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 other evidence-based therapies, I’ll help you:
Build self-awareness and understand what’s draining you.
We’ll identify how perfectionism, overachieving, and overfunctioning show up in your life, what drives your particular patterns, and where they’re costing you the most time, energy, and emotional bandwidth.
Develop greater mental and emotional flexibility.
You’ll learn practical skills for working differently with the thoughts, internal rules, anxiety, and other difficult feelings that can keep these draining patterns going.
Honor your own needs, wants, and values.
We’ll clarify what matters to you and help you distinguish between achieving and having high standards that feel meaningful and the over-achieving and over-performing that leaves you depleted, so you can make yourself an equal priority without feeling lazy or not good enough.
Build self-worth from the inside out.
You’ll develop self-compassion and learn new ways of responding to self-judgment, while gradually untangling your worth from what you achieve and how well you perform.
Strengthen boundary-setting skills.
You’ll practice honoring your needs for balance, rest, and relaxation, and honoring your own limits with fairness to yourself and self-compassion.
What Sets Me Apart
And makes me uniquely qualified to help you with perfectionism, overfunctioning, and overachieving
Lived Experience
I understand perfectionism, overfunctioning, and overachieving from personal experience as well as professional experience. For years, I pushed and pressured myself to achieve the highest standards and get things right, and it became so automatic that I sometimes lost touch with my own needs and preferences. I was constantly striving to reach my own high expectations and get an A+ on everything I did. During periods of high stress, those patterns could intensify even further.
Over time, I learned how to keep my own high standards while also listening to my own limits. I didn’t have to give up being driven, conscientious, responsible, or dependable. I learned how to stop approaching everything like there was going to be a performance review. I learned how to live my values in ways that were more balanced and sustainable.
That experience is part of why I care so much about this work and why I understand how difficult it can be to change patterns that are deeply connected to who you believe you’re supposed to be.
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 the thoughts, emotions, internal rules, and fears that keep perfectionism, overfunctioning, and overachieving going.
I’ve found this combination of approaches especially helpful for learning to treat your own needs, wants, and wellbeing as equally important to what you accomplish and how well you accomplish it, while continuing to be the conscientious, dependable, high-standards person you want to be.
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.