Trauma Therapy for Perfectionists in Georgia
Hi, my name is Cheryl Delaney, and I’m a TEAM-CBT therapist in Atlanta, Georgia, who treats trauma and perfectionism.
Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop?
When you’ve experienced shocking, intense, and painful things, you can’t help but be prepared for something like that to happen again. Traumatic experiences change our beliefs about our level of safety, the trustworthiness of other people, and our ability to control events.
In the immediate aftermath, our stress response is important and protective. After we’ve moved to safety, though, a state of constant alert only drains our energy and keeps us from ever feeling fully calm or relaxed.
If you’re tired of being on edge, if you want to feel hopeful and engaged, if you want to connect with the people around you, to be able to find joy and pleasure in your daily life, reach out. Schedule a free consultation to find out if we’d be a good fit. We’ll talk about your goals, and I’ll answer your questions about the process.
Not All Trauma Is Dramatic.
Some of my clients have experienced truly horrifying events, including violence, death, and serious injury. Many of them, though, have lived through a quieter type of trauma. They grew up in households full of conflict, neglect, uncertainty, financial instability, or a rotating cast of caregivers.
It may have been slow and steady rather than explosive and shocking, but those experiences are not necessarily any less powerful.
Relationships (their absence or presence) are at the center of our lives. If your childhood taught you that relationships are volatile, that conflict is dangerous, or that you are at constant risk of rejection or punishment, that experience is bound to linger. It can’t help but play a role in your current relationships.
Trauma recovery is possible. You can notice good things again (without immediately fearing the worst).
How Is Trauma Connected to Perfectionism?
In order to prevent any further suffering or loss, the resilient find ways to keep themselves safe. High standards and hard work can be powerful ways to escape additional risk.
Many of my clients have been pushing themselves for decades because surviving demanded it of them, and no one ever offered a different path.
Perfectionism offered them some level of insurance against future trauma, and they opted in. And how amazing! Surviving is incredible! And it's exhausting to never be able to relax.
Growing to depend on high standards means living on a treadmill that only gets faster. When you’ve been striving out of fear for so long, slowing down typically doesn’t just feel scary; it feels unimaginable. What would it even look like?
As hard as it is to conjure that picture, contentment, agency, a relaxed approach to connection and relationships — all of that can happen for you.
How Therapy for Trauma and Perfectionism Can Help
Every person’s experience is a little bit different and the exact course of treatment varies from person to person. Some common themes are:
Changing your beliefs about yourself.
Learning to understand yourself and recognize your values and motivations so you can stop punishing yourself for your shortcomings.
Facing your greatest fears and, as a result, no longer being driven by them.
It’s not uncommon for people with difficult childhoods to develop physical symptoms (back pain, migraines, tinnitus, vertigo, to name a few) that can ease or be resolved in the course of treatment.
We’ll use a combination of tools, including TEAM-CBT and IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy).
Imagine feeling present and relaxed in your daily life. What would your typical day be like? How would it change your closest relationships?
Trauma is complex, and its effects are unique to the individual. We can approach it using a few different models. We'll identify the beliefs that were formed by your experiences, understand the motivations driving you now, and confront the painful memories that are keeping you stuck. Finally, many perfectionists fear being open and forthright because they’ve faced consequences for that in the past. As a result, they may have unexpressed emotions that are causing problems. Unexpressed anger and resentment, for example, can contribute to anxiety or hard-to-explain physical symptoms.
TEAM-CBT Treatment for Trauma and Perfectionism
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“Nobody else can handle this as well as I can.” “I better just stay silent, or we’ll get in a fight.” “I need to keep everyone safe. I’m not going to be able to keep them all safe!”
These might not be exactly the thoughts that run through your head, but you probably recognize one of them. Your vigilance is a mark of your love and care for the people in your life and a survival tool for yourself, but you’re paying a high price.
Unlearning your negative thoughts isn’t just a matter of denying reality and putting on rose-colored glasses. There’s a grain of truth in each negative thought, after all. At the same time, there are parts of it that are inaccurate and unnecessarily harmful. We’ll use powerful techniques to find genuine, true, and helpful ways of seeing things.
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Exposure is just one tool, but it’s a big one, and it’s almost always an important and transformative part of treating trauma.
One very common experience of trauma is concluding that we can’t bear to think about what happened. It’s no wonder we don’t want to - it’s such intensely painful work - but trying to keep it out of our conscious minds has us doing mental backflips. Then dreams intrude or we have bright flashes of memories that feel more like being teleported back in time.
Or we drew lessons from our experiences - even unconsciously - like “I deserved that,” or “there’s something wrong with me,” or “I need to stay as small and quiet as possible to be safe,” or “I can’t bear the pain of thinking about that.” And, to address those unconscious lessons, we call up the memory and face the fears it’s holding.
It’s terrifying to contemplate, but we’ll do a lot to prepare and I’ll be with you through it all.
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Trauma-related perfectionism contains powerful motivations to sustain itself. We have evidence that this level of work and performance has allowed us to survive. Everything you’ve done to maintain that has made sense.
Understanding these on a deeper level gives you the opportunity to actively decide whether the costs are worth the benefits.
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Trauma survivors have often learned that there are emotions they aren’t supposed to feel. To avoid them, we pretend they don’t exist, even to ourselves.
Anger, resentment, and envy come up as they do for every human being. To keep them under the surface, we have to constantly surveil ourselves and every non-verbal cue in our vicinity.
As unimaginable as this sounds, we can learn to express even those negative emotions in a skillful way that brings us closer to the people we love. When we do that, it tends to have a big effect on our overall anxiety.
Working Together to Transform Your Trauma
The TEAM-CBT process is both methodical and flexible. It’s different for every person, but the scaffolding is repeatable, and the results are dependable. I’ve used the same tools for myself and with clients, and it works. We’ll work together to resolve the problem you’re facing right now, but also to give you tools you can apply to the next problems that show up. When you leave therapy, I want you to feel prepared to handle the challenges that come up for the rest of your life.
Let’s Talk.
Click below to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation.