Anxiety Disguised As Perfectionism

I have come to realize something over the last little while: my constant striving for perfection is just anxiety disguised as perfectionism and I don’t really know where to go with that. I am sure I am not alone in this. I’ve read it’s common in women with anxiety and/or ADHD. While I do not have an ADHD diagnosis I definitely have quite a few of the traits that I have read about when researching ADHD in women.

I used to spend hours blogging and reading other peoples blogs. Mostly women my own age but that was a long time ago and the blogging landscape has changed so much since then. Now it is more about what you can do for others and not just a way to record what is happening with yourself and I kind hate it. Unless I am looking up hand lettering blogs or crafting blogs, then I like it.

I would also spend hours working on the design of my blog and designing other sites. Was I good at it? I don’t really know, but one thing was for sure I loved it. Now I really struggle with it because I can’t get past trying to be perfect and constantly feeling like I am failing at it. I actually built a website a few months ago for my portfolio. I know it’s actually pretty and looks good. But for some reason I still struggle with seeing it as not good enough.

I keep thinking that it’s not complicated enough and that I am not good enough to make money designing web sites. I know everyone has to start somewhere and that most designers started with small sites like that but my anxiety just keeps calling me an imposter and telling me that it is not perfect enough. It’s seriously frustrating because it’s something I really want to do. I really love my job as an assistant resident manager but it would be nice to make some extra money and have something to fall back on when we retire.

That was just meant to be a simple starter website to start building a portfolio. I never meant it to be anything more then that. I started it with the assumption that the next one I built would be more complicated and better and though I know that my anxiety just keeps beating me up over it and telling me it’s not good enough. I do remember doing this before when I used to blog. I would edit my blog and then I would get frustrated and I would wipe everything out and start again.

I even do it in my everyday life. I erased a hole in my work planner book. I was just trying to write an appointment in but I was so obsessed with my writing and how sloppy it looked so I kept erasing and re-writing it until I literally erased a hole in it! This is something I did a lot as a teen as well. I would get erasers and whiteout taken from me. Those bottles of whiteout that you used to use that got thick and gooey. I would put so much on that my paper would crack.

I have been like this as long as I can remember but somehow I have to learn that I can let things go and do them better the next time around instead of doing and re-doing and re-doing until I literally can’t take it anymore. I don’t know if I will ever get to that but I am really hoping I can.