ocd & perfectionism

If anyone remembers the post about my perfectionism, I am still suffering the same "symptoms" though they have become better gradually.  I'm doing psychiatry right now at school and have come to the conclusion that I am a borderline OCD-related perfectionist.  When I realized my "symptoms" were OCD-ish the other day, I looked up "OCD and perfectionism" right away, and the articles that came up made me feel like I had finally found someone who understood me.  Whenever I looked up perfectionism, the descriptions never felt quite "right", nor did the descriptions of OCD.  I don't know why I never linked the two together until now.

Here are some abstracts from the articles:

OCD & Perfectionism

OCD leads you to think too much and this leads you to compulsions. Set a timer and when the alarm goes off, be impulsive and stop what you are doing. Go do something else. Plan ahead so that you know what is next on your schedule. You can say something like: “This will need to be good enough right now. Tomorrow I’ll pick up from here.”
→ I have been trying something similar over and over for the past year!

 “Part of who I am is my perfectionism. I’ll lose my identity. I want to continue to achieve, be organized, be detail-oriented, and be determined. I don’t what to change who I am.”
→ I have said this before more than once!

Refocusing on what matters in your life can be helpful.  Life is meant to be enjoyed despite mistakes and problems.  At the end of the day, what do you really care about? If it is happiness through perfection, you may wish to refocus and resolve that happiness is a state of being and mind. It’s an attitude.  You can choose to obsess, redo, and worry. Or you can chose to spend your time on what really matters.
→ This is exactly what I have been saying to myself for the past year!

Perfectionism: Are you sure it pays off?

Perfectionists report that they usually are identified by others as being detail oriented
→ I don't know how many times my parents have told me not to focus on the details!

Everything is Equally Important: Because perfectionists want to do everything well, they have a difficult time prioritizing tasks.  All tasks seem equally important, and the same level of detail, effort and energy is brought to all tasks.  If you asked a perfectionist to identify some tasks to complete at 100%, some at 80%, and some at 50% they have a difficult time moving tasks out of the 100% category.
→ This is exactly my problem!

if you projected yourself into the future and look back, what would you like for your life to have stood for?  What do you want to be remembered for?  Based on this then, one begins to form their A list (tasks to be completed at or near 100%), a B list (tasks completed at 80%), a C List (tasks completed at 50%), and an F List (what to let go).
→ Again, I have been trying to do this for the past couple of months!

Repetition Until it Feels/Looks/Sounds “Right”:  Because tasks have to be without mistakes and feel/look/sound “right”, perfectionists tend to over edit, review, and repeat compulsively.  This behavior is also intermittently reinforced as a teacher or boss will say that it was the best paper/report in the class/office.  It is unacceptable for a perfectionist to let others see “rough drafts” or “works in progress”.
→ This is another problem of mine!

OCD and Perfectionism

Finally, unhealthy OCD perfectionism may help to perpetuate obsessions. For instance, like many people with OCD you might believe that you must have complete control over your thoughts. As such, when a bizarre or distressing thought pops intrusively into your mind, you label these thoughts as dangerous because they are out of your control. This causes you to monitor the thought even more closely, which can help to create an obsession.
→ I could never decribe this symptom better!

Practice Giving up Control: As part of cognitive-behavior therapy and/or exposure and response prevention therapy, you may be asked to participate in exercises designed to build your capacity to tolerate a loss of control. This can involve being prevented from checking something or adjusting something until it is "just right." Although this can initially be extremely distressing, over time you will gain more confidence in your ability to tolerate a loss of control.
Adopt a Mindful Stance: Mindfulness emphasizes being less “invested” in our thoughts. Accepting that we have less control than we think over our thoughts can be very helpful in reducing the distress that often accompanies intrusive thoughts. Mindfulness meditation exercises can help to promote a more objective awareness of our day-to-day thoughts and emotions.
→ This is exactly what I need!

Anyway, if anyone reading this feels like they're reading about themselves, here is a list of signs that show you may have OCD-related perfectionism.  In my case, sign#3 (rereading passages multiple times in order to make sure I’ve understood them properly) began to surface when I started studying for university entrance exams and instead of avoiding to read (like it says in sign#4), I read and read and read, trying to overcome the symptom and actually, it kind of worked, though I'm still super slow with calculations -- I was by far the slowest in class when we had to do a speed calculation test for our pharmacology experiment.  Also, when I understand something too quickly (especially when others seem to have difficulty) I tend to doubt that I really understand it; I keep asking myself if I really thought it over and understood it "fully" and it's really tiring because I never know what the "full comprehension" is or what it feels like, and even if there is such a thing, I know it is often times not required to be able to "function".  The passage below almost gives me a sense of relief!

Even though your mind seems to tell you there is such thing as “achieving perfection,” don’t believe it! Your OCD is lying. Sometimes clients say, “There are times I feel like I’ll turn over the leaf of uncertainty once and for all.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen.

The reason I say I have "borderline" OCD (when it definitely has caused some pretty strong anxieties) is that I usually don't care that much about what others think of me and thus I don't have a morbid fear of making mistakes, nor have I missed a deadline due to procrastination or the all-or-nothing spirit described repeatedly in the articles.  In short, my OCD has not quite bothered me to the extent of getting in the way of my necessary work.

