My perfectionism is disabling. I ban myself from doing anything I don’t feel like I’ll do perfect at. I barely do things I love and don’t know my interests well. I love people and mingling, but I grew up selectively mute until highschool and to this day I have a hard time being direct. I overthink all texts. I used to type one sentence for hours and not send anything. My humor is very underdeveloped because I don’t risk bombing jokes. There’s so much I won’t do unless someone is there encouraging me and enthusiastically approving of what I’m doing. I have severely low self esteem because of my level of perfectionism. I just want to hang out and chill with people and have interests that I act on.
Btw, what do you do when you need to do something you love, fast?
I dont think the comments necessarily grasp the specific nature of perfectionism all that well. Perfectionism in many cases comes from being in traumatic environments where independence becomes subordination and you are punished for breaking others’ arbitrary rules. As a result you adapt to these conditions where failing means punishment; you learn that if you want to try something you must not fail.
The way to get over perfectionism is to learn who you are by doing hard things you didnt previously think you can do and to be active in experiencing life and high intensity emotions. Its not that your low self esteem is caused by perfectionism, but low self esteem actually causes perfectionism.
You should if you can try to do some research into trauma itself. One of the most clear signs of trauma is perfectionism and it seems to me like healing the trauma will be the way for you to get over the hurdle of perfrctionism
