I 'M A Perfectionist

I hope this post has some replies. I lose faith on SW each time a futile sex related post has dozens of replies and something important and life changing as this usually gets none.

I still don't know the cause of my perfectionism but the effect is procrastination. That's the single root cause of my procrastination.
I've a strive for flawlessness and set excessively high (not that I feel like it obviously) performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations.
I feel that good enough is not good at all.

I always have excessive demands and goals on myself and if I don't met them I get discourage. It is followed by a feeling of motivation and despair and leads to depression.

I get easily overwhelmed by the overload of work on projects that I'm on. I want things to be perfect and done in a particular perfect way and don't accept things that are "good enough". I've difficult times delegating. I get lots of stress most times.

If there's a particular aspect or project in my life that is difficult I get so full of anxiety that I might get locked into an obsessive mindset that can destroy me from the inside. Fortunately it doesn't affect others around me neither I turn into drugs for relief but things could be easily get out of hand if I didn't had so much self control.

I rarely feel satisfied about what they are doing. Very seldom I see their efforts or accomplishments as "good enough". If it isn't perfect like I thought then it's by me perceived as a complete failure. Even if for others things are way more than perfect. Unfortunately or not I don't care about what others think.
It's not like I've self esteem fortunately. Because obviously despite all things it lead me into great success. But it's not healthy to have self-doubts and negative thoughts all the time.

I do not fear failure too. I've failed a lot in my life. I've learned and grown from it. I embrace failure. Doesn't come from there.

My perfectionism took me far in my life. I accomplished a lot. But I'm not happy with it. I still feel that is a step back and that I could do much more if I could learn how to manage it. But in order to do it I must find the cause.

It would help me a lot if some other perfectionists shared what is the cause of their perfectionism. Thank you all.

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LilMissAnonyMOUSE · F

I can relate to what you're going through because I do have that tendency as well to expect perfection from myself, to do things where I feel I give only the best, that it should be flawless, and make no room for dissatisfaction.

I feel it points towards us being our own worst critics. Sometimes, it's fearing criticism; we kind of worry about it because rejection of any kind is not something pleasant to feel. I would rather make sure it's good work so that no one can see any faults or flaws in it. So we overthink things, we doubt if it's really the best we could do, always wondering if we could do more. Procrastination is definitely a common result of feeling this way; putting off a project for another moment because you tell yourself you don't want to work on it until you can do it as you perfectly imagine it in your head. Not that I never feel satisfied or proud of the hard work I put into things, but this constant high expectation from myself to keep pushing until I can finally say'' Okay, I'm happy with that.'', can be taxing and makes me feel I waste time waiting for that perfect moment to do that perfect thing. But the thing is, by being our worst critics, we also become our worst enemies because we are not helping ourselves by creating a situation where we become an obstacle to ourselves. It's not about lack of confidence because we all somehow know what we're good at. I think it's this need to feel that the effort isn't half-hearted, resulting in it being mediocre, but that I created something good that I'm content with it and proud of the hard work I put into it and not for reasons of validation,
but it would be nice if it's valued by others too. Fortunately, I'm in a stage now where I'm finally easing up on myself, just do what I can and saying, '' It is what it is'' and if it's not good enough for others, well..too bad, I know I did my best.

Ultimately, we have to relax and go with the flow, as being too uptight with being a perfectionist can affect one's mental health, sacrificing our well-being and happiness. Perfection doesn't exist, precision... yes, but not perfection. Good luck,I hope you can also overcome this😊