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LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Therapy for People Pleasing and Perfectionism in Agoura Hills, Los Angeles


Take the pressure off and nourish your authentic experience.

It’s amazing what we’ll do to be perceived as good, isn’t it? At some point in your life, you picked up the idea that the way others see you makes or breaks your worth as a person, and you’ve been scrambling to make sure you get to be seen in a good light. 



Any of these sound familiar?

The weight of how other people see you has been quite heavy. 


  • You struggle to set boundaries with others when you are uncomfortable with a situation

  • You struggle to reach out for support because you don’t want to be a burden, or you worry about being perceived as weak

  • You don’t speak up when you are feeling hurt because you fear losing the person or opportunity 

  • The weight of trying to be perceived well by others causes a lot of stress and/or anxiety

  • It’s really hard to show yourself love- either because you don’t think you deserve it, or you think self love is corny or selfish


It’s only human to want to be accepted by others, but it’s gotten to the point where it is eating away at you.

You have a sense that you are wearing a mask as you go through your life, it’s hard to relax because of all the pressure you feel, and life just feels harder feeling like you need to keep a certain image up all the time. You worry that if people knew the truth about you that in some way, your current situation would fall apart.

Maybe this is something you call perfectionism or people pleasing, or maybe it’s been so ingrained in you that you call it “just the way it is in my family”. 

How Therapy For Perfectionism and People Pleasing Can Help

Imagine getting to the place where you…


  • Can put down the mask and do what you know is authentically good for you

  • Have more self compassion and can apply the grace you give to others to yourself

  • Don’t let the opinions of others dictate your behavior

  • Can acknowledge on a deep level that these tendencies are not needed anymore and you will survive without them

Together we can dive back into your history to figure out how these tendencies got started, and what they have been protecting you from. 

In this exploration, we’ll explore the beliefs that are fueling your people pleasing and perfectionism, and come up with action steps to work towards how you would like to navigate your life moving forward. 


A note on culture…

We acknowledge that the way we interact with others can also vary widely from culture to culture. We’d love to dive into exploring how your cultural background could be fueling these types of tendencies. 

Therapy for perfectionism and people pleasing can help you…

  • Deprogram beliefs about needing to be a certain way to be a good person

  • Learn to express yourself authentically

  • Gain acceptance around being perceived as a fallible human

  • Identify boundaries with others that would help take unneeded pressure off of you

  • Allow others’ perceptions of you to be what they are without a need to control them

The weight of the expectations set for you don’t have to keep weighing you down. Let’s start to release them.

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Frequently asked questions

Where do perfectionism and people pleasing come from?

These relational patterns can bring a lot of distress, but know they are completely natural adaptations to specific social situations. People pleasing and perfectionism are both considered to be relational patterns. In other words, they are patterns we pick up because of the messages we are receiving from other people we are in connection with.

Most commonly this can stem from family life, but it can also come from other kinds of connections as well when there is pressure for us to show up in a specific way.

People pleasing and perfectionism can form in response to environments where it’s not physically or emotionally safe to disagree or make a mistake. In some situations, a person’s nervous system sees that it’s safer (or some may use the word easier) to just suppress their point or view or authentic expression as to not rock the boat. These patterns can also be a form of compensation in a situation where a person is being sent the message that they are not good enough, as a way to try to prove their worth.

How does being in the LGBTQIA+ community increase my chances of perfectionism or people pleasing?

It’s a common experience for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to grow up in or be otherwise embedded in queerphobic environments that want them to suppress their queer identities, or at least mold them to not be so outwardly queer. That could include religious messaging around “being gay is one thing, acting on being gay is another”, or encouraging queer folks to dress or act in a more heteronormative way to make cis-het people more comfortable.

All this attempted molding away from queer expression can be incredibly shame inducing, and shame is usually a driver of perfectionism and people pleasing. If shame for who you are is your baseline, it’s a natural internal defense mechanism to attempt to behave in ways that distract from the shame- perfectionism and people pleasing are just two forms of distraction. The part of you that tries to be perfect or people pleases is just trying to be loved and accepted, which is a perfectly normal human desire and need.