Perfectionism, People-Pleasing, and Dystonia: The Hidden Connection

This article is based on a video from the Hope for Dystonia YouTube channel.

For most of my life, I was the “good child” — the one who tried hard, read the room, and kept everyone around me happy. It took me years to understand that the same drive that made me look so capable was also keeping my nervous system permanently braced, and that the bracing eventually surfaced in my body as severe dystonia.

If you’re following your own dystonia healing journey closely, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize yourself in what follows. I want to talk about two patterns that sit much closer to the root of dystonia than most people realize — perfectionism and people-pleasing — and the surprising, hidden connection between them and what happens in the body. Let me start where it usually starts: in childhood.

Watch the Full Video

Were You a “Good Child”?

If you’re reading this, chances are you were a “good child.” Even if you weren’t perfect, you tried really hard. You probably learned to monitor and understand everyone around you so you could keep the peace and head off any strong reactions from your parents. You tried to get good grades, or to behave in the ways that were expected of you, and a great deal of importance and stress was placed on those things. You noticed whether mom was having a good or a bad day. You worked hard to figure out what was expected, and how to avoid getting into trouble.

Those efforts may even have given you gifts later in life. Maybe you did well academically or professionally. Maybe you became known as the one who is always perfect, always looks good, always does things well — or the one who is universally liked, the nice one, so loving and so ready to understand what everyone else wants and make sure they get it. Those things may have helped carry you to where you are today, in good ways and, as we’ll see, in some not-so-good ways too.

But here’s the question I want you to sit with. While you were working so hard to understand everyone else and do everything well, who took care of you? Who asked what you needed? How often did someone turn to you and say, “what are you feeling right now? what do you need?”

For many of us, that simply wasn’t a common experience. And if it wasn’t, you likely never developed the muscles — the habits — for having a relationship with yourself: with your own needs, your own boundaries. Everyone else came first, and over time a quiet disconnection grows between us and ourselves.

This is not the end of the story. It’s something we can work on even as adults, and it can bring enormous healing, joy, and empowerment. We can learn to become the person we were always meant to be, beyond the adaptations we picked up when we were small.

How Do You React to Dystonia?

Here’s the second thing I want you to notice. On the days when dystonia is really limiting your ability to function, what’s your first instinct? What does the frustration, the anger, or the sadness sound like?

If you’re anything like I was, you may notice patterns that say: come on, you can’t be self-indulgent. Keep going. Be productive. Do things well. Make sure you’re still a good husband, a good wife, a good son, a good employee. Make sure you look okay, that nobody thinks something is wrong with you. Get it done, despite what you’re feeling. The instinct is to suppress and override what you feel, in order to fulfill what seems most important: to look good, to be productive, to not disappoint anyone.

Now notice something. This way of fighting the dystonia, of bracing and creating tension around it, is the very same pattern of tension and guarding — of protecting yourself by dysregulating your nervous system — that you’ve been practicing for a long time. And it’s the same kind of tension that sits at the root of dystonia in the first place.

Perfectionism and People-Pleasing as Protection

You may have heard me say before that, more often than not, at the root of dystonia is a pattern of chronic guarding we adopted early in life to meet our fundamental psychological needs. That isn’t the only cause — there are other layers that come later: a jaw imbalance, something in the upper cervical vertebrae, repetitive movements with an instrument or the limbs. But those are additional layers, added on top of a base layer: the way you learned to function.

Perfectionism and people-pleasing are two of those base-layer patterns. If you recognize yourself in them, there’s a good chance that base layer primed you to be more susceptible to the chronic tension and involuntary movements of dystonia. Today we’re looking at just these two, but there are others worth knowing — freezing and making yourself small, hypervigilance, the push-pull of wanting closeness and fearing it at the same time. The pattern underneath them all is the same: a nervous system that learned to guard.

The Nervous System Learns Through “Inhabitable Alternative Experiences”

So what do we actually do about it? Here’s the single most important thing to understand about the way forward: the nervous system doesn’t learn through impositions. It learns through what I call inhabitable alternative experiences.

If I simply yell at you, “stop people-pleasing!”, what happens? You’ll say “okay” — and then immediately try to please me too, do your best, feel selfish and guilty at the thought of putting yourself first, and quietly have no idea what’s actually being asked of you. Commands don’t change a nervous system.

An inhabitable alternative experience is different. It’s an experience that lets the nervous system try on something new, and little by little learn that this new thing is safe, that we can return to it, and that it actually meets our needs better than the old pattern did.

Speak to Yourself the Way You’d Speak to Someone You Love

In practice, it often starts with the very thing we missed. For many of us, nobody consistently asked, “what do you need? what are you feeling? how can I help you feel safer and happier?” So we never built that muscle of inquiring about our own needs. The good news is that we can build it now, as adults, and learn to attune to ourselves.

So instead of telling yourself you have to white-knuckle through, be productive, look normal, and never “make a scene” with your spasms, imagine starting a new kind of dialogue with yourself — speaking to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love who was going through the same thing.

You wouldn’t chastise them for having involuntary movements. You’d say: are you okay? what do you need? how are you feeling? Yes, I can see you’re having involuntary movements — and I love you nonetheless. My love has nothing to do with whether your head and neck are still, or with how well you can play the guitar today.

And you wouldn’t only do it in the hardest dystonia moments. You’d do it moment to moment, checking in: what do I need right now? Sometimes the answer is small. I’m a little chilly — I’m going to pause what I’m doing and get a blanket. I know I have a deadline, but I’m going to get up and use the bathroom now. Little by little, these are the inhabitable alternatives we offer the nervous system: small, safe experiences it can try on until it learns a new equilibrium.

Try It On Right Now

I’d invite you to try this on, even as you read. In a moment that feels safe, give yourself permission to just be as you are — even if it’s only for ten seconds. You might notice it feels unfamiliar, even a little uncomfortable. You might feel that familiar guilt, or some resistance to the idea that you can have involuntary movements and it’s genuinely not a big deal — that your worthiness of love isn’t changed by one iota by them.

Then ask yourself: what would it be like to organize this way all the time? What would my relationship with myself be like? Would there be the same tension, the same inner war against myself? And would I be more, or less, able to learn new things with the muscles and nerves that dystonia affects?

I’d bet it would be a lot easier. That’s certainly been my experience — it’s a big part of how I got my life back, and how so many of the people in the testimonials got theirs back too.

These Patterns Are Not Forever

So, in summary: perfectionism and people-pleasing were there for a reason. They served you, in some way, until they didn’t. And even though they’ve been with you a long time, they are not forever. Just as you learned these patterns, you can learn new ways of being who you are — helping your body find more ease, and allowing neuroplasticity to take hold, so that you unlearn the patterns of dystonia and learn something new.

Your Next Steps

There are two free resources that pick up exactly where this article leaves off:

1. The free Dystonia Recovery Kit. The foundational information I wish someone had handed me when I was in the thick of it.

2. The free workshop. We go much deeper into these patterns — the handful I rewired to get my life back — and into the self-attunement work that lets the nervous system try on something new.

No cost, no catch — just a new way of understanding your body and yourself. Much love to you.

If I did this, so can you.