Anyone else struggle with perfectionism / setting unrealistic high standards?

LegacyUser

Hey guys,

I am a long time suffered of general anxiety which has been under reasonably good control over the last 7 years with medication.

Alongside the anxiety, I developed a problem with achieving perfectionism in each and everything i do in my life but to unrealistically high levels which causes undue stress and feeds the anxiety also.

It`s a bit of a complicated one really as in essence achieving perfectionism within the small things I do on a daily basis makes me feel closer to achieving the overall perfectionism that I so desperately desire in my life........ but at the same time, needing this perfectionism is a driver for the anxiety as perfectionism is an unrealistic expectation of oneself. (Its impossible to actual get to the stage of overall perfectionism).

Just to be clear, I am not talking about achieving worthwhile life goals such as "finish a university degree" or "get that promotion at work".... I am talking about my necessity to keep a constant up to date "To Do" list on my phone where I keep a written note of every single individual task that I need to be done no matter how minor or insignificant it may be such as:

Walk the dog
Pack bags for trip
Get groceries
Call to sports shop
ect.....ect....

I have a near constant necessity to add to and check off tasks within my "To Do" list on a daily basis and have an overwhelming urge to document and carry out every single task I have to do no matter how minor it may be within as quick as a time frame as possible in order to get the whole list checked off and all tasks done and achieve a state of complete organization and perfectionism. Needless to say that with my desire to constantly add to the list , tit never gets completed ... ever!! It wouldn`t matter if i did either and i know this myself as i would still feel unsatisfied and not perfect and having not achieved enough.

Anyway, this put`s massive stress on me and also feeds into the anxiety on a daily basis with the near constant checking of my phone and "To Do" list.

Is anyone aware of any proven scientific materials to read / research/ listen to/ ect.... that may help me try to overcome this problem. It has really become increasingly worse of late and I think it is really time to try get it under control at this point.

Thanks for any help offered!!!

Faith

You basically need to expose yourself to the feared situation, without allowing yourself to respond as you normally would. So the first step might be not checking the list for an hour. Then maybe two hours. Then half a day and so on. It sounds simplistic, but it's a habit that you need to break.

The point is, if you don't maintain a list, you need to find out that nothing bad will happen.

It's hard to work out whether what you're describing is perfectionism or more obsessive, but two books that may help are Overcoming Perfectionism by Shafran, Egan and Wade, or possibly Overcoming OCD* by Veale.

*This post is in no way a diagnosis, but the techniques used in treating OCD may be useful also.

amtc

My dad kept five diaries. A pocket one. A hall table one. An office one. A car one and a kitchen one. It got so bad that he would do something that wasn't on the diary and then write it on and cross it out. My mother ended up writing on it 'get up' and 'go to bed' as she got frustrated.

Anyway my parents got a new back door. My dad specified it to the nth degree as he used work in this area. This was to be the rolls royce of back doors. Even the installers were amazed at the level of detail and delivered as specified. Which is grand. Except it now opens across the washing machine so to put clothes on line is a complicated shimmy involving doors. My dad had to laugh as it was so ridiculous.

Anyway this made him see things in a bigger picture, so no longer doing lists. But what he does find really useful is doing cryptic crosswords. I'm not sure if that is useful but he says it uses up free brain space

LegacyUser

Faith wrote: »

You basically need to expose yourself to the feared situation, without allowing yourself to respond as you normally would. So the first step might be not checking the list for an hour. Then maybe two hours. Then half a day and so on. It sounds simplistic, but it's a habit that you need to break.

The point is, if you don't maintain a list, you need to find out that nothing bad will happen.

It's hard to work out whether what you're describing is perfectionism or more obsessive, but two books that may help are Overcoming Perfectionism by Shafran, Egan and Wade, or possibly Overcoming OCD* by Veale.

*This post is in no way a diagnosis, but the techniques used in treating OCD may be useful also.

Thanks for your response. It is quiet difficult to know whether it is an OCD trait or a perfectionism trait or indeed a mix of both. I do find I display some OCD traits with organizing my personal belongings, paper work, layout of things on a worktop counter ect so indeed it difficult to say whether you could label the list checking and checking off as a quest for perfectionism or indeed an OCD trait. Very difficult to know really!!

I appreciate your input on phasing out the list keeping ritual.. I had imagined that this would be the solution similar to breaking all bad habits. Too many times though I have told myself that once I just get THIS current list finished, then I`ll reset and stop keeping lists. Of course I have never gotten to a point of being able to attempt this as the CURRENT list never actually gets completed as I keep adding to it. Alas, It has to change as it feeds into my anxiety and I`ve noticed due to external life stressors I have at the moment with work that my need to keep a list and hence also my anxiety has risen significantly.

Thanks for the recommendations on the books, I will see if I can get hold of them, It`s on my "To Do" list..... Joking!! (But not really!!)

LegacyUser

Hey OP,

I was diagnosed with OCD a few years ago. It manifested like yourself in a perfectionist attitude to life, and caused a lot of stress and anxiety.
I attended Congintal Behavioural Therapy for it, and was made aware of "safety behaviours" that I would do every day that I considered normal. They were in fact, like your list keeping, feeding my anxiety.
Try to stop the lists as much as you can. Also try to remember, nobody cares what you're wearing, whether your bed sheets are ironed, or whether you paid all your bills before they even came in.

99% of people are thinking about themselves 99% of the time.

Fakediamond

Have a look at Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, it's not the same as OCD. I don't know if you fit the profile, but it's worth researching.

LegacyUser

I`ve deleted my list!!..... Well kind of!!

I`ve spent a good bit of time now over the last few hours researching perfectionism, Obsessive compulsive disorder and also obsessive compulsive personality disorder. I`m certainly no psychiatrist and cannot diagnose myself from internet research but I would be inclined to think that my traits are more geared towards obsessive compulsive personality disorder rather than OCD perfectionism. As the above poster mentioned , I definitely seem to be displaying a type of safety behavior by list keeping. When i do this, I feel in control of my life and am preventing things going wrong or preventing disaster happening.

I assessed my "To Do" list earlier which I had roughly 20 items on and could see that in reality only 4 of them items were very important things that i had to remember to do and the rest were absolute nonsense that would not effective my life in any way if they never get done. I have always kept my list on my phone so have chosen to put the 4 very important items on a sticky note list (Yes I know another list!!!!) which I know will be getting done this coming Tuesday and actually deleted the list form my phone. This killed two birds with one stone really as it meant getting rid of 16 nonsensical things off the list that did not need to be there and it also removed the list from my phone where I would have easy access to check it up to 10 times a day.

Now I am aware that I put 4 items on another list but I felt these are things that i must absolute not forget to do on Tuesday and so kept these on a post it note. I am aware that I am most likely not going to forget what these 4 items are between now and Tuesday being that they are so important and all but I just couldn`t bring myself not to keep any list of these particular ones. Baby steps and all that....

I am hoping on Tuesday that after completing these four items that i`ll be list free (provided I don`t add anything between now and then, which I`ll be trying my hardest not to.)

I don`t envisage for a second that I cured myself after just a few hours of researching materials on the internet and am aware that there could possibly be set backs as well as regressions but for day one of attempting treatment, I feel very proud that I at least got the list off my phone and also reduced it from 20 items to 4. I feel that has been a very good start to "exposure" in treatment.

I have to say, without a doubt than even just over the last few hours since doing so, it has been mixed emotions of a moderate level of anxiety but also lower than expected about having reduced / deleted the list and also with some feelings of joy and burden removed.

Hopefully I can keep up progress on a daily basis and get more and more exposure in....