Why Therapy Is For Overachievers

Therapy is stigmatized in lots of ways. One of the most common stigmas, though, is the idea that therapy is somehow for people who can’t get their life together. In other words, it’s for people who have bad careers or bad relationships, not for people with high-paying jobs and long-term relationships.

But that belief doesn’t match up with the reality that many therapists see. Being an overachiever is no guarantee that you’re emotionally healthy. In fact, overachievers can feel such overwhelming pressure, and might even contemplate self-harm or suicide. It’s worth taking a closer look at why overachievers might benefit from, at least a few, sessions with a therapist.

How Overachievers Happen

First, let’s look at what drives overachievers. There are many reasons why someone might demonstrate overachieving behaviors. In some cases, it might have to do with upbringing and messages received from their parents or other family members. They might have a parent who asked, “That’s the best you can do?” when they came home with five A’s and a single B, for instance. In other cases, it might come from going to a prestigious school, and feeling like you always have to work harder than everyone else.

Eventually, you get to the point where going the extra mile is just what people expect of you. That can be a major drag on days where you feel tired or cranky or just not capable of giving 100 percent, and then some.

The Perils of Perfectionism

There are a few ways for overachievers to run into a metaphorical brick wall. One is by being a perfectionist. You may think that having high standards is good, but there’s a fine line between having high standards and expecting everything to be perfect. Deep down, perfectionists often carry around the belief that they’re never going to be quite enough. This secret shame can manifest itself in all sorts of unpleasant ways.

The sense of perfectionism can also make you super competitive. That competitiveness is only intensified if you live in a notoriously cutthroat city like New York. Everyone in New York is always trying to outdo everyone else... New York therapists are used to seeing people who are accustomed to burnout and feelings of exhaustion.

How Therapy Helps

Before you begin therapy, you might have to get over the idea that just seeing a therapist somehow makes you weak or inferior. That’s a belief usually rooted in anxiety, and it’s simply not true. The strongest people are often the ones who can admit when something isn’t going right, and ask for help. Going to therapy means you’re trying to make a positive change in your life, and that’s a sign of emotional maturity.

A therapist will help you figure out why, exactly, you feel the need to overachieve all the time. If you run into something you aren’t good at, you probably feel almost panicked because, well, you grew up believing you were supposed to be good at almost everything you tried.

Your therapist can help you figure out when and how this pattern started for you. Going to therapy doesn’t mean you’re giving up on setting goals and expectations for yourself–it means allowing yourself to be realistic, forgiving, and accepting of yourself, if things don’t go as planned.

Overachievers can sometimes be very inflexible. That makes it hard for other people to have relationships with them. You don’t want to be so hypercritical that you drive others away. A therapist will help you to both identify, and break, toxic patterns that often come with being an overachiever.