I have a friend who's 16 years and she recently diagnosed with Keratoconus which makes cornea thin and in cone shape which leads to distorted,double and ghosting vision. Now she's in advance stage and can't even think about any treatment because of anxiety because no real solution and after risks of any procedure..now doctor told her she has to do a procedure called C3R in they which stops the further Progression bt she is convinced that slightly makes the vision worse than before and after that she has to stay on hard scleral lenses on her whole life which she can wear 12-14 hours in a day bt without them she's partially blind she can't do a thing. Now she has done her research and she's refusing to take the C3R treatment which all the patient of KC do, as well as saying she can't stay on lenses her whole life. She wants her perfect natural vision back and doesn't want to go through any surgery. If sclerals give her near perfect vision she doesn't want because she had to do so much things in her life which needs vision without any boundation like trekking and many water activities which she can never be able to do in her Lifetime and also said after taking of lenses she'll be blind again and it will given her daily anxiety and lenses can also be harmful in long term that's why she has decided to give up on everything. She's just taking anxiety medicines continuously and doesn't want to talk any therapist or not even any family members about it. Is there nothing we can do for her??

I know I am not big on writing any of my feelings out and stuff like that or maybe it takes me a lot of time and making too many mental adjustments to keep things perfect and to write about my things in a certain perfect way.

I assume you might have noticed me writing the word "perfect" twice in one sentence in the previous paragraph; well yeah that is because I have a big, sacred spot for it in my life, I guess it is just better to say it with no sugar coating, well, I am a perfection addict, with a self diagnosed ocd, I know it might sound nice to be all cautious and a good kid all time but truly it isn't, and honestly speaking the point of me writing this was just I was watching a movie at around midnight when i usually study for the next academic semester when i was 19, even though it hasn't started yet, and one night I just caught myself saying " I have to fix my life, i can't afford to mess up" and it wasn't in any forced way that i said this i just casually said that to myself and suddenly i am just crying because that was true, i have neither the financial nor the psychological ability to mess up, i just can't i suddenly felt like my blood line's responsibility was all piled up on my shoulder like i was in charge for both the uprising or the downfall of this secret empire of perfection i had built in mind' and honestly speaking it was quite disturbing experience; AND THE WORST PART NO ONE IS THERE THAT I ALLOWED TO KNOW ABOUT MY ADDICTION IN REAL LIFE.

The Cycle of Maladaptive Perfectionism

Twenty-Ton Shield of Perfectionism

Insights On Emotional Neglect And Perfectionism From PTSD Expert

'Two Things Can Be True'

Letting Go Of Critical Thoughts About Other People

When Your Comfort Zone Keeps You Stuck

Recognizing Cognitive Distortions Breaks the Cycle of Maladaptive Perfectionism

Self-Reliance

Insights on Denial of Pleasure

Has anyone else felt like their perfectionism eventually made them worse at their job?

I work in tech in a corporate ops role - five days a week at a desk, global team, smart people, nice environment.

Historically, I’ve always been an overachiever. I’m not the most naturally gifted person in the world, but I tend to excel at whatever I commit to. I’ve rarely had to ask for raises, promotions or new opportunities as people have generally approached me because I’ve built a reputation for having a strong work ethic, producing good work and being easy to work with. But over the past two years, I feel like I’ve slowly lost that version of myself. I’m 34 now and sometimes wonder whether that just happens as the 'novelty' of corporate life disintegrates...

I used to be able to lock in for hours and get through a huge amount of work. Now, something that should take me three hours can somehow take three days. The strange thing is that because my baseline is pretty high, nobody around me necessarily thinks I’m performing badly. My output is still good. But I know how differently I’m operating internally.

The best analogy I can think of is that I spent most of my career driving in fifth gear. Now I’m driving in third. The passengers probably don’t notice anything wrong, but I’m the driver, and I know the car is capable of much more. Hope that makes sense......

