How do you stop turning your ‘healing’ process into another project to perfect?
How do you stop turning your ‘healing’ into another project to perfect?
My therapist has said that it sounds like I meet the criteria for OCPD. I want to get a formal diagnosis.
My mind immediately starts thinking of the ways I can start organising my journey of ‘healing’. I don’t know how to stop myself from turning this into something I need to organise and perfect.
For example, I know that a healthy diet, exercising and proper sleep are crucial for good mental health. The problem is I have already been trying to perfect these aspects of my life for a long time. I will end up approaching exercising like this:
•Find the perfect exercise plan (planning always takes a long time for me)
•Plan the perfect days and time to exercise, analyse it against my week and other schedules and write them down in a planner
• Start performing the exercise plan \*\*
This is where my difficulties arise I cannot let myself do things slowly, I have to exercise and exercise for 3 days a week minimum. I either ‘go hard or go home’. This approach ends in two ways. I will start excessively exercising to the point I will hurt myself or burn out or if I miss a day I have failed. After I feel like I have failed it is very hard to keep going. I go into this shame spiral of not being able to accomplish a perfect routine, it is almost like a depressive state.
Does anyone else experience this?
I feel like my life has been a constant cycle of perfecting and optimising every aspect of it, but my go hard or go home approach always ends up crashing down on me. It is like I can’t do things half arsed. I have tried to do things slowly but it just feels so wrong and gives me so much discomfort. I don’t know how to stop myself from approaching everything this way.
I am concerned now because I really want to help myself and manage OCPD if that is what this is but my brain is already going a hundred miles an hour researching and thinking of the ways I can try to implement a ‘healing’ process.
Please help me! I feel like I’m stuck and I just go round and round in these circles and I can’t get out. How do I approach things differently??
Edit - Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply to me, I honestly appreciate it.