Leanne Astbury

For years, I thought my perfectionism was one of my strengths.

It made me work harder, achieve more, keep going and hold everything together.

From the outside, I probably looked like I was coping really well.

But I understand my perfectionism differently now.

It wasn't just a personality trait. For me, it had become a coping strategy.

Perfectionism kept me doing. There was always another goal, another problem to solve or something I should be doing better.

And when you're constantly focused on what you need to DO next, you don't spend much time paying attention to what's happening inside you.

I didn't.

Even when I physically stopped, my mind didn't.

I wasn't resting. I was stopping while criticising myself for stopping.

Looking back, I genuinely believe perfectionism took years of my life away from me.

I was living, working, achieving, studying and raising my family. But I was so busy striving for the next thing that I wasn't paying attention to what was happening inside me.

This is what I wish I'd understood sooner:

Perfectionism can be protective.

Sometimes it's not about wanting everything to be perfect. It's about what getting something WRONG feels like it could mean.

What if I fail?
What if I disappoint someone?
What if I'm criticised?
What if I'm not good enough?
What if I lose control?

If perfectionism has become one of the ways you feel safe, doing less doesn't necessarily feel relaxing.

It can feel threatening.

So instead of only asking:

“How do I stop being a perfectionist?”

Try asking:

“What does my perfectionism believe it's protecting me from?”

My perfectionism didn't mean I was okay. It helped me LOOK okay.

It kept me so busy doing that I didn't stop long enough to understand how much I was struggling.

If you want to understand what your perfectionism might be masking, Awaken Your Worth can help you start looking underneath it.

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Sometimes the things you dislike most about yourself are the very things your mind learned to do to protect you.

Maybe you hate that you can't say no without feeling guilty.

That your brain never switches off.

That you replay conversations wondering if you said the wrong thing.

That you're always thinking about the next thing you need to achieve.

That no matter how much you do, it never feels enough.

That you're constantly worried about disappointing people.

That you overthink everything.

That you struggle to ask for help.

That you don't feel confident.

That you're exhausted from trying to keep everything and everyone okay.

Maybe you've spent years thinking:

“This is just who I am.”

But what if it isn't?

What if some of these things are behaviours your mind LEARNED because, at some point, they helped you feel safer?

Take people pleasing.

You might think:

“I'm just a people pleaser.”

But perhaps your mind learned that keeping other people happy felt safer than risking their disappointment.

If I say yes, I avoid conflict.

If I keep them happy, I avoid criticism.

If I don't upset anyone, I reduce the risk of rejection.

Suddenly, saying no isn't just saying no.

It can feel threatening.

And your people pleasing starts to make much more sense.

The same curiosity can be brought to your perfectionism, overthinking, need for control and constant worry about what other people think.

Instead of asking:

“Why am I like this?”

Try asking:

“What has my mind learned this protects me from?”

Because there's a huge difference between:

“This is who I am.”

and

“This is something I learned to do.”

The things you've spent years criticising yourself for might make much more sense when you finally understand what's underneath them.

If you want to start understanding what's underneath your own patterns, ROOT is my FREE AI tool designed to help you get curious about why you think, feel and behave the way you do.

Instagram: ROOT is in my link in bio.
Facebook: I'll put the link in the comments.

I didn’t write this book because I’d always had everything figured out.

Quite the opposite.

I wrote it because I know what it feels like to understand something logically… and still not be able to change how you feel.

I knew I was a people pleaser.

I knew I needed better boundaries.

I knew I shouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought of me.

I knew I was incredibly hard on myself.

I knew that constantly overthinking, trying to get everything right and worrying about disappointing people was exhausting me.

But knowing all of that didn’t tell me how to change it.

And that’s the bit I think we miss.

We’re surrounded by advice telling us what we should do.

Say no.
Set boundaries.
Stop overthinking.
Be more confident.
Stop caring what people think.
Love yourself.

But very few people stop and ask:

Why is this so difficult for me in the first place?

Why does saying no make me feel guilty?

Why does someone being disappointed in me feel so uncomfortable?

Why can I achieve something and immediately move the goalposts?

Why do I need reassurance when, deep down, I already know the answer?

Why can I tell everybody else they’re good enough… while struggling to believe the same thing about myself?

Becoming a psychotherapist helped me understand professionally so much of what I had experienced personally.

And eventually, those two worlds came together.

That’s why I wrote Awaken Your Worth.

Not as another book telling you to “just love yourself.”

But as a workbook to help you slow things down, get curious about your patterns, understand the beliefs underneath them and actually do the work.

You’ll write.
Reflect.
Question.
Challenge.
Practise.

Because I don’t believe you need to become a different person.

And you certainly don’t need to become worthy.

You already are.

The work is understanding what taught you to believe otherwise — and slowly learning to live like you believe your worth was there all along. ❤️

Awaken Your Worth — A CBT Workbook for People Pleasing, Perfectionism, Low Self-Worth and Anxiety.

Available now on Amazon.
Link in bio. (In comments - facebook)

You probably already know what you’re supposed to do.

Say no.

Set better boundaries.

Stop overthinking.

Stop worrying about what everybody thinks.

Be more confident.

Stop needing reassurance.

Be kinder to yourself.

But if knowing what to do was enough, you probably would have done it by now.

Because the bit we don’t talk about enough is WHY these things can feel so difficult.

Why can saying no leave you feeling guilty for hours afterwards?

Why can somebody’s tone changing make you immediately wonder what you’ve done wrong?

Why can you know somebody is allowed to be disappointed with you… but still feel an overwhelming need to fix it?

Why do you replay conversations looking for something you might have said wrong?

Why does making a mistake feel so much bigger than just making a mistake?

