Perfectionism can be really hard for so many reasons, including our OCD often evaluating every thing as being equally, and 100%, important. This often leads to a lot of indecision about where to start, indecision about how to start, and avoidance about starting at all for fear of making the wrong decisions. What are some ways you can relate to this?

I try to do almost everything perfect with not always being aware of what I am doing. I think I am perfect. It makes me sick and hate who I am. I see Imperfections in others and listen and listen wondering why they don’t want to fix them. I try to help them fix them which never or rarely works. I keep looking for the perfect looking woman that would be my answer to being happy. Of course there is no such person. My wife is beautiful but I see imperfections (wrinkles) that cause me to lose the emotional contact with her. The arrogance and pride in me drives me to hate myself further. If she knew it would break her heart and mine too. I hate myself.

When writing papers for school, I would often be perfecitonistic. I was also assuming the harshest critic would be reading this, afraid of the teacher giving a bad grade. This perfectionism can also fuel procrastination. I tried to settle with my writing and did well. But I think the perfectionism interacted with hyperfixation from ADHD or something else in my personality and that may have slowed me done too. Ultimately procrastinating, like other forms of avoidance, makes the activity more dreadful or daunting

So true! It also makes me think of the worst poster from when I was in 2nd grade, which read, “Your best is not good enough. You must strive for perfection.” Yuck! I’m so glad that my young students know that’s hogwash! We even had the term “perfect” as a vocabulary word, and my students replied that it was unattainable, so we added that to the definition in our textbooks.