I sweat excessively

What this looks like

You sweat through shirts in normal weather, in air-conditioning, in meetings. You sweat from your armpits and your hands. You wear colors that won’t show it. You bring a change of shirt. You apologize before shaking hands. You sweat more when you’re worried about sweating.

You’re producing the sweat by anticipating it. You’ve trained the response.

What you’ve already tried

• Clinical-strength antiperspirants
• Prescription-strength antiperspirants
• Botox injections in the armpits
• An anticholinergic medication
• Specific clothing that hides it
• Avoiding situations where sweating would be visible
• Telling yourself nobody is looking

You sweat more reliably than ever.

What’s your stress signature?

Why anti-sweat products only partly worked

You very likely came out of a moment in your life where being seen sweating felt unsafe. You may have had one experience early on, a presentation or a date or an interview, where the sweating became its own problem and you’ve been bracing against it ever since. You may have grown up watching a parent sweat visibly and decided you’d never let that happen to you. You may have been in a culture or a profession where composure was mandatory and sweating was read as weakness.

The products you’ve tried address the surface. They don’t change what your body has been responding to. You’re bracing against being seen sweating, and the bracing itself is what activates the sweat. Botox blocks the response in specific areas, and your body finds other places to use.

For related body responses to social anxiety, see I blush uncontrollably and I have performance anxiety .

You’re producing the sweat through your anticipation. We work on the anticipation.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy ends the bracing-against-being-seen-sweating that primes your body to deliver exactly that, while any topical or medical care you use continues. We change what happens in the seconds before a meeting, a handshake, a presentation, so the activation signal stops getting sent. Your sweat glands stop being trained for performance.

You pick a shirt because you like the color. The backup shirt leaves the bag.