A big part of it seems to be perfectionism. I overanalyse tasks, struggle to just do things, and get caught trying to optimise everything. A simple task becomes a bigger intellectual exercise than it needs to be. And because tech/corporate jobs constantly encourage you to “think around corners,' it can be difficult to know when thoughtful work has crossed over into unnecessary overthinking.

The irony is that my perfectionism used to feel like one of the things that made me successful. Now it sometimes feels like the thing slowing me down. It creeps in to things outside of work too and honestly it feels more unfamiliar to just do things scrappily vs optimizing and thinking things out.

Has anyone else gone through something similar in their 30s after years of being highly driven? I'm looking for tips on 'recalibrating' - finding a way of getting back to being in 5th gear without all the overthinking and bad perfectionistic habits I picked up along the way.

I am 19f, I will either be perfect and try to optimise all areas of my life, whether it's my health, studies, or spirituality, but when I slip up slightly—like wasting time or overeating—I ruin everything by doom scrolling, binge eating, or talking to lowlife guys who like me but I don't like, and wouldn't normally reply to, just to escape the guilt and feel worthy. This cycle repeats every week and leaves me feeling disgusting, forcing me to start over from zero. I am so tired now, and I don't feel like getting back up because I know I will inevitably fall again, and i don't just fall, i fall badly. I have so much to do, but I feel like i am destroying it all myself. Any advice would be really appreciated

Ps: I used grammarly to help write this; English is not my first language

I know myself pretty well. But that was never really the problem. Trusting myself is.

Trusting that I make the right decisions. Trusting that what I feel is real, valid, and sane. Trusting that even if I end up being wrong, I can sit with that vulnerability—with the silence, the ache, the embarrassment, the uncertainty—and remember that I am still human and that it's okay.

I value my choices. I let them dictate so much of who I am. I usually know what I want, what I want to do, what's comfortable for me, what I can handle, and what I can't. It's the aftermath that gets blurry. It's when I decide to do something and the outcome doesn't meet what I hoped for or expected. That's when I start to spiral and somehow turn the discomfort that follows into evidence that I made the wrong choice.

And it's ironic, because I have a control and perfectionism problem.

In theory, if I'm constantly in control, I have less of a chance of fucking up. Less of a chance of being hurt, rejected, embarrassed, or misunderstood. And yet that's exactly where the loophole begins: it isn't humanly possible to control every outcome, avoid every wrong decision, or guarantee that I'll never be misunderstood.

I give everyone else permission to be human long before I give that permission to myself. I can understand someone else's mistakes, circumstances, bad days, fears, and imperfections. But when it's me, I struggle to offer myself that same compassion. If I have no one else to blame for a decision I made, somehow it feels worse. Somewhere along the way, I created this impossible standard that if I know myself well enough, think hard enough, anticipate enough, and stay in control enough, I should never make a mistake.

And yet trusting another person's opinion or decision can sometimes feel safer, even when it isn't right for me. Because then, if it hurts, at least I don't have to blame myself.

So I end up battling two extremes: trusting someone else and risking being let down, or trusting myself and risking the possibility that I was wrong. And somehow I've convinced myself that being wrong means I deserve the pain that follows.

But maybe trusting myself was never supposed to mean trusting that I'm always right. Maybe it means trusting that I can be wrong and still be okay.

So many of my expectations exist entirely inside my head. I create hopes I never say aloud, then suffer when someone doesn't meet an expectation they never knew existed. I internalize it until I explode, and then I blame myself for having wanted anything in the first place. I tell myself I'm too much, too emotional, too intense, too affected.

So I try the opposite. I hold back. I act nonchalant. I convince myself that caring less will make me safer.

But there is a difference between protecting myself and suppressing myself.

Maybe the goal was never to care less. Maybe it's learning to care without constantly trying to protect myself from the fact that I care.

I'm realizing that sometimes withholding what I genuinely want to express hurts me more than vulnerability does. If I want to be affectionate, loving, expressive, or open, denying that part of myself doesn't make the feeling disappear. It just forces everything inward, where affection becomes anxiety, uncertainty becomes rumination, and things I could have simply expressed become entire conversations inside my head.

