Counselling for Burnout and Perfectionism

Therapy for people who have run out of capacity and cannot work out how to stop. In person in Burnaby and Kitsilano, and online across British Columbia.

Burnout is what arrives after a long enough stretch of sustained pressure, and it goes well beyond being tired. It tends to show up as cynicism, detachment and carelessness in someone who was none of those things a year ago.

Perfectionism is one of the most reliable routes into it. Not the ordinary wish to do good work, but the version where your worth as a person has quietly become attached to your output.

I work with adults across the range of concerns that bring people to counselling, burnout and the internal critic that drives it are where I go deepest.

What people in this work describe

People dealing with burnout or perfectionism often do not think of themselves as struggling. More often, they describe being tired, under pressure, or simply needing to get through a particularly demanding period. Over time, though, the strain can start to show up in how they work, rest, think, and relate to the people around them.

Some of the things that people tell me about are:

  • exhaustion that a weekend or a holiday does not touch

  • a mind that will not switch off, particularly at night

  • work that used to matter now feeling flat or pointless

  • irritability with people who have done nothing wrong

  • a growing gap between how much effort goes in and how much comes out

  • guilt at resting, and no real rest when you do

What we work on

Therapy starts with understanding how the pressure operates in your particular life: what it attaches to, what keeps it going, and what feels at stake if you stop pushing quite so hard.

We look at the patterns that tend to sit underneath burnout and perfectionism: the standards that keep moving, the difficulty switching off, the sense that rest has to be earned, and the habit of measuring yourself by what you produce. We also pay attention to what happens when you fall short of your own expectations, and how quickly that can turn into self-criticism, overwork, avoidance, or another attempt to get things exactly right.

Part of the work is practical. We look at the thought loops and behaviours that keep the pressure going, test some of the assumptions underneath them, and find ways of working and resting that are sustainable in an actual life rather than only on paper.

The other part is understanding why these patterns have such a strong hold. Perfectionism and overachievement rarely come from nowhere. They often developed because they helped with something: feeling safe, staying in control, avoiding criticism, being valued, or making sure you were never the person who let things drop.

The part of this that surprises people

The critical internal voice is not a design fault. It exists to help you tell better from worse and to hold a standard, and for a long time it may genuinely have done that.

The trouble starts when it stops being a guide and starts running the place. At that point every success becomes a baseline expectation rather than an achievement, and every shortfall becomes a statement about who you are.

Most people assume this voice is the reason they have achieved what they have, and that easing it would mean losing their edge. It is worth looking at that assumption directly, because the effects run the other way. Shame, anxiety and low self-esteem cost you sleep, cognitive energy and emotional capacity, and each of those makes errors more likely. The pressure that is supposed to protect your performance is what eventually undermines it.

Where and when I work

I see clients in person at:

  • my Burnaby office in Metrotower II, 4720 Kingsway

  • my Pine office in Kitsilano, Vancouver at 1682 W 7th Ave

  • online with anywhere in British Columbia

In order to make therapy as accessible as possible to fit into the busy schedules of my clients, I offer sessions during the day (including lunch time), in the evenings, and on workdays and weekends.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about counselling for perfectionism and burnourt

  • They overlap and they can occur together, which is one of the things a consultation and the first few sessions are for. The distinction matters because it changes what we do.

  • This is the most common worry people bring, and it is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. What tends to happen is that standards stay high while the cost of holding them drops.

  • No, and that is not the goal I start from. Most of the work is about changing how the pressure operates internally, which is the part that travels with you regardless of where you work.

  • It depends on what is driving it and how long it has been running. We set clear goals in the first few sessions so there is something concrete to work towards.