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I procrastinate constantly even though I'm well aware of why I'm doing it. I'm petrified of making a mistake, and probably the worst part of it is that even if I don't get shouted at for being stupid - I still think people think I'm stupid for it which makes me mortified nonetheless. The self-sabotage-so-I-have-an-excuse, see-you-can't-use-that-to-prove-I'm-stupid method.

And then I shame myself for being so stupid to sabotage (and be imperfect) in the first place.

I too was never good enough as a child, and I was told that I was an IDIOT because if I was smart, I would have magically known or done everything I was supposed to do. I somehow internalized this to mean if I wasn't STUPID, I would be PERFECT.

Weirdly enough this has made me mostly an over-achiever (Well, to everyone except for me. *I* am mortified I ruined my gpa by procrastinating senior year so much it dropped by  .09 . Now people will round down and say I got a "3.8" instead of a "3.89" when I had a "3.98", which means essentially I dropped my gpa by twice as much because the first number is all anyone will notice. Yes, I actually care this much about .09 on my GPA and I don't even have any reason for people to be care what my GPA even WAS right now <--- perfectionism everybody!!).

Here's a real perfectionistic doozy I've been dealing with recently:
I feel that "good enough" (read smart/perfect) people only try if they already are certain they will succeed - only stupid people try if there is a chance they will fail because they are so stupid, they think they can actually succeed (where obviously if they were smart they would know they would fail and wouldn't try!). So, if I try and fail, its not that I'm a failure - its that I am clearly an IDIOT because I tried.

Wondering if anyone else has felt this way and have any suggestions for how to convince myself to "try anyway"?

I logically know that the above thought is totally batty and truly successful people have failed constantly and don't consider failure a useful tool. But my inner critic doesn't