The Link Between Perfectionism and Anxiety: How Therapy Can Help

If you’ve ever felt like you have to keep it all together at work, in your relationships, in how you show up every day, you’re not alone.

For high-achieving women, perfectionism can feel like both a strength and a safety net. It’s what’s helped you get where you are. But it also keeps you up at night replaying conversations, doubting yourself, and wondering when things will finally feel “enough.”

You might tell yourself, “If I can just get this one thing right…” but the peace you’re after never really comes.

Because perfectionism and anxiety go hand in hand. And they quietly feed off each other until you’re exhausted, overthinking everything, and still never quite satisfied.

How Perfectionism and Anxiety Are Connected

Perfectionism sounds like a drive to do your best, but underneath, it’s often about trying to avoid failure, judgment, or rejection.

When you hold yourself to impossible standards, you’re constantly scanning for mistakes. That pressure can trigger anxiety: the worry that if you fall short, something bad will happen or someone will think less of you.

And then anxiety reinforces the perfectionism. It whispers: “If you just try harder, plan better, stay in control then you’ll finally feel okay.”

It’s a cycle that never really ends, because the goalposts keep moving. The more you achieve, the more your mind demands from you.

The Hidden Costs of Perfectionism

Perfectionism doesn’t just drain your energy, it steals your joy.

It makes it hard to celebrate wins because you’re already thinking about what could’ve been better. It strains relationships when you expect yourself (and sometimes others) to meet impossible standards. It keeps you stuck in overthinking and prevents you from taking risks or enjoying rest.

Over time, the constant tension between doing enough and being enough wears you down. You might start to feel detached, burned out, or anxious for no clear reason.

Perfectionism promises control, but what it really delivers is exhaustion.

How Therapy Helps Break the Cycle

Therapy helps you slow down the perfectionism-anxiety loop and understand where it began.

Often, perfectionism isn’t actually about wanting to be the best. It’s about wanting to feel safe. Maybe you learned early on that success or being “easy” to love kept things calm. Or that mistakes led to criticism, chaos, or rejection. Therapy helps you make sense of those patterns and begin to loosen their grip.

You’ll learn how to quiet the inner critic, set more realistic expectations, and reconnect with parts of yourself that exist beyond your achievements.

Because you don’t have to earn your worth by doing more or being perfect. You get to feel grounded and confident exactly as you are, and therapy helps you get there.

Ready to Feel More Grounded?

If you’ve been stuck in the loop of perfectionism and anxiety, you don’t have to keep pushing through it alone. Therapy can help you understand where it comes from — and build a new way of being that actually feels peaceful.

👉 Contact us today to explore how therapy can help you finally step out of perfectionism and into freedom.

Margaux Flood, LCSW, is a licensed therapist with over a decade of experience supporting clients in Virginia and Florida. She specializes in couples therapy, women’s mental health, anxiety, and self-esteem, using evidence-based approaches like Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), mindfulness-based techniques, and attachment-focused interventions to help clients strengthen connection, build confidence, and feel more grounded in themselves and their relationships. , Margaux Flood, LCSW is committed to providing compassionate, expert virtual care for clients across Virginia and Florida. Her team also provides individual psychotherapy services across the states of Mississippi and Missouri.