How I Overcame My Anxiety That Presented as Perfectionism

I lived with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder for most of my life. It wasn’t until my mid-20s I realized not everyone worried as much as I did, and I didn’t have to struggle so much.

I had all the things that “should” have made me happy — a good job, a loving marriage, supportive family and friends. But at the end of the day, I was overwhelmed, anxious and exhausted. I was chasing goal after goal, each time thinking the next milestone would be the one to make me happy. “I’ll be happy when I get a promotion, when I have a family, when I make more money,” and on and on. But nothing ever felt like enough. I never felt like enough. I was overwhelmed with expectations and responsibility, trying to find my place in the world. I was running in all directions of my life, not realizing I was on a treadmill going nowhere.

When I graduated college, like most seniors entering the “real world,” my entire life was uprooted and changed in an instant. I decided to pursue graduate school and a fellowship program, as a way into the Fortune 50 company I had interned for. I also moved in with my boyfriend in a new state where we didn’t know anyone, all within a matter of months.

There were so many new aspects of life tugging me in all directions, I didn’t know where to focus. So, I gave 110% in everything. While pursuing my master’s degree, I was working part-time for my company, but taking on every assignment thrown my way and putting in extra hours to prove myself “worthy” of a full-time position.

At home, I took ownership of the cooking, cleaning and our social calendar, trying to prove I was “wife material,” as if I had to be a 1950s sitcom housewife to get a ring on my finger. In grad school, I knew my grades didn’t matter nearly as much as they had in undergrad, but I agonized over papers and assignments, still stuck in a perfectionist mindset that straight As were the only way to achieve my goals.

But when everything is a priority, nothing is.

To the external eye, people thought I had it all together, they probably thought my life looked perfect. In reality, I was anxious, depressed and dangling on the edge of burnout. I thought I needed a better way to manage my stress and I was doing something wrong. But the only thing that was wrong was the way I treated myself.

I started going to therapy and was eventually diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which felt like a weight lifted off my chest.

My therapist helped me recognize patterns and identify the limiting beliefs that were holding me back. Together, we discovered people-pleasing and perfectionism were the source of the majority of my anxiety. I was constantly afraid of upsetting people around me. I wanted everyone to like me — no, love me. I wanted to be the best friend, co-worker, daughter, wife, etc., and I put way too much pressure on myself to do it all.

I was a perfectionist, chasing an impossible standard I had built up in my mind of what a woman should be. I was a people-pleaser, trying my best to gain everyone’s approval to validate my self-worth. I neglected my own needs to please everyone around me, refused to ask for help and hid behind a mask of perfectionism. I was running on a treadmill, trying to reach an impossible goal, stuck in an endless cycle of pleasing, perfecting and performing.

I’ll never forget when my therapist said, “It’s not your job to make everyone else happy.”

She was right; other people’s emotions are not our responsibility. You are your responsibility. The only thing we can control is our own reactions. Rather than wanting everyone to like me, I learned to seek their respect instead. In other words, I began to focus less on doing what I thought they expected of me and started focusing on being myself and trusting my gut.

Anxiety can be both a cause and effect of people-pleasing and perfectionism. It is ultimately a fear of the unknown, and we all experience it at certain points in our lives. According to the Mayo Clinic, anxiety is characterized by intense worry, nervousness and dread. It is a biological response to a threat, causing a fight, flight or freeze response. Your heart races, you start to sweat and your mind becomes singularly focused on the threat in front of you. This response dates back to prehistoric times. When a caveman encountered danger, like a wild animal, the body snapped into survival mode, deciding to run or stay and fight.

Today, we rarely experience danger in the form of man-eating animals, but rather in the uncertainty of everyday life. We may experience anxiety when someone cuts us off in traffic, nearly causing an accident, or when we do something that scares us, like riding a roller coaster or giving a speech.

Often, we experience anxiety around changes or transitions in our lives, or “threats” to life as we know it. You might experience worry when starting a new job, going off to college or moving to a new state. These sources of anxiety are situational, and everyone experiences them from time to time.

For some people, though, the anxiety never goes away. Generalized anxiety disorder is often largely biological rather than situational. Your fight-or-flight response is essentially overactive and perceives threats everywhere. If there isn’t a legitimate threat, your brain creates one; it finds something to worry about. Have you ever been so happy you stopped and worried about the bad thing that must be coming your way? Yeah, me too. For me, anything uncertain is a huge struggle.

As I did the work on myself in therapy, I realized many women are trapped in this cycle of pleasing, perfecting and performing. I started noticing most women around me were either complaining about all their responsibilities or pretending, like I had, to have it all together.

That’s why I decided to write my first book, “Strong Calm Confident You” — to help other women learn to love themselves exactly as they are, so they can stop seeking validation from others, stop trying to be perfect and start living.

I see you, and I want you to know it doesn’t have to be this way.

We each need to set the standards and the expectations for our own lives and denounce the outdated ones we’ve become prisoner to. When we do this, together, we can change the story for the next generation of women. When we call bullshit on the “perfect standard” we’ve been upholding, we help give other women the chance to live authentically, too.