Why do you look for reassurance when part of you already knows the answer?

And why can you know, logically, that you’re good enough… but struggle to actually feel it?

That’s what we’re going to talk about here.

Not just WHAT you do.

But what sits underneath it.

The beliefs you have about yourself.

The rules you’ve learned to live by.

The fears that make certain situations feel unsafe.

The connection between your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

And the reasons patterns like people pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety and overthinking can be so difficult to simply “stop”.

Because sometimes the behaviour you’re desperately trying to get rid of actually makes complete sense once you understand why it developed.

And when you understand that, you can begin working on something much deeper than the symptom.

So if you’re tired of being told to:

“Just set boundaries.”

“Just stop overthinking.”

“Just stop caring what people think.”

…this page is going to be a little different.

We’re going to get curious.

We’re going to ask why.

And we’re going to start making sense of the things you may have spent years trying to change about yourself.

If you’d rather understand yourself than spend your life trying to manage yourself, follow along.

If you're exhausted from overthinking, people pleasing, trying to get everything right and worrying about what everyone else thinks — this page is for you. ❤️

I'm a psychotherapist, and here we're going to talk about people pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, overthinking and self-worth.

But probably not in quite the way you're used to.

Because I don't just want to talk about how to stop these patterns.

I want to help you understand why they're there in the first place.

And there's a personal reason that's so important to me.

For a long time, I thought I was just a “nice person”.

Helpful. Easy-going. Reliable. Always there when somebody needed me.

And I am those things.

But there was another side to it that I didn't understand for a very long time.

I found it incredibly difficult to disappoint people.

I said yes when I wanted to say no.

I worried about changes in people's moods.

I overthought conversations, over-explained myself and often felt responsible for how everybody else was feeling.

From the outside, it looked like being nice.

On the inside, I was stressed, anxious and worried all the time.

Today, I'm a psychotherapist — but I also understand these patterns from the other side of the therapy room.

And that's a big part of why I've created this page.

I want us to get curious about the things we usually just try to get rid of.

Why does saying no feel so uncomfortable?

Why can somebody else's mood change yours?

Why do you need reassurance even when you know everything is probably okay?

Why can you know you're good enough, but struggle to actually feel it?

Because sometimes the behaviour we're desperately trying to change isn't the real problem.

Sometimes we need to look underneath it.

So if you've landed here wondering:

“Why am I like this?”

You're in the right place.

❤️ Follow along — we're going to get to the root of it.

You don't struggle to delegate because no one does it right.

You struggle because if it goes wrong, it's still somehow your fault.

But let's go deeper than that. Because the real question isn't about delegating at all.

When something goes wrong, what does your brain make that mean? Usually it's something like "I've failed." Okay. And what does failing mean about you? That you're not good enough. That you'll be found out. That you're not as capable as everyone thinks you are.

There it is.

That's not a rational thought. That's a fear. And our brains treat fear the same way regardless of whether the threat is physical or emotional. It sounds the alarm. It mobilises everything it has to protect you.
So you take control. You do it yourself. You over-prepare, over-check, over-deliver. Not because you're difficult. Because your brain has learned that if things aren't done right, something bad happens. And somewhere underneath that is a belief you've probably carried for a very long time. That when things go wrong, it reflects something about your worth.

Our behaviours are never random. They're always pointing at something. The perfectionism, the inability to hand things over, the exhaustion of holding it all. These aren't character flaws. They're a belief system running in the background, driving everything.

And beliefs that were formed in fear keep you living in fear. Even when the original threat is long gone.
That's what makes it so exhausting. And that's what makes it so hard to just stop.

If this is resonating, start with Root. It's the free CBT tool to help you understand what's driving the pattern, not just what the pattern looks like. Link in comments

Because understanding the belief is where it actually starts.

You don't feel guilty because you did something wrong. You feel guilty because someone taught you that your needs were wrong.

Read that again.

The guilt feels like a warning. But it's not. It's just a pattern. One you picked up so early you started to mistake it for the truth.

Your needs were never the problem. They just weren't convenient for someone else.

If this is landing for you, Root is in my free CBT based tool I built to help you start unpicking exactly this, the beliefs you absorbed before you even knew you were absorbing them.

You don't have to figure this out alone. Link in comments.

You are human.
But people pleasing can make you forget that.

It teaches you to suppress your feelings, ignore your needs, overthink your decisions, and carry responsibilities that were never yours to hold.

You become so focused on keeping everyone else happy, comfortable, and emotionally safe…
that you stop treating yourself like a human being with limits, needs, feelings, and worth too.

That is why so many people pleasers feel exhausted, anxious, resentful, lost, and emotionally disconnected from themselves.

Not because they are weak.
Because they have spent years abandoning themselves to avoid losing others.

That is exactly why I created ROOT 🌱

A free CBT-based AI tool designed to help you start uncovering the possible reasons behind your people pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, overthinking, and self-doubt.

Because once you understand why you became this way…
everything starts to make more sense.

Link in comments to try ROOT.

You become the person everyone relies on because somewhere along the way your brain learned:

“If I am useful, needed, helpful, easy, available… I won’t be rejected.”

So now you say yes when you’re exhausted.
You over-explain when setting boundaries.
You carry things that were never yours to carry.
And even thinking about disappointing someone fills you with guilt.

Not because you’re weak.

Because your nervous system learned that keeping other people happy felt safer than honouring yourself.

That is why “just say no” has never worked for you.

Because this was never about communication.
It was about self-worth.

And the hardest part?

The people who rely on you the most often have no idea how much it is costing you.

If this felt a little too familiar, save it.
You may need this reminder on the days you start abandoning yourself again.