-functioning are connected to rigid rules we developed long ago about what we should, have to, or must do, how well we need to do it, and what might happen if we don’t. Therapy can help you recognize those rules and respond to them with greater flexibility. We can also look at the anxiety, fear, or other difficult emotions you may be trying to manage by controlling outcomes, pushing yourself harder, or taking on too much responsibility, and develop different ways of handling them. For many people, self-doubt or low self-esteem is part of the pattern as well. Therapy can help you build a stronger sense of self-worth that depends less on how much you accomplish, how well you perform, or how much you can handle. Over time, this can mean feeling less overwhelmed and burned out, with more time, energy, and mental bandwidth for rest, enjoyment, relationships, and the things that matter most to you.