Perfectionism OCD

I’m about to turn 18 and I’ve graduated high school a year early and I deal with intense feelings of imposter syndrome. I have no clue where my life is headed and not really even sure what college I wanna go to. I know I want to go to college but I just don’t know what I should do. I have a good job that I’ve been at for over a year and thats great, but I look at people my age and feel like I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’m an overachiever and someone that deals with OCD and the mix of those two is not fun. I think that when I was a child I had a lot of pressure placed onto me to do so well that I’m constantly looking for ways to improve in many aspects of my life. This leaves an unrealistic outline of where I should be and makes me feel so shitty that I can’t even see the good I’m doing. I can’t remember many positive things that people say to me about myself because I don’t think my brain believes it. I often worry if I’m not as smart as other people and overthink mistakes I make so many times a day. Excepting constructive feedback from people is extremely hard for me because I feel like I’ve failed. I feel sad about all of my past relationships with people. I feel scared nobody will ever love me.

justagirlie

Date posted: 17w

I deal with the same exact thing. I never really relish in my achievements especially academically because I feel like I can always do better. One thing that helped me is recognizing those demeaning and negative thoughts and realizing that you are just repeating what has been said to you as a child. It is not how you truly feel it is merely how you have been taught to feel. Take everyday step by step and do research, try new things, process of elimination and I hope you can find your path. sending love <3

OCDopus

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 17w

You sound a lot like me when I was your age. You’re still young and you have a lot of time to figure out what you want to do. Unfortunately, you’re at a time in life where there actually is a lot of pressure placed on you to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life. Also unfortunately, we’re people with OCD so we let those fears and doubts affect us more than most people. What adults don’t seem to tell you at this critical juncture in your life is that there are people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even older that still feel that uncertainty. I’m in my mid-30s and I’m about to go back to college to start a completely different path for myself because I just wasn’t vibing with the old one I set out for myself before. As long as you’ve got time in this world, it’s not too late to change what you want to do with it. My advice to you is to just take things one day at a time. You can choose to worry about the future, or you can live your life and find what you like as you go. You may make mistakes but that’s also a part of living. Get out there and try new things. The failure you’re afraid of doesn’t have to be an ending. You can choose to use any failures as the motivation required to get out there and search for how to succeed in whatever task you set out to accomplish in the first place. “The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.”

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