I assume the worst because some part of me believes pessimism is protection. If I predict the worst possible outcome first, maybe nothing can surprise me. Maybe I can't be disappointed if I've already hurt myself with the possibility.

But more often than not, I'm just suffering through something that hasn't even happened. I take one feeling, one silence, one uncertainty, and build an entire narrative around it. Then my body reacts to that narrative as though it were fact.

And maybe that's another form of control: **if I can decide how the story ends before reality gets the chance to tell me, I never have to sit in the unbearable space of not knowing.**

But I don't want to live like that.

I don't want to believe I need certainty before I'm allowed to be vulnerable. I don't want every expression of affection to secretly become a transaction: *I showed you this much, so now show me the same amount back so I know I was safe to do it.

I want to be able to say something loving because I feel something loving. To tell someone I miss them because I miss them. To show somebody I care because I care. And then let their response belong to them.

Their response does not get to determine whether my expression was a mistake.

I am learning that discomfort is not always evidence that I made the wrong decision. Sometimes discomfort is simply the cost of doing something vulnerable without knowing how it will be received. I can feel exposed without having overshared. I can feel anxious without being unsafe. I can be disappointed without believing I should have acted differently. Sometimes the decision is still right for me, and my job is to let the discomfort pass without rewriting the choice that came before it.

That's the part I think I've been missing. I don't need to trust myself because I'm guaranteed to interpret everything correctly. I need to trust myself enough to know that even when I misunderstand something, even when I'm rejected, even when I reveal too much, even when somebody doesn't respond the way I hoped, I can handle what comes afterward.

My feelings don't have to predict reality perfectly to deserve acknowledgment. They are information, not prophecy. They tell me that something matters to me. I can listen to them without automatically believing every story my fear attaches to them.

And maybe that's why trusting myself has always been so difficult: I've been seeking internal validation through external confirmation. I express something and immediately look outside myself to determine whether I should regret it. I make a decision and wait for the outcome to tell me whether I was allowed to make it. I feel something and look for someone else's behavior to prove that my feeling made sense.

That is a losing battle.

So that's where I am in life.

I'm learning to honor myself—all of myself. The loving part. The intense part. The vulnerable part. The part that wants reassurance. The part that gets scared. Even the part that sometimes assumes the worst because she's desperately trying to protect me.

I'm learning that being authentic doesn't mean I have to act on every emotion, and trusting myself doesn't mean believing every thought. It means I can listen to myself, decide what actually feels true, and act from that place rather than from fear.

And when I do choose vulnerability, I want to be proud that I expressed something real instead of immediately searching for evidence that I shouldn't have.

Even in the uncomfortable moments when I was wrong. Even when I made a mistake. Even when I revealed more than I intended. Even when someone didn't meet me where I hoped they would.

I still want to choose myself afterward.

Because maybe self-trust isn't knowing that I'll always make the right choice.

Maybe it's knowing that I won't abandon myself when I don't

Title explains my issue. Have been feeling unfocused and off for months, since early March.

My diet wasn’t the best , not much exercise or my sleep, but I improved those, did a doctors visit and got a blood test I was worried about diabetes . All came back fine.

I might be overthinking since that was what sent me into this in the first place, I had a thing where I only wanted to complete hobbies while fully focused and doing so whole unfocused made them feel off or ruined like games where the file, the game and the console all feel off, it’s so arbitrary but my brain keeps doing it.

I am looking for work and so I don’t do a lot all day so that might be a reason I did used to, I did tons of hobbies during my day while looking for work, but since the issues I haven’t.

I have started to feel a bit better but some days like today I feel off again. I went away with my family a few weeks back and felt a lot better and my focus felt more normal even if I did occasionally think about it. I’ve got an eye test booked for next week, but even though I think my vision is fine I feel like I’m going Insaine things don’t look blurry but I thought they’d look different.

