Therapy for High Achievers in MA & NY
I’m a high achiever, but is it burning me out?
Do you feel like your worth is related to your productivity?
Do you feel like you look like you have it all together but on the inside you feel like you’re all over the place?
Do you feel like if you’re not doing it all, you’re doing it wrong?
These feelings can be overwhelming and you may be wondering if therapy might be right for you.
You may have been experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression related to these thoughts. Chronic fatigue, a constant sense of worry or dread, thought spirals about managing it all, even GI issues, or headaches.
Your Days May Look Like…
Waking up early and already planning out how things will go. You may not be feeling well but you feel like you have to push through anyway. You don’t take a lunch break and work instead, answering all of your emails, and feel a flicker of stress at noticing an email you missed. You have a packed schedule and even when you’re doing something enjoyable, you’re not fully present. Relaxation feels like a task that you need to do “well.” By the time you’re getting ready for bed, you’re thinking about all of the things you missed or that could have gone better.
It is possible to find balance
Being a high achiever and wanting to succeed, especially in the world we live in today, is certainly a balcony, but with every balcony comes a basement.
We may find ourselves overreaching our limits, doing all of the things, without taking time to refill our own cups, and care for ourselves in the way we need in order to be at our best.
We can find ourselves feeling overtaxed, exhausted, perhaps often struggling with chronic health issues.
That’s where I come in.
Using evidenced based practices, we can work together to help better understand how to make high achievement work for you, and find better balance in your life.
What can therapy provide for me?
We’ll work together to explore what your concerns are and set realistic goals to help address those concerns. After an initial, thorough assessment, we’ll talk about how you would want things to look or feel different to you in your life.
We’ll explore relaxation and meditative techniques to keep us in the present, thought reframing skills, and explore some of the deeper contributing factors to your desire for high achievement that we can incorporate into your therapeutic journey together.
I still have some concerns…
I don’t want to stop achieving, so what do I do?
Therapy isn’t about stopping what works for you. Being a high achiever comes with a lot of positives but it can have its drawbacks, too. Part of this work is exploring what those drawbacks are and figuring out what’s the best path forward to reduce stress, anxiety, and to learn how to take care of yourself before you get burnt out. This can look like boundary setting or meditation or various other coping skills, as well as exploring your inner world, and your relationship to success. It’s about digging deep and finding balance.
Why do high achievers feel like it’s never enough?
This is a complex question but it may be related to learning about worth being tied to gaining results. This could be praise from a good reports card, being an example to younger siblings, being called a “gifted child,” or generally just having learned that doing more meant safety. Part of therapy is understanding your own context and how that contributed to how you see success, how this is tied into your worth, and how that fuels your need to achieve.
Can high achievers slow down without losing their edge?
Yes! It’s possible to learn ways to find more balance in your life without giving up the things that are working for you and have contributed to your success. It’s about learning how to regulate our nervous systems and incorporate more coping skills to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves in a world that’s already stressful enough and will continue to demand more of us if we don’t learn how to navigate it.