Perfectionism & people-pleasing
Saying yes before you've noticed you don't want to. Over-preparing, over-functioning, dreading criticism, never quite resting. These are strategies that worked once, we work with them as protection, not as flaws.
Both are strategies and they worked once
Perfectionism and people-pleasing are usually not personality traits. They are strategies, often learned somewhere that approval was conditional, criticism was frightening, or the safest way to belong was to be useful and to get things right.
The problem is not that they don't work. They work extremely well, which is why they are so hard to give up. They produce achievement, appreciation and a reputation for reliability. They also produce exhaustion, resentment and the specific loneliness of being valued for what you provide.
We work with them as protection rather than as flaws. Nothing is dismantled before something steadier is available in its place.
What this often looks like
- Saying yes before you've registered you don't want to
- Over-preparing, over-checking, over-explaining
- Postponing things until you can do them properly
- Physical dread around criticism or feedback
- Being unable to rest until everything is finished
- Managing other people's moods as if it were your job
- Resentment that leaks out sideways, then guilt about it
- Not knowing what you want when nobody needs anything
How we work with it
We slow the pattern down until it becomes visible. The yes, the extra hour of checking, the anticipatory bracing, these happen faster than thought. Somatic work lets us catch them while they are happening, which is the only place a different response is actually possible.
We get to know what the strategy is protecting. Perfectionism is usually guarding against humiliation or rejection; pleasing is usually guarding against conflict or abandonment. Once its job is clear, it tends to relax without needing to be defeated.
We build tolerance for other people's disappointment. Often the hard part isn't saying no but surviving the aftermath, someone's coolness, distance or irritation. We work on staying present through that without collapsing back into fixing it.
We practise good enough as a felt experience. Not as a slogan, but as something your body can register: finishing something imperfect and staying regulated while you do. This is repetition work and it's where the change consolidates.
We look for your own signals again. Small preferences, small refusals, small wants. Most people find they come back faster than they feared once there is any room for them.
Practical details
Format
60-minute individual sessions, online or in person in Stockholm. Weekly or fortnightly to start.
First step
A free 15-minute introductory call. Length, fee and cancellation are set out on the Inside a session page.
Inside a session →Closely related
If the underlying question is about your own worth rather than the strategies, this may be the closer fit.
Self-esteem & self-worth →
Questions people ask me
Isn't perfectionism just having high standards?
High standards feel like care. Perfectionism feels like threat, the sense that something bad happens if the work, or you, are not good enough. The tell is usually in the body: bracing before you send something, relief rather than satisfaction when it's accepted and no rest between one task and the next.
If I stop being like this, will I lose my edge?
This is the most common fear and in practice it is not what happens. People keep their care and their competence; what changes is the cost. You can still want to do things well without the constant threat of not being enough as the engine driving it.
Why can't I just stop saying yes?
Because it isn't a decision being made slowly enough to intervene in. If your nervous system learned that other people's disappointment was dangerous, the yes arrives before thought does. That's why insight alone rarely fixes it, we have to work at the speed the pattern actually happens.
I don't even know what I want. Is that part of this?
Very much so. If you spent years scanning for what others needed, your own preferences got less practice. They are usually not gone, just quiet. A good deal of this work is simply learning to notice your own responses again before overriding them.
How is this different from self-esteem work?
They are close relatives and often overlap. Self-esteem work centres on your sense of your own worth; this page centres on the strategies you use to secure it, achieving, over-preparing, pleasing, over-functioning. Many people work with both and we don't need to decide which it is in advance.