You were never meant to be perfect. You were meant to be you.
By Abi Beri | Somatic Therapist, Dublin, Naas & Newbridge
[Reading time: 11 minutes]
Are you tired? Not just physically tired — though probably that too. But tired in a deeper way. Tired of trying so hard. Tired of holding it all together. Tired of the relentless effort to get it right.
If you are reading this, there is a good chance you have spent much of your life in pursuit of something called perfection. Or if not perfection exactly, then close enough. Good enough that no one can criticise. Good enough that you cannot be rejected.
Except the rest never comes. The goalpost keeps moving. You achieve the thing, and before you can feel good about it, you are already focused on the next thing. You wonder why you are so tired when you are doing everything right.
Perfectionism is exhausting because it is endless. And you have been running on that treadmill for years.
Where Perfectionism Comes From
Perfectionism does not come from nowhere. It is not a personality flaw. It is an adaptation — a survival strategy you learned, usually very early, because it worked.
For most perfectionists, it started in the family. Maybe love was conditional. When you were good — really good — you got attention, approval, warmth. When you were messy or struggling, that warmth withdrew. So you learned: good equals loved. Imperfect equals unsafe.
Maybe there was a parent who needed you to reflect well on them. Your achievements were their achievements. So you carried the weight of their self-esteem on your small shoulders.
Or maybe the household was chaotic, and perfectionism was your way of creating control. If I just get everything right, maybe I can hold this together.
In attachment terms, perfectionism is often a strategy for maintaining connection. If I am flawless, I cannot be rejected. If I never mess up, you cannot leave. It is, at its root, a fear of abandonment dressed up as high standards.
Where It Lives in Your Body
As a somatic therapist, I am always curious about where things live in the body. And perfectionism has a very clear signature.
There is a bracing. Shoulders slightly lifted. Jaw slightly clenched. A readiness in the system — always prepared, always vigilant. Perfectionists often do not know how to fully relax. Not because they do not want to — but because the nervous system has learned that relaxing is dangerous.
You know that thing where you are supposedly relaxing — on holiday, in the bath — and your body is still tense? Still running some background programme of vigilance? That is perfectionism in the body. It does not believe you are allowed to stop.
And then there is the inner critic. The voice that monitors, evaluates, criticises. That voice lives in the body too. It creates constant low-grade stress. Your nervous system notices. Your cortisol levels notice. Your capacity for joy notices.
The World We Live In
Perfectionism does not exist in a vacuum. It is being fed, constantly, by the culture around us.
We live in an age of curation. Everyone’s life is a highlight reel. You scroll through images of perfect homes, perfect bodies, perfect careers — and somewhere in your nervous system, you absorb the message: this is the standard.
Then there is productivity culture. The worship of busy. The idea that your worth is measured by your output. Rest is lazy. Slowing down is falling behind.
The self-help industry, the wellness industry — and I say this as someone who works in this space — often makes it worse. We sell you solutions to problems you did not know you had. We create new standards of perfection and call it growth.
And the algorithm rewards performance. It rewards polish. It does not reward ordinary. So we perform, we curate, we present the best version — and wonder why we feel like frauds.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: the economy runs on your sense of inadequacy. If you felt fine about yourself, you would not need the product, click the link, try the programme. Your not-enoughness is profitable.
The Cost of Perfection
Perfectionism takes your rest. You cannot truly relax because there is always something that could be better.
It takes your joy. You cannot be present to what is good when you are always focused on what is lacking.
It takes your relationships. You are performing so much that people do not get the real you. And when they love the performance, part of you knows: they do not really know me.
It takes your creativity. Creativity requires risk, the willingness to make bad things on the way to good things. Perfectionism hates that.
And it takes your humanity. Humans are not perfect. We are messy, contradictory, changeable. Perfectionism says: not acceptable. Hide it.
You Are Not a Project
Here is what I want to offer. Not as a technique. Not as another thing to perfect. Just as a truth.
You are not a project.
You are not a product to be optimised. You are not a rough draft waiting to become a final version. You are a living, breathing, unfolding human being.
If there is a soul — and I believe there is — it did not come here to achieve perfection. It came here to experience, to learn, to feel, to be human in all its mess and beauty.
What if good enough was actually good enough? Not as giving up. But as recognition that you were never supposed to be any other way.
A Sacred Talk
I have recorded a longer version of this — a sacred talk that goes deeper into the family origins, the somatic patterns, the cultural forces, and the permission to finally stop.
It is not a technique. It is not another thing to optimise. It is just words, offered to land where they need to.
Working Together
If perfectionism has been running your life — if you cannot rest, cannot enjoy what you achieve, cannot stop the inner critic — somatic therapy can help.
We work with where perfectionism lives in your body. The bracing, the vigilance, the inability to let go. We do not just talk about it; we meet it in the nervous system.
I offer sessions in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge, and online across Ireland and beyond.
You were never meant to be perfect. You were meant to be you. And that, it turns out, was always enough.
[BOOK A SOMATIC THERAPY SESSION]
In-person: Dublin | Naas | Newbridge
Online: Ireland & Worldwide
