- Date posted
- 19w
How does your perfectionism OCD manifest?
I haven't been able to read about experiences similar to mine when it comes to my perfectionism OCD so I was wondering if anyone had any "uncommon" experiences.
I haven't been able to read about experiences similar to mine when it comes to my perfectionism OCD so I was wondering if anyone had any "uncommon" experiences.
Mine has shown up as needing to do tasks perfectly (absolutely no errors, ever) at work, needing to type the perfect email or message, find the perfect restaurant to visit. Generally, to have no room for doubt or error, or it would be the end of the world according to my OCD. This sometimes goes hand in hand with my just right OCD - finding the just right cup to use, or song to listen to, the right words when comforting someone. Do you want to share some of your experiences?
I relate to this. Whenever I look up perfectionism OCD it just shows up symmetry. For me, I have major imposter syndrome. I feel the need to be an expert or else I'm invalid. I'm a psychology major and I'm taking a hard neuroscience class. I feel like if I don't understand everything in the textbook, I will never be a good school counselor. I'm also a singer songwriter who has written over 40 songs but I still feel like I'm not a musician.
it comes up in many ways for me—one of them is that my sentences have to be exactly true to the best of my knowledge, if that makes sense? like if i know my bus arrives at 8:17 but i round to 8:20 i’m “lying.” which sounds like such a minor example but basically everything about my life has to line up straight and i can’t allow any ambiguity or i’m overwhelmed with guilt and fear and have to follow up with whoever i was talking to to clarify which is mostly just annoying for them🥴
@Anonymous not sure if this counts as perfectionism but i think it’s the closest category?
Oh i do this too, i never thought abt it as perfectionism, but you could be right
Im struggling with this myself, im a student and i failed for two year now, because whenever i have an exam if i dont prepare to it PERFECTLY i give up and i beat myself up , most of the times when its time to pass the exam i dont even read the questionsof the exam, my brain be like you didn't prepare perfectly of course you wont get a good grade, and the problem is i was doing this without knowing that there is something called perfectionism, i definitely do it in other things in my life , but it destroyed my studies
oh I totally relate to this! I would drop out of my classes because I thought I would fail even if I had good grades. If I missed one assignment, I would just drop the whole class. I dropped out of a total of 14 classes in the past 7 years. I've worked myself up to a fulltime load and I haven't dropped any classes in a full year :) there is hope, it gets better.
@avf2000 @avf2000 glad to hear it gets better for you, yeah it probably takes time and awareness and effort to get over it
I primarily have academic perfectionism with avoidance compulsions; if I get anxious that my schoolwork isn't "perfect" enough I'll flake and stop doing the work altogether. In my mind, if I don't try at all then I can't "fail", which is my biggest fear. Writing is my biggest trigger though. I've rewritten the same sentence over and over for half an hour before deleting it because the thought of it existing in its imperfect form is too distressing. It kind of feels like my imperfect writing is contaminating the universe with its very existence. A visceral disgust. I've worked through a lot of this - I rarely use a thesaurus when sending texts anymore lol - but I'm still nowhere near able to write an essay or write for fun like I used to.
@sophea I also get bothered if Scrabble pieces aren't centered on their squares and little things like that. But it's not nearly as big a deal for me.
I can't figure out what type of OCD I have. I must be the only one who has mental hoarding OCD with some Just right and death themes. I've never seen a description of someone's symptoms that match mine. Mine are a combination of Just right and mental hoarding of a memory. Like if I have dinner, I need to do a routine where I take in various elements on the environment - the food, my phone, the people around, pets, the coolness of the air con, and think of them in a specific syntax. I need to go through this thinking cycle without also thinking about certain people, deceased people, any themes of death, certain colours (red and black mostly) and then when I get to the end I deliberately have to think about something that is anti-death, like a particularly person who is younger, a certain good colour. But there are other conditions to prevent having to re-do the routine. The phone can't give me a notification or ring. Then I have to touch the phone and think of a supporting person or colour. On top of this, if I go to Youtube, Facebook or anywhere else and I see something related to death first I have to re-do the whole routine. I have a pre-thought that protects me if I do see something in the theme of death. Touching a cat tail will re-trigger the routine and so will touching a certain matt or matts in my house without first say '1,2,3,4'. I do these mental hoarding routines every time I eat, every time I leave the house, every time I leave work, before I go to sleep. The other element of this is protecting loved ones and pets. In some of my routines, around food, leaving the house and going to bed, I have to mentally think of everyone in the house and all of my pets in the same way as above. I dont even know if it is OCD. It's mostly mental compulsions. I don't get anxiety, just discomfort. As exotic as my symptoms seem to be, I don't think my OCD is as bad as it is for others. it's a bit Just right and thats it. My symptoms do not fit any of the categories.
I think I have mild OCD. Maybe that's why I can't relate to many of the difficulties experienced by other posters. My OCD is more on the compulsion side performing certain rituals at key transitions or points during the day. I honestly cannot figure out what the underlying obsession is other than some kind of weird mental hoarding to acknowledge and cherish a moment but also to protect my family and even my pets. I get little or no anxiety (I used to when I was younger). Even mild OCD absolutely sucks and is debilitating to an extent.
Hi I’m new to the community and I have such weird ocd tendencies I was curious to see if anyone else has so I’m just going to list them in no specific order: 1. My brain goes “I hope” every time I think of something bad happening. Like “I hope that pedestrian gets hit by a car” or “I hope a demon snatches me under the bed right now.” 2. I have dermatillomania mostly on my arms, chest, face, and shoulders. If I have a bunch of open wounds on my body, I make myself feel “cleaner” by doing an everything shave in the shower. Conversely, if I’m having a period of mostly healed skin, I like to leave my body hair growing out for a couple days as a way to gloat to myself how “clean” I am even without shaving. 3. After my whole life living with these symptoms, most of them I’m able to brush off. But this next one still shakes me and disturbs me to my core every time it happens and it’s picturing sex acts with people I would NEVER want to do sex acts with. My earliest memory of this is when I was a little kid, as young as 5 years old, I had an image in mind of what I thought God looked like. Every time I would imagine God, I would automatically imagine him naked and I would shove my head under the pillow and shut my eyes tightly and try to make the image go away because I thought I was being blasphemous by imagining such a thing. 4. This one is relatively new, the past year or two, but cutting my own bangs. The only reason I consider it an ocd tendency and not just self sufficiency is because I SUCK at it and botch it every time!!! But I keep trying to find the perfect parting that contours to all the existing cowlicks and kinks in my hair and try to carve out my “natural bangs.” I convince myself a hairdresser is just not familiar enough with my hair growth patterns to give me what I want. This one is particularly embarrassing because it’s like I’m wearing my mental illness on my face. I have been wearing a headband for the past year to try and hide it but it doesn’t stop me from cutting it again because I am so insistent to get it right. I always regret it after. 5. I don’t know if this one is ocd but I suspect it might be and it’s that I rarely ever am not drinking water. If I finish a glass I’m filling up another one. Sometimes it will be a different beverage like coffee or matcha but I almost always am sipping compulsively on something. I use the bathroom about once every hour and 3-4 each night. That’s all I can think of for now but I wanted to share some atypical traits to see if anyone relates! This isn’t by any means all of my ocd tendencies unfortunately:/ just the ones I’ve never heard anyone else share before!
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