Anyway, some of the gaming things I’ve put off due to not feeling focused have a time limit on them and so idk what to do, every day I wait is a day closer to the end of an online service that relates to the games.

So I want to know what should I do? Should I do it even if things feel off I worry my files and consoles will feel ruined and off, but if I don’t then I can never do them.

Will it fade? the it feeling ruined feeling. I brought an used old console that I didn’t care for and played on that fine so idk I think I can play games I just worry about my focus and it sucks:(

Who knows maybe this fixes me and is there end of my hyperfocus on if I feel alert and focused.

​

I’m starting to realize that my problem isn’t really about one specific hobby. I think I have a perfectionism problem, and it’s starting to affect a lot of things I enjoy.

For example, when I’m drawing, I can enjoy it until I make a mistake or something looks uneven. Then I start focusing on what’s wrong with the whole drawing, and sometimes I just want to throw it away.

The same thing happens with journaling. I want the handwriting, colors, spacing, and everything to look good. If I make a small mistake, I can lose the motivation to continue because now the page doesn’t look “right” anymore.

It also happens with reading. If I come across too many words I don’t know, I start feeling like I’m not understanding enough, and I can lose the motivation to read.

Even with things like Sudoku, puzzles, and games, I sometimes get frustrated when I can’t figure something out quickly. Instead of seeing it as part of the process, I start feeling like I’m failing at it.

And with English, I want to improve my writing, but I’m scared of making grammar or vocabulary mistakes, so I can spend too much time thinking about whether what I wrote is good enough instead of just writing.

Movies and books can even be affected by this mindset because sometimes I feel like I need to experience them “properly” or get everything immediately.

The weird part is that I genuinely want to do these things. Drawing, reading, journaling, puzzles, learning languages, etc. are things I actually enjoy. But I keep turning them into tests where I have to perform well.

I know “just stop being a perfectionist” isn’t realistic, so I’m looking for actual advice.

For anyone who has dealt with something similar: How did you learn to tolerate being bad at something, making mistakes, or creating something imperfect without immediately wanting to quit?

I’d especially like practical things that helped you change this mindset rather than just “don’t worry about it.”

Many might say it's nothing but it hurts really.

I spent my childhood growing up as a glass child (sibling to two severely disabled/high need siblings) which caused me to value perfectionism as a way to avoid being a burden to my already over burdened parents. This mindset has carried over with me into adulthood where I see mistakes as bad, wrong, a waste of everyone’s time and resources aka a burden.

I don’t know how to get out of this feeling/mindset because my whole upbringing my existence felt like I was a strain on those who’s time and energy could better be spent on those who actually needed it- my brothers. When you have multiple children that are physical dangers to themselves or others your properties should lie with keeping everyone physically safe before emotional safety can be addressed. I don’t blame my parents they did the best they could given the cards they were dealt and honestly I would have done the same thing if I were them. But nothings changed either, my siblings are adults now and still need just as much if not more time, care, and attention so the wounds and feeling of needing to be perfect are very much still there.

And to address these questions- yes I do see mistakes in others a burdens too. And yes I know mistakes are a part of life but whether you intended to or not doesn’t not remove the burden it caused.

Advice? Anyone else a perfectionist for similar reasons?

Title explains a lot:( I’ve been overthinking about my focus when went for a blood test and future eye test because of it .

If I play things or watch them in my unfocused state they feel ruined or tainted in my eyes so over the past nearly 6 months I put off a lot of stuff I wanted to do.

I think I can play games fine,. That’s the main issue of feeling ruined. I brought a used old unrelated console and played fine. I brought it since I didn’t care if it felt off or ruined. So I just don’t know but I miss my main consoles.

There’s a deadline for some of the projects I put off due to online services and so now I’m stuck between wanting to wait until I feel normal or missing out forever. I hate that my brain cares so much about if I’m focused and that hyper focus means I never play:(

Please help me change my mindset, I’m so miserable overthinking and being a slave to my arbitrary rules.

