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unhealthy perfectionism & neuroticism

superyoon1

New member
Joined
Jul 5, 2008
Messages
1
MBTI Type
ENFP
I just graduated from high school, and I (was) an unhealthy perfectionist. I found myself procrastinating because I doubted my ability to do well on schoolwork, I had some major self-image problems also...I wanted everything to be perfect...

However, I think I'm actually low on N. (I know for sure that I'm high on E, very high on O, high on A, and moderately low on C.) As a child (until) about the middle of high school, self-consciousness, perfectionism, etc was something totally foreign to me. But that SUDDENLY changed in 10th grade.

I felt these feelings that were totally foreign to me. For example, before soph year, my interest in women was just a thing on the side, nothing important. I started liking a girl a LOT that year. Second, before, I just went thru the educational process not caring too much about how I did...but later I suddenly found myself dreaming for Ivy leagues and "prestige" and success... Thirdly, I felt self-conscious about my appearance, something that I had hardly ever felt before...Lastly, I suddenly was besieged with thoughts about death/that whole existential crisis thing. Feelings that I had NEVER had before...suddenly I was wrenched by emotional turmoil. I felt a desire to live my life to the fullest, and I started thinking about what life meant more after that year...I learned a lot about myself, but I lost a lot too.

As a kid, I was praised a lot and felt pretty loved, but also had to live up to really high academic expectations...and I kinda did a lot of things that I didn't truly love to do, I just felt like I had to. I was generally a guy who wasn't really into the learning process as much as the learning itself, wasn't that organized etc...

The biggest trend I notice now is that whenever I became more perfectionistic/cared more about school, the more depressed and neurotic I became.

Am I really neurotic, or was my happy self as a kid (back then I didn't know any psychology/personality stuff) a better indication of my "true self?" Or was my neuroticism "masked" by the fact that people told me a lot of good things about myself, and when I finally faced stress and negativity, my true neurotic self burst out?

Thanks guys.
 

zark

New member
Joined
Nov 14, 2008
Messages
13
MBTI Type
istp
I noticed that no one is still replying in your query. But let me be the first to give some light.

I too is currently at this moment looking for answer on this site on why I'm being more neurotic the more I push myself to be serious in life, but I haven't found one yet, then I run into your post, it gave me an idea instead.

I know the scientific or psychological reason for these base on typology is that we perceiving types are more of a happy go lucky people, so it means that what our priority functions do is to gather information, rather than outputting. When we become serious, we need to output things, and when we do that we use our lesser functions, like for example to you it would be extroverted thinking, and that is to organize. I had learned that using our lesser functions for a long time stresses us.

So what can we do to be more happy? Probably be more happy go lucky and be our normal selves, but still be serious if needed.

I hope that help us.
 
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