Schizophrenia and perfectionism

I am obsessed with being perfect, even just a day sitting in a chair I have to be perfect inside and out

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No that sounds more like OCD - I know, I have it.

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I am a bit of a perfectionist and REALLY was one as a teen and late teen before the illness really hit me…that is, during my little golden age of being okay. I was not okay during most of my teen years. from 16 to 18 I was good…maybe too good. Something was bound to ■■■■ it up.

I am cool about some things and not cool about some things. I take my body seriously- I cannot/will not stop working out. I cannot/will not stop with school. I need things to do, hard things to do. Today I timed myself on a run because I felt like it. I am not even a runner, I’m a bodybuilder. I’m too big to be running very fast without getting injured, but it made a five day downward spiral come back around and I took a nap and feel much better and my symptoms are less severe.

Perfection sometimes happens, in my observations…a 4.0 is perfect. A 100 on an exam or paper is perfect. A picture of me after I go through cutting weight is perfect. That sort of thing. The way I sometimes handle a situation…perfect.

But other people wont be perfect no dont expect that unless you pay them to be perfect and they claimed to be perfect and thats why you’re paying them lol

Noted and agreed- I also have some OCD stuff going on. The obsession with my body, the obsession with checking the rearview mirror and locking my car and doors, et cetera.

I had Howard Hughes level OCD as a teen.

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so for me now i just surrender, the more perfect i try to be the worst i feel.

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The CBTs – especially REBT (see below) – will 1) help you dis-cover where those ideas came from, 2) show you that they aren’t true, and 3) help you give them up in favor of better ones

REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
Standard CBT – http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/About-CBT/252/

That said, the MBCTs will help you give up ideas, period. And that is where truly living again begins.

DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing

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what’s ur view on hypnothereapy…

If it were what Milton Erikson (the Big name) and others promised, it would be at center stage.

Maybe there was a time in my life when I tried to be perfect, but not any longer. I try not to make mistakes, but as for all szs it is so difficult to achieve perfection, I am happy if I am 70 % perfect or so.

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perfection is a myth… and a personal point of view.

A man make the most amazing stained glass window… his love… art… and skill are in this window…

and then someone else says… it’s too small or big or doesn’t let in enough light… not what I had in mind…

Some people use “perfection” as away to continue to be discontent. I’ve been learning to let go of perfection.

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I think I’m still a perfectionist to some extent and therefore, procrastinate. But I also think my mother and brother are more so in that they go over things with a fine-toothed comb. My Dad and I gravitated toward each other, I think, because we eventually learned to just enjoy other people, flaws and all.

Amen. (And as a soul singer I used to know often said from the stage, “If you’re gonna tell the truth, you might as well testify!”)

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I’m a very down to earth person. I believe in doing your best and being your best. I read a quote about perfectionism that it isn’t achievable but if you chase perfectionism, you can achieve excellence. I really like this quote and it kinda made me try even harder at the things I do throughout the day, my work etc. I do wish I was more detail oriented though, I skip on a lot of things sometimes, when I cook, sometimes I forget to put salt and sometimes I miss the little details in my work. It’s not a bad thing to be perfectionist. Enjoy it. If it’s making you sick, that’s another story.

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Bingo. “Too much of a good thing may not be.”

Use to be. Now it’s exhausting. Yawwwwwn.

I find a lot of perfection in music. When I find a song that I couldn’t imagine changing in any way. Those are my favorites.

Then some times I find a demo version and it changes my perspective. To see what they were working with in the beginning.

The record version:


The demo version: (More interesting lyrics)


This is totally different but is a precursor. (Again better lyrics)

When I had a thorough derealization experience, the world seemed so perfect. Of course, it was all a dream, or some sort of stage I was moving about in, but it was perfectly orchestrated. Everything fitted. At the same time as it was unreal, it was more real than reality. It fitted something else, and it did so perfectly. It is called derealization, but it was at the same time a realization, implying it was a realization of something else.

I had OCD for a while when I moved into my new apartment. I had to constantly make sure every item in the house was perfectly arranged to fit a certain style. It is slowly going away, though.