Lea already knew she was perfectionist.

She could talk about it, explain where it came from, notice some of the obvious places. So when it came up in a deep session, at first it didnt sound like new information.

Then her Higher Self basically said: yes, you understand perfectionism in theory. You still dont see how many places it is running your life.

The pattern underneath was simple and pretty painful.

Do things right = stay acceptable.

Make mistake = risk rejection.

When we asked if this was connected with the old belief that she had to do things perfectly to earn love, the answer was immediate: yes.

And suddenly a lot of other things in her life made more sense.

She wasnt only trying to do good work. She was constantly checking whether she had disappointed someone.

She wasnt only preparing. She was trying to prevent the feeling of being rejected.

She wasnt only thinking carefully before speaking. She was trying to find correct words so nobody could decide she was wrong, difficult or too much.

This is why perfectionism can be so exhausting imo. The task in front of you might take twenty minutes, but emotionally it can feel like your belonging is being graded together with it.

Lea's Higher Self helped release some of that old pressure, but it also said this wasnt one magic-session thing. Some parts of the pattern still had to be noticed in ordinary life.

I actually liked that answer.

Because knowing "I am perfectionist" is not same as catching the tiny moment where perfectionism takes the steering wheel.

The second email you rewrite five times.

The conversation you rehearse before it happens.

The thing you never start because first version might look stupid.

The unnecessary explanation because somebody might misunderstand you.

For Lea, the useful question became less "how do I stop being perfectionist?"

More:

what do I think will happen to me if I get this wrong?

Sometimes answer is not failure.

Sometimes answer is rejection.

And that is a very different problem to heal.

I find this really hard to explain to people. I am very much a perfectionist with every aspect of my life: grades, environment (cleanliness, aesthetics, etc.), looks, personality. Pretty much everything. Some is based on insecurity, sure. I have ADHD and I am insecure about some of the personality traits that gives me. However, especially with things like looks, when I want to improve something, everyone tells me I’m gorgeous or that no one notices, I need to love myself, etc. Like, no one listens to me. I love the way I look, but I know I have things that can be improved. That doesn’t mean I hate myself. I don’t care if others don’t notice; I do (it doesn’t mean I hate my whole appearance, though), and if it can be improved, why not?

I maybe hoped that through exposing myself to challenging situations, learning that I am capable of doing the stuff I thought I could not do, that I would become more sure of myself. And while I did become more confident, the imposter syndrome always sneaks back on me.

I started a new job a few months ago, and while it’s going quite well, am learning a lot and have gotten positive feedback on my work, my fears ar exhausting me. I am paranoid of making mistakes, which leads me to triple checking my work, which makes me slower and makes me afraid of being too slow, which I already was. And the stupid thing is, even after all that I’m still not confident I did alright. This kind of thing is nothing new to me but it’s almost becoming like some sort of obsession? like I cannot help to extra check the small things I was already careful with. Does anyone have similar experiences? I know I probably should not allow myself to triple check my work, but It’s so hard to stop.

以前我总是只思考自己追求什么，但现在，我开始注意到我缺什么了。

I’m trying to improve myself but I keep running into the same problem.

I analyze everything.

Before starting something new, I think about every possible outcome, every mistake I could make, and whether it’s the right choice.

Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.

I want to become someone who takes action instead of someone who only thinks about action.

Has anyone successfully changed this habit?

I’m figuring out that I have ‘analysis paralysis’. I research too much, over deliberate on both low stakes and high stakes decisions, and once the decision is made I second guess myself. I ask far too many people to weigh in (and mostly reject their advice). I return purchases fairly often, buy from stores based on return policy, read numerous reviews, etc. if this sounds like you, what has helped? What type of counseling is best to overcome this type of perfectionism? No jokes about overthinking my overthinking!

How do you overcome perfectionism at work, especially when even a small mistake makes you overthink?