Cross-Cultural Wellness: Insights From an Anxiety Therapist in San Francisco to Support Your Creative Life (Part one of a series)
The Problem of Perfectionism and the Creative Spirit: Cross-Cultural Wellness Ideas from an Anxiety Therapist in San Francisco
If you’re a creative person, whether as your life’s work or alongside a different paying gig, you may know intimately know this experience: an inner critic that won’t stfu, anxiety before sharing your work, and that haunting sense that nothing you make is ever going to be good enough. As an anxiety therapist in San Francisco, I work with artists, musicians, performers, and writers who are deeply talented—and deeply overwhelmed by perfectionism.
There’s often a tension between creative inspiration and the pressure to perform. Let’s explore a few cross-cultural wellness ideas (all from Japan) that can help you reconnect with your creativity, ease your anxiety, and rediscover some joy in the process.
The Beauty of Imperfection: Wabi-Sabi
Originating in Japan, Wabi-Sabi is a philosophy that embraces what is imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete. It encourages you to find beauty in the things you might consider negatives —cracks in pottery, incorrect paint choice, a wonky draft.
For creatives who hold themselves to impossibly high standards (while sometimes thinking what they have are simply ordinary standards), Wabi-Sabi offers a different perspective. It reminds you that art doesn’t need to be flawless to be meaningful. In fact, it’s often the imperfections that make a piece, a story, a painting feel alive. Sometimes wildflowers are more beautiful than a perfect florist’s arrangement. And what isn’t working can inform your choices in the future, you can learn something about the piece, or yourself. An attempt at perfection can create a kind of internal rigidity that stops you from exploring and experimenting, or causes you to mess with it so much you suck the life out of it.
Try this: Revisit an old piece of work and notice what’s perfectly imperfect about it. What emotional texture lives in its flaws?
Think Like a Beginner: Shoshin
Shoshin, also from Japanese culture, means “beginner’s mind.” It’s the idea of approaching your work with openness, curiosity, and lack of preconceptions—even if, or especially if, this isn’t your first show, novel, or composition. Sometimes having created so much, or in the same way over the years, can lead you to feel stale and disconnected.
Your anxiety can cause you to second-guess every creative choice making you hamstrung, so returning to Shoshin can be grounding. Remind yourself you don’t have to know everything, (and knowing everything, by the way, isn’t even a possibility). You just have to take the first step.
Try this: Tell yourself to start badly. Seriously! Because a ‘bad’ start is much better than not starting at all.
Stop Comparing Yourself: Oubaitori
Oubaitori is an idiom that means “cherry, plum, peach, and apricot.” This term comes from the idea that cherry, plum, peach, and apricot trees all bloom in their own time and with their own beauty. What’s that got to do with your creative life? Essentially it means “don’t compare yourself to others.”
When you find yourself scrolling endlessly through Instagram, scanning those carefully curated photos and reels you believe mean you’re a failure, remember that comparison to others, whether to their work, or their life, fuels anxiety. Oubaitori reminds you: Your path is your own. There is no one like you.
Try this: Ask yourself where are you unfairly comparing your creative journey to someone else’s? What would it look like to trust your own rhythm?
Small Steps Matter: Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy, but it’s relevant for creatives as well. It’s the art of making small, continuous improvements. It’s not about overnight success; it’s about tiny, sustainable steps forward.
As an anxiety therapist in San Francisco, I often work with clients who freeze under the pressure to be an immediate success. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Kaizen says: what if one tiny action today is enough?
Try this: Write one sentence. Play one chord. Sketch one line. Take a breath and let that be your win.
Perfectionism Is Not a Prerequisite for Worth
Many creatives deep down believe: If I’m not exceptional (or award winning, or on a bestseller list), I’m nothing. That kind of all-or-nothing thinking is a classic anxiety trap.
Wabi-Sabi, Shoshin, Oubaitori, and Kaizen offer gentle and eminently practical alternatives. These perspectives say your work doesn’t have to change the world to have value. You don’t need to be extraordinary to be enough. You already are.
How Therapy Can Support Your Creative Process
Working with a therapist who understands both your creative spirit and your mental health needs can make all the difference. Therapy can help you:
Understand where your perfectionism and self-doubt came from and what keeps it going
Build up your resilience around stuckness or setbacks, and create routines for sustainable creativity
Navigate your anxiety and impostor syndrome with a more self-compassionate attitude towards yourself
Learn tools for self-care including how to listen to, and reconnect with yourself
You don’t have to do it alone. As an anxiety therapist in San Francisco, I offer a safe, nonjudgmental space where we can explore your inner world—and help you get unstuck.
Ready to take the next step?
You deserve to feel confident in your work—and yourself. If anxiety is getting in the way of your creativity, I’d love to help.
📞 Schedule a free 15-minute consultation
Let’s talk about what’s going on and how therapy can support you.
lisa@lisafrankfortmft.com
Lisa Frankfort, Ph.D., LMFT is an anxiety therapist in San Francisco who works with creatives of all kinds—writers, artists, performers, musicians—especially those wrestling with anxiety, impostor syndrome, perfectionism, or feeling like a fraud (despite evidence to the contrary). Her fully virtual practice offers a grounded, no-nonsense space where you can get real about what’s holding you back—without having to explain what it means to live inside a creative brain. Therapy with Lisa includes insight, warmth, as well as laughing —because healing doesn’t always have to be heavy.
Curious to see if it’s a good fit? Learn more at www.lisafrankfortmft.com.