perfectionism

I think every person has some kind of morbid personality traits.  It's difficult to draw a line between sane and insane.

For example, my mom is a huge worrywart in certain areas.  When she locks the door before leaving the house, she hits her head or pinches her hand to sort of leave herself a solid memory that she actually did lock the door.  I'm not joking.  Without that ritual, she gets worried if she has really locked the door, the moment she starts walking off.  It sounds pretty morbid, but neither I nor my father has advised her to go see a psychiatrist.  My father instead has even taken the initiative in carrying out the ritual -- "Hey, don't we have to hit our heads?"

I think the reason we don't take the lock-and-hit too seriously is because it hasn't yet affected my mother's life too much.  It's not to the point where she can't leave the house because of the fear of being unsure of her locking habits.  Being addicted to a couple of hits on her head can't be that bad, considering all the problems humans are capable of having.

If I apply this criterion to my own morbid personality trait, however, I sometimes think I might as well only be a step away from the psychiatrist office.  I have a very very strong tendency towards perfectionism.  I hide it well enough in everyday life; no one thinks I'm at the morbid level, but lately it's actually making me suffer to the extent that I've felt the urge to confess it here.  (Not that I've ever felt too self-conscious on the internet.  Or anywhere, actually.)

The problem with my case is that

1) It consumes time.  It takes time to be obsessive.  And more than half of the things I'm obsessed about probably don't matter to me a month later.  So it's a plain waste of time.  Priority sequences get destroyed for this waste, and it's simply not worth it.

2) Makes me an unhappy person.  I think I'm pretty lenient to others, but I can be very very strict to myself.  And in areas that aren't even important.  I almost always have something on my mind that I don't like, or that makes me worried.  I can't live in the moment.

3) Triggers procrastination.  Since I want it all perfect, and I mean PERFECT, some stuff can seem like a huge task when in fact it's not.  (Clearly inherited from my mother; in her mind, snubbing out a cigarette can require a handful of firemen.  I often remind her that an ashtray is all she needs -- just for my own mental health.)

4) Makes me suffer from guilt.  When things don't go as planned, that is, when I spend an extra hour relaxing, I feel guilty -- too guilty to even bother getting off my butt.

5) It's not cool to be a perfectionist -- always tense and... just uncool.   I want to be the relaxed, laid-back type with a genuine smile.

Partly got over 3) and 4) but they still come back once in a while.  1) and 2) are the problems I face not just sometimes.  It's kind of ironic that I want to be perfect at not being a perfectionist, but...  I really want to do something about this before I become neurotic or something.

I'm not going to proof-read this, just for a change.