r/perfectionism

So I been noticing somethings about me lately.

I'm actually not a orderly or a neat person. My study desk are messy, book shelves are not always tidy ect but recently I have been taking a break from socializing and giving myself a little me time to heal from some of my irrelevant problems. As I have more free times than usual I started to clean my house more often and I found myself wanting to be perfect while cleaning my desk, my bookshelves, my kitchen, my living room ect. But as I get back to normal, as usual I get bored and keep the house messy again. So what do you think am I a perfectionist or it was just a temporary perfectionism thoughs/actions?

Hi everyone. I’ve realized I have a problem that’s killing my love for gaming. Instead of immersing myself in the story or gameplay, I’m constantly obsessing over the picture quality. I can’t stop opening the menu to tweak brightness, HDR, or contrast. I feel like the image is never "perfect" enough, and it feels more like a chore than a hobby. If after completing the game I realize that the settings were incorrect, then my brain doesn’t count the game completion and considers it ruined. Has anyone else dealt with this "Settings OCD"? What mental tricks or rules do you use to just "set it and forget it"? I want to focus on the game, not the pixels.

Cognitive behavioral therapies, while, again, are crucial approaches towards neurotic expressions, can be quite ineffective on their own in addressing fundamental causes, complex cases, or when existential crises arise; particularly if severe traumatising experiences are linked to them. Somatic experiencing, psychodynamic, internal family systems, Coherence, EMDR therapy, and whatnot —which can be integrated into a larger, trauma-informed framework, such as a phase-based one, among others— would be better suited to heal from those griviences leading to neurosis while engaging into cognitive behavioral work to address the former.

>A Freudian (psychoanalytic) analyst would approach Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) by focusing on uncovering and resolving unconscious conflicts that are believed to be at the root of the symptoms. Unlike modern, evidence-based treatments like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), which focus on managing and changing thoughts and behaviors, Freudian psychoanalysis aims for deeper insight into the "why" behind the OCD. [¹]

>A Jungian (analytical psychology) analyst [for instance] would approach Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) differently from a Freudian analyst, though both share a focus on the unconscious. While Freud emphasizes unconscious conflicts and repressed impulses, Jung's perspective expands to also include the collective unconscious, archetypes, and the process of individuation. [²]

Jungian Quotes;

>If we follow the history of a neurosis with attention, we regularly find a critical moment when some problem emerged that was evaded .. ⌚

A teen patient's dream; >He is walking along an unfamiliar street. It is dark, and he hears steps coming from behind him. With a feeling of fear he quickens his pace. The footsteps come nearer, and his fear increases. He begins to run but the footsteps seem to be overtaking him. Finally, he turns around, and there he sees The Devil, in deathly terror he leaps into the air and hangs there suspended. This dream was repeated twice, a sign of its special urgency.

His interpretation; >It is a notorious fact that the compulsion neuroses, by reason of their meticulousness and ceremonial punctiliousness, not only have the surface appearance of a moral problem, but are indeed brimful of inhuman beastliness and ruthless evil, against the integration of which the very delicately organized personality puts up a desperate struggle. This explains why so many things have to be performed in ceremonially “correct” style, as though to counteract the evil hovering in the background.

>After this dream, the compulsion neurosis started, and its essential feature was that the patient, as he put it, had to keep himself in a “provisional” or “uncontaminated” state of purity.

>For this purpose he either severed or made “invalid” all contact with the world and with everything that reminded him of the transitoriness of human existence, by means of lunatic formalities, scrupulous cleansing ceremonies, and the anxious observance of innumerable rules and regulations of an unbelievable complexity. Even before the patient had any suspicion of the hellish existence that lay before him, the dream showed him that if he wanted to come down to earth again there would have to be a pact with evil. ⌚

>Once a young man came to me with a severe cases of compulsion neurosis, he produced a voluminous manuscript, which, so he said, contained the history and analysis of his case. He called it a compulsion neurosis quite correctly, as I saw when I read the document. It was a sort of psychoanalytical autobiography, most intelligently worked out showing really remarkable insight. It was a regular scientific treatise, based on a wide reading and a thorough study of the literature. I congratulated him on his achievement and asked him what he had really come for.