I must say, however, that I am very glad to have reached a "perfect diagnosis".

sense of worthiness

Tonight, I listened to this talk by Brene Brown, recommended by a friend.  I've mentioned her book a couple of posts ago, and what I didn't like in the book, I didn't like in her talk.  Frankly speaking, I think she tends to dramatize her so-called breakdown.  But maybe that's just because I'm Japanese and sometimes every sentence spoken by an American can sound exaggerated (no offense; it's just a cultural difference).  Either way, that's not what I want to write about.  Below is breifly what she says (for people like me who aren't really interested in her personal stories but still want to know the essence of her talk in five minutes):

We all live for connection, but there's an obstacle called shame.

Shame = fear of disconnection.
"Is there something about me that if people know or see it they would think I'm not worthy of connection?"  The feeling of "I'm not smart/thin/pretty/promoted enough."

But in order to let connection happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen.

People who have a strong sense of love and belonging have a strong sense of worthiness -- they think they are worthy of connection.  These people have
1. courage = the ability to tell the story of who they are with all their heart; the courage to be imperfect
2. compassion = the ability to be kind to themseves because we can't practice compassion with others if you can't treat yourself kindly
3. authenticity = the willingness to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they are

Connection is the result of the above three.  Those people with a sense of worthiness embrace vulnerability and believe that what make them vulnerable make them beautiful.  They know the necessity of the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees.

The world we live in is a vulnerable world.  So we numb vulnerability with addiction and whatnot.  But we can't selectively numb feelings without numbing other emotions so we end up numbing joy, gratitude, happiness, everything.  We struggle to make the uncertain certain, to perfect ourselves and our children (when in fact, they are wired for struggle when they get here and our role is to tell them they are worthy of love and belonging despite their imperfection), and to pretend that what we do doesn't affect others.

Instead, what we should do is to let ourselves be deeply and vulnerably seen, which means
1. to love with our whole hearts even if there's no guarantee
2. to practice gratitude and lean into joy in those moments when we're wondering: Can I love you this much?  Can I believe in this so passionately?  Can I be this firece about this? -- just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say I'm just so grateful, because to feel so vulnerable means I'm alive.
3. to believe that we're enough.  Not when we're perfect, but just the way we are. 

...So how do we believe that we're enough?  I get it that if we feel worthy, we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable and hence find connection.  But how do we believe we're worthy?  This was the question I was left with.

The word worthiness hit me strong because the moment I heard it, I knew it was exactly what I lacked when I did what I most regret in my life: sleeping with someone I didn't even like.  It was just once, but the regret has haunted me for years.  I knew a guy was drooling over me, thought I could use him to make myself feel worthy, and ended up feeling used, probably because I let it happen when deep down my mind was actually saying no.  It's the most foolish thing I've ever done, and one of the saddest stories I've ever known --  I was not brought up by parents who loved me only when I was perfect.  They always, always loved me, no matter what, and still, I took their love for granted and thought I was not worthy of anyone else's love.

I don't think about it anymore, but when I do the pain is excruciating -- my imperfection regarding this mistake is almost unacceptable, though at some point I realized there was no other choice but to accept it and move on.

As a result, I no longer suffer to find the reason of my worthiness, but I still think it's impossible to love myself unconditionally.  I mean, you can't just sleep all day, do whatever you like, and say, well, that's me, I love who I am!  I know all I can do is to do what I can, keep doing what I must do to accomplish my dreams, however small or big they may be, and just do my best every day, because that's the only way for me to feel worthy.  At least, that was how I lived my life when I was still very young and never knew what it was like to hate myself.

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.

self-hatred

It's a beautiful night
We're looking for something dumb to do
Is it the look in your eyes
Or is it this dancing juice
Who cares baby
I think I wanna marry you


I've been hearing this song a lot lately.  If someone is going to ask me to marry him, I will most likely care whether it's because of a bottle of cheap booze or not.  I don't want him to say he *thinks* he wants to marry me.  Or that if I wake up and want to break up, that's cool.  But then again, I do like the carefree approach towards life I can see in Bruno Mars' lyrics - something I would call アメリカ式刹那主義 (the American way of living only for the pleasure of the moment).

It reminds me of the guy I slept with a couple of years ago when I hated myself.  Now that I think about it, I think his principle of living only for the moment and not caring about the past or the future seemed attractive because it was the time in my life when I was forced to think about my future and I was tired of it.

I didn't have a job, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I hated myself.  And when you hate yourself, you get sour and start to criticize all kinds of things.  Things or people that never would've gotten on my nerves annoyed me; I was almost always irritated, and I hated how my dad said I wasn't entitled to criticize anyone who had a job.  "At least they're supporting themselves," he would say.

"So I don't even have freedom of speech because I can't support myself?"  I decided to get a job and worked as a part time translator for a while.  All I wanted was to be free.  Free from my future.  Free from the idea that I had to have a dream.  Free from all the expectations - mostly my own expectations.

