burnout & perfectionism therapy in austin, tx

• Perfectionism and people-pleasing

• Burnout and emotional exhaustion

• Chronic stress and the inability to slow down

• Difficulty setting limits or saying no

• Feeling responsible for everyone else's emotional state

• High achievement that never feels like enough

• The sense that your worth is tied to your productivity

• Anxiety and depression that show up alongside burnout

Burnout doesn't happen to people who don't care. It tends to happen to people who care deeply, work hard, and have spent years being the person others rely on. From the outside it can look like success. From the inside it feels like running on empty for so long that empty has started to feel normal — and slowing down feels more threatening than pushing through.

But burnout and perfectionism rarely come from nowhere. They usually started as smart adaptations — ways of earning safety, love, or belonging in environments that required you to perform, achieve, or hold yourself to an impossible standard. People-pleasing, overachieving, difficulty resting — these patterns made sense once. They helped you navigate something real. The problem isn't that you developed them. The problem is that they've been running so long, and so automatically, that you may have lost track of who you are underneath them.

In our work together, we don't focus on becoming more productive or better at managing stress. We work to understand what these patterns were originally protecting, what they've cost you, and what it might look like to relate to yourself differently — not as a project to optimize, but as a person with needs that deserve to be taken seriously. That shift tends to be slower and more uncomfortable than a productivity hack. It also tends to actually last.

I offer burnout and perfectionism therapy in Austin, Texas and via telehealth across the state for adults who are ready to understand what's driving the pattern — not just manage the symptoms.