>"Well!", he said, " You have read what I have written. Can you tell me why, with all my insight, I am still as neurotic as ever? In theory I should be cured, as I have recalled even my earliest memories. I have read of many people who, with infinitely less insight than I have, were nevertheless cured. Why should I be an exception? Please tell me what it is I have overlooked or am still repressing. "

>I told him I could not at the moment see any reason why his really astonishing insight had not touched his neurosis… " .. there remains only one, perhaps quite foolish, question: you do not mention where you come from and who your parents are. You say you spent last winter on the Riviera and the summer in St. Moritz. Were you very careful in the choice of your parents? ” “ Not at all. ”

>“ You have an excellent business and are making a good deal of money? ” “ No, I cannot make money. ”

>“ Then you have a big fortune from an uncle? ” “ No. ”

>“ Then where does the money come from? ” He replied: “ I have a certain arrangement. I have a friend who gives me the money. ”

>I said: “ It must be a wonderful friend! ” and he replied: “ It is a woman. ”

>She was much older than himself, aged thirty-six, a teacher in an elementary school with a small salary, who fell in love with the fellow who was twenty-eight. She lived on bread and milk so that he could spend his winter on the Riviera and his summer in St. Moritz.

>“ And you ask why you are ill ! ”

>He said: “ Oh, you have a moralistic point of view; that is not scientific. ”

>I said: “ The money in your pocket is the money of the woman you cheat. ”

>He said, “ No, we agreed upon it. I had a serious talk with her and it is not a matter for discussion that I get the money from her. ”

>I said: “ You are pretending to yourself that it is not her money, but you live by it, and that is immoral. That is the cause of your compulsion neurosis. It is a compensation and a punishment for an immoral attitude. ”

>An utterly unscientific point of view, of course, but it is my conviction that he deserves his compulsion neurosis and will have it to the last day of his life if he behaves like a pig.

>He went right away like a god and thought: “ Dr. Jung is only a moralist, not a scientist. Anybody else would have been impressed by the interesting case instead of looking for simple things. "

>He commits a crime and steals the savings of a lifetime from an honest woman in order to be able to have a good time. That fellow belongs in jail, and his compulsion neurosis provides it for him all right.⌚

>The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. You promise yourself all the time new countries, new chances, wonderful things, and are lured on and on, living the provisional life. That is very typical of the specific psychology of the neurotic; part of the neurosis consists of that suspended life, or rather, the provisional life. I learned that term from a patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from their world. He said: " The trouble is, I am living a provisional life, and the name of it is Happy Neurosis Island, where nothing has come off yet. I am now forty-five, and I know I began my provisional life .. went to Happy Neurosis Island when I was seventeen. And I cannot be cured because, if I should remember again, I should wake up a boy of seventeen and have to realize that so many years had gone by wasted[neither did he enjoy a hedonistic life of boyhood and youth, nor did he accomplish significant achievements]inferred—I can never admit to myself that I've wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!— Now, I have hope and I can live. "

>I told him in the beginning that he would not put it through, because he could not bring off the sacrifice of thirty years; it is a bloody sacrifice to cut away thirty years of your life! He could have done it if he had wanted to be cured, but he didn't.⌚

>You see, it is very typical of human beings that as long as they are suspended and they have a chance to move on, they always have hope of finding the good thing round the next corner, so they never insist on having happiness where they are. But when you settle down and assume that now it will come off, you are up against a brick wall. Happiness does not descend upon you, it is even a considerable strain to keep quiet. And then you think regretfully of former times when you could escape and disappear somewhere in the clouds on the horizon. ⌚

>Carelessness of all kinds, neglected duties, tasks postponed, willful outbursts of defiance, and so on, all these can dam up their vitality to such an extent that certain quanta of energy, no longer finding a conscious outlet, stream off into the unconscious, where they activate other compensating contents, which in turn begin to exert a compulsive influence on the conscious mind.⌚

>Instinct stimulates thought, and if a man does not think of his own free will, then you get compulsive thinking, for the two poles of the psyche, the physiological and tegmental, are unsolubly connected. For this reason instinct cannot be freed without freeing the mind, just as mind divorced from instinct is condemned to futility.⌚

>More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and, in particular, compulsion symptoms. The pathological contents have a markedly unreal character, with a frequent moral or religious streak. A petty fogging captiousness follows, or a grotesquely punctilious morality combined with primitive "magical" superstitions that fall back on abstruse rites.⌚

>History > https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/how-long-has-ocd-been-around#h-people-were-describing-ocd-long-before-it-was-called-that

>Warning ⚠️ https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/ineffective-and-potentially-harmful-psychological-interventions-for-obsessive-compulsive-disorder/

[¹] 🔗https://www.reddit.com/r/psychoanalysis/s/b3bl817V0n

[²] 🔗https://youtu.be/bNFSqiadG60?si=fpuQhwLj9NWZGj3U

We often unnecessarily at times put so much of pressure on ourselves to achieve everything at such a young age

Fueled by early childhood experiences, where we were rewarded for academic excellence, led us to believe that we are capable of continuing the same

That if we were to continue to succeed academically, we would be rewarded for the same that lead us to strive for perfectionism

When you see yourself outperforming your peers, narcissism naturally occurs. You start thinking of yourself as superior and others inferior to you

When actually narcissism serves as a tool to hide one's insecurities they contain about themselves