The No BS Therapist:

I recently gave a talk for the BACP, my own governing body - on perfectionism and people pleasing, naturally 😅 - and something genuinely different happened this time 🙌

A few years ago, preparing for something like this would have looked very different 😬

• I’d have been practising every spare second for a month 📝
• Constantly rewriting and rearranging 🔄
• Anxious for a full week beforehand 😟
• Completely unable to enjoy the day itself 😔

It would always come down to: “I need to work incredibly hard to earn my place here” 😤

Not “I believe in what I have to say” — but “this is a great opportunity, so I can’t mess it up” 🫠

That distinction matters SO much more than it might seem with perfectionism 💡

Progress ➡️

This time, I managed to do something I’d never even thought was an option before: I trusted my own experience and expertise 💪 I genuinely accepted that I had something valuable to share 😊

And, I actually enjoyed it 🤯 Talking to a room full of fellow therapists about perfectionism and people pleasing, being in the moment, feeling engaged rather than trapped inside my own head 😌

I was still nervous on the morning - of course I was, I’m a human being. But instead of anxiety and fear that I couldn’t make a single mistake taking over, it gave me more energy and actually helped me, that I’m grateful for 🙏 Anxiety, it turns out, isn’t always a bad thing 😮

BUT I’ve been here before 🤔

Here’s something I want to be honest about though, because it’s SO important 🙋‍♀️

There have been times in the past where I thought I’d beaten my perfectionism 🙌 Where I went into a talk or an online meeting feeling calm and motivated, and told myself this was growth 🪷 But with hindsight, I wasn’t always coming from a healthier place - I was just running a slightly different version of the same old story without realising 😅

Instead of “I need to work hard”, it sounded more like:

• “I’ve worked hard for this, so I deserve to feel proud” 💼
• “I just want to come across as professional” 👔
• “This is a great opportunity to progress” 📈

And those things feel more positive, right? They sound almost healthy 😌 But they’re still conditional 🚨 They’re still saying: “your success and value depends on your performance” 😖

Because if those are the reasons you feel okay, then at the next event, if you haven’t worked hard enough, or you don’t act professional enough … you’ll still beat yourself up for it 😔 The goalposts just move 🥅

That’s what I’d call the positive flip side of perfectionism — and it’s just as sneaky 🫠 Real progress away from perfectionism isn’t feeling great because you’ve ticked the right boxes. It’s feeling okay in yourself regardless 💛

Finding the realistic balance ⚖️

The key part about perfectionism that I think gets missed: it’s not all bad 🤔

I don’t think my perfectionism will ever fully disappear, and I’m glad about that 🎉 It’s part of what drove me to work with career perfectionist women in the first place 🔥

But it also gives me the motivation to give talks, appear on podcasts and to create my easy destress membership 💁‍♀️ It allows me to enjoy my career even more, with variety 🙌

AND, easing up the expectations helped me feel comfortable to be more me 🙋‍♀️ I was rocking my rainbow hair, converse and bright clothes 🌈

I even gave a swear warning at the start, and so many people afterwards said they wanted me to swear more! - even the goddam CEO of the BACP 😆

I didn’t want to take away my drive, the problem was the harsh self-criticism and the massive expectations 😖 The weeks of low-key, lingering in the background dread and worry 😰 Being unable to feel proud of something without immediately poking holes in it 🕳️

Having a much better handle on it made the run-up to the BACP event SO much calmer 😮‍💨 and the talk itself more enjoyable 😊 I was going to give that talk either way so I could either find a way to enjoy it, or I could be miserable and stressed the whole time 😩

I chose to put things in place to be able to actually enjoy it 🥳

What I want you to know 💬

It is possible to ease the fucking rough parts of your perfectionism while keeping everything that’s useful and motivating about it ⚖️ You don’t have to hack away at it and tear it all out to feel better ✋

You just need to get better at working with it, not against it 🤝

If that’s something you’re ready to explore, I’d love to help 👋😊

Check this out for info about therapy for anxiety and perfectionism, which can be either in-person from Aspley or Beeston in Nottingham, or online from anywhere in the UK 🗣️

I’d love to have you join us in my easy destress membership for fully guided, always in your ear, super easy, no bs breathworks, grounding, weekly check-ins, self-care plans, and SO much more 👥

Or, feel free email me anytime for talks, workshops, podcasts and more on anxiety, people pleasing and perfectionism 📝