The Life of a Neurotic Perfectionist
I always knew being perfect didn’t exist yet I keep striving to attain it. To visualize it, it is like trying to reach the end of a bottomless pit.
I knew this all along yet I continue to do it — why? Because it has become compulsive wherein I can’t seem to stop myself from doing so because if I do stop myself, it causes me great anxiety, which I hate. With that, it became neurotic, wherein my behaviors have become maladaptive to my daily functioning.
It all started when things implanted on my head that making mistakes felt like the end of the world. It made me think that being imperfect was being weak.
How do I live my life as a neurotic perfectionist? It affects me in the simplest of ways:
- Not wanting to get out of bed out of fear something horribly will go wrong on that day
- Staring at a blank document when doing a paper because you want to make sure the first part already has an impact
- Not wanting or procrastinating to study for a test out of fear you will not get that A
- Refusing to raise your hand in class out of fear you will be embarrassed for giving the wrong answer
- Preventing to speak about your feelings and emotions out of fear you will be reprimanded for thinking that way and you will be judged as being ‘weak’
- It is not wanting to publish this very article out of fear it has a lot of grammatical errors or it would not be positively praised
These things all have one thing in common — FEAR. Like what Michael Law said:
“At its root, perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success.”
Because of my neurotic perfectionism, it has hindered me from learning to take risks, being comfortable with the uncertainty of things, and striving to improve from every mistake. It has limited me from living my life all because I was afraid of things being imperfect.
I struggled with the reality of wanting to be free from this vicious cycle yet compulsively craving for it. Being a neurotic perfectionist was my norm and it was hard to deviate from such norm.
Some days were easy to deal with — reminding myself that I can always improve yet most days were difficult. I would purposely delay what I needed to do out of fear I wasn’t doing it right. I didn’t want to make mistakes — that was the standard I created for myself. I was told I don’t need to follow this standard because no one is imposing it to me. It was I imposing it to myself. I realized that I cared too much about what people thought about me; therefore, I created this standard because if I didn’t, I would be perceived as weak and not likeable.
However I am currently recovering. Trying not to be a neurotic perfectionist is a process. The process isn’t perfect — there will be ups and downs. The hardest part will always be learning to accept that I wasn’t perfect and that I cannot control everything as much as I want to. Although what comforts me is the fact that broken crayons can still color — that despite not being perfect, I can still do good things and I am good despite my imperfections.
Striving for the best isn’t wrong, it’s when this striving becomes maladaptive is when it is wrong.
As what Sharon Adler says: perfectionism doesn’t exist. Only beautiful versions of brokenness does.
