So as a result I date “down” a few pegs just to feel appreciated. Awful. But less lonely.

Oddly, I was voted best personality years ago by my class. Now that personality is slipping to a darker place.

What’s even crazier is, after all this typing, it’s alllll just in my head. But it shows the pervasiveness of an unhealthy mind.

Sigh. Fellow perfectionists, I love ya for who you are.

I also do it at work sometimes which is NOT a good thing. Coming back from Christmas I was paralysed by procrastination for 3 solid weeks – I did not do a SINGLE piece of work in that time! Fortunately no-one noticed because when I do work I do it faster than everyone else.

I have noticed in the past it has applied itself to my dieting behaviours – if you can’t diet perfectly, you might as well binge etc. And since noone can ever diet perfectly, well, you can imagine how well that worked!

Now, I’m working on giving up on dieting altogether. It never really worked for me anyway (see above) and all it does is cause stress and mental anguish, which I so don’t need! It’s a hard thing to stop though!!

This, due to mistake modeling after my Mom, who was terribly afraid of allowing her daughters to witness or see that she made an error in her decisions/life/etc.

Sad, really.

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Jill — That’s awful that your parents always thought you were lazy I have found the business world to be really helpful re: productivity as well. I think there are a couple of reasons for this…

1. There are 8 hours a day already dedicated to getting your work done. I’m less likely to procrastinate because I don’t necessarily feel the time pressure that I do at home. The “I don’t have time for this, because I need to also accomplish x, y, and z” feeling. I can stress about getting the dog to the groomer all I want, but it’s not going to happen during those 8 hours, so….
2. Projects are usually broken down into smaller steps/ stages. Steps that fit neatly on a to-do list.
3. Work (at least my chosen career, and it sounds like yours, too) is much more fun and rewarding than writing papers or taking exams! I love my job, and while I do put off getting things done sometimes because I know they’re going to require a lot of effort to execute in my fashion, often I’m eager to do it because I’m excited about the project.

So glad that you’ve been able to find work that is rewarding for you!

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sannanina — Depression is a hugeproblem of mine as well. When I’m really depressed, I really do not have the energy or motivation to obsess over something until it’s “correct.” Therefore, things get put off, and off, and off… and I tell myself I will get to them “when I feel better.”

There are so many ignorant professionals out there (I even wrote a post about it once — see Ignorant Doctor Comments). There ARE good ones out there… somewhere…. so keep looking until you find one!

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sarah-j — Thanks for the compliments I will make it to yoga one of these days… and you will all be aware when it does happen!

“Just do your best” is a tough one for me, too. I have to change it to “do the best that you can given the time and the situation, and without pushing yourself past the limit or upsetting yourself” (which isn’t very catchy). I used to really struggle with trying to do everything (maybe there will be a post on this soon…). I really learned the hard way that while maybe you can do everything, you definitely cannot do everything well. And doing a lot of mediocre things feels crappy. So I am better at picking and choosing what I do… only now I think I put more pressure on doing the perfectly, since I should be able to — right?

Good question about “type-A coronary prone behavior.” Type A behavior involves struggle for achievement, chronic time-urgency, and competitiveness. These behaviors have been associated with the prevalence of coronary heart disease. All of the stress that you are putting on yourself (and therefore your body) can be really hurtful — especially to your heart.

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bloggerwithocd — Ha, well… maybe if blogging were my job, I could afford to spend that much time writing posts!

http://www.itsmewithocd.blogspot.com

Its so strange how, if you have this problem, you can often achieve better results at whatever it is you’re doing by going easier on yourself rather than harder.

I hear you about the ‘give yourself a break’ thing. A similar one is ‘just do your best.’ Just my very best. Ok so, to do that would actually require me to spend endless hours, exclude everything else and give every ounce of energy in my being! And thats supposed to make you feel better?!

About the yoga, I just recently started it and I find it amazing and quite healing. The instructor that I have though is nice and very body positive though ‘stretch as far as is comfortable for you, everyone’s body is different’ and there’s a nice atmosphere of non comparison. I hope you decide to do it and there’s a similar atmosphere for you.

Can I ask one question? Whats type A coronary prone behaviour?

Thanks again for the post

I think that this perfectionism + procrastination cycle is frustrating for anyone who struggles with it… but that it is particularly dangerous for individuals with eating disorders. When you don’t meet your expectations repeatedly (because you’ve put things off and then don’t have the time or the energy to do them “perfectly”) you feel so much worse about yourself. You feel like you can’t get anything done and you proceed to beat yourself up. This kind of self-hate and negative thinking really fuels the disorder. I also find it’s hard when people tell me to “give myself a break,” because I already feel like I’m not accomplishing very much. I’m already procrastinating — what do you want me to do? Excuse myself from all responsibility?

Replace eating disorder with depression and you have a perfect description of my current situation. As far as EDs are concerned – I am a binge-eater, but I also go through periods of dieting that are very much characterized by trying to be “perfect” in my eating and exercise habits. The problem is, people (including doctors and therapists) often just don’t get that. They don’t get that it is not a good thing for me to lose weight by cutting out ALL sweets, ALL fried foods, etc. and exercising in a mindset of “doing it right” and being sufficiently “hard on my self”.

And yet – despite all of this I also like my perfectionism, and sometimes perfectionism is necessary to do something really, really well. It is useless if someone tells me that I need to stop being a perfectionist, I would never be satisfied. I think the solution lies much rather in deciding to which areas of my life I can successfully apply perfectionism and then working on truly giving my best without procrastinating and in which areas of my life it is okay or even beneficial to be content with 80 or sometimes even just 50 %.