Thinking about it now, I did nothing to find a breakthrough but I did almost anything to get away from myself - until one day I slept with a guy I didn't even like.  And even that wasn't enough to wake me up.

"My life wasn't supposed to be this way." - a line I never pictured myself saying almost fell from my mouth.  I just didn't know what I wanted to do.  It was the first time in my life that I couldn't imagine my future.  I didn't know that not being able to picture tomorrow could be so tough.

I don't know how I overcame my self-hatred, or if I have, in fact, overcome it.  But if there had been a breakthrough, I think it naturally came when I became honest to myself.  By the time I realized it, I wanted to be a doctor and nothing else.  I still had some hesitations; I didn't know if I would be feeling the same a year later, but I decided to do what I could for the time being.  And a year later, I was in med school living a life I never imagined.

I still sometimes hate myself, but I think I was very lucky that I had parents who waited for me while I took my time deciding on what I wanted to pursue, and I want to thank them for still supporting me.  I guess I now see that I have no time for self-hatred.

ups and downs

My dad had to leave for France this morning so my mom and I drove him to the station.  While we were on the car, my dad asked if I wanted to go to the gym with him when he got back (because he had a free ticket) so I told him I was going to meet up with a friend.  And he asked which friend.  "The one who was worrying about her last name?"

Me: Last name?

Dad: Yeah, the only thing that bothered her was that her last name was going to change if she married her boyfriend.

Me: ...

Dad: The boyfriend was a rich artist and...

And I remembered my friend from high school whom I met last year - I think it was in January; just before or after I broke up with the ex.

At that time, she was studying art in New York and had come home temporarily during winter break.  She had done an internship at an office of a famous interior designer and had been asked to work with him after graduation.  She had broken up with the boyfriend she had been dating in high school (she used to show me things like lubes when I didn't even know much about sex) and was dating a guy she met at college.

He was an extremely talented painter; politicians and CEOs paid unbelievable amount of money to buy his works.  "Did you see my profile picture on Facebook?  He painted that."  In fact, she modeled a lot for him, and buyers asked him to introduce her to them at glamorous parties.  Her boyfriend was her soul mate, her best friend, someone she could never live without; she was so lucky to have him.  The only thing that had been bothering her was that she was going to have to change her last name when she got married - she didn't like her boyfriend's last name for a reason I forget.  She was also worried about whether she was going to have a daughter or a son.  She wanted a daughter who could model for her husband.  "I want a cute little girl."

She made me feel like the ugliest living being on earth.  She was happy with a bright career, a caring talented boyfriend, and didn't have to worry about money (she was from a rich family in the first place),  while I, on the other hand, had nothing but a dream to become a doctor.  I felt guilty that I was making my parents work to support my "dream" and I didn't even know if I could ever get into med school.  I felt awfully left behind, and when I honestly said so, she said she understood.

Really?  I don't think so.  I wanted to be happy for her; I wanted to stop comparing and just be happy for this happy friend but I couldn't do anything about my ugly feelings.

When we said bye, she said she would contact me when she came back for good, so I said don't.  "I'm going to be miserable if my life's still not on track, so can you just leave me alone until I contact you?"

I still haven't contacted her, though I guess my life is partly on track now.

Either way, I was still talking with my mom on our way back from the station, and she told me about this "bragging party" she attended recently.  It's a get-together thing between a group of people (mostly women) teaching Japanese to foreigners, and it's held every three months or so.  People gather and brag about what they've been up to but it's supposed to be fun because everyone is eager to know what others are doing.

My mom hadn't attended the party in a long time because she had been busy taking care of her mother and worrying about me.  Some people asked what she had been doing other than taking care of her mother, and she didn't have anything to tell.  There was an atmosphere that made her feel shameful that she hadn't accomplished anything over the past few years.

She actually went to the party to meet just one friend, but she told me about how another former colleague (who has mistaken herself as my mom's friend) kept bugging her once she told them she was picking up French again.  My mom hated how the colleague acted like she understood what it was like to have to take care of her mother and to have a daughter go away to another prefecture, while she kept bragging about how she had started learning Korean after her own mother had passed away and how her own daughter was working in a prestigious company.  "She was transferred to a branch in Nagoya.  She only knew Tokyo so she's having a rough time.  I went over the other day to buy her a new car..."

My mom soon decided to go home but at the same time, she remembered how she had acted last time she went to the bragging party.  She had lost weight from a successful diet, her daughter had just gotten in grad school, and her mother was still doing well with a lot of hobbies.  The colleague on the other hand, was taking care of her mother who had become senile.  They didn't talk much during the party, and soon, the colleague stopped contacting my mom.

All this reminded me of an article about Facebook depression; how people were feeling miserable when they were forced to read happy stories their friends had posted every time they logged in.

Obviously, there are ups and downs in life.  It might be hard to be understanding towards others in either situation, but I thought I should try to see things more objectively either way, because now I sort of see that even what I was worrying at the time when I met my friend would've been nothing for some people -- just like my friend's last name seemed nothing to me.  What seems big to you can be so small if you just try to see it from another perspective.  Something we always say but hardly ever understand, especially during rough times.