Almost nobody who does creative work for a living walks in and says the word "perfectionism." They say they can't finish the thing, or they finished it and now hate it, or everyone around them seems to be doing better with less talent.
That comparison isn't vanity. It's usually the symptom sitting on top of something else: a worth that got soldered to output somewhere along the way, so every unfinished project reads as evidence against you instead of just an unfinished project. I see this constantly with artists, writers, and people building something ambitious enough that failure feels personal.
My associate Analia Rey, AMFT, works with exactly this. Her focus is creatives navigating comparison, perfectionism, and burnout, alongside dating and relationship work, using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and narrative therapy. ACT is useful here specifically because it doesn't ask you to argue your way out of the self-critical thought. It asks what you'd do today if the thought stopped running the show, which is a more honest question for someone who's already tried to think their way out of burnout and failed.
Narrative therapy does the other half of the work: separating you from the story that your output is the only evidence of your worth. That story usually got installed early, by a parent, a teacher, an industry, and it rarely announces itself as a story. It just feels like the truth about you.
Sessions with Analia are $150, fifty minutes, private pay with superbills for reimbursement. If any of this reads like recognition rather than description, the full page has more on how she works, and a free twenty-minute consultation is the fastest way to find out if it's a fit.
