I can't keep living this way, driving myself to the ground with perfectionism. Putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect, I can't breathe. Constant rigidity. I'm miserable day-to-day, striving for unattainable ideals of happiness and success. Peace and placidity evade me. How can I change everything I am? My very being. Everything that led me to this point - the "standards," the self-discipline, the restricting - threatens to take it all away as I melt into a profound paralysis. I hide behind these ideals terrified of failure, of falling short of greatness. I can't breathe, the walls are closing in, and I have to face how flawed I am. I want to be someone else, but I so desperately want to be the perfect version of me.
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@wabisabi02478 You really speak to the profound distress of battling crippling perfectionism. In relation to another post in the "Stigma" thread, this certainly isn't what the layperson's definition of perfectionism is (!!!) and the fact that such great distress like you describe is invalidated by people using OCD as an adjective when they really just mean "particularity" is disappointing and needs to change. Thank you for sharing your raw experience with perfectionism––I hope it inspires others to reconsider casual use of the words OCD and perfectionism.
@wabisabi02478 It sounds like some genuine suffering, and it's very relatable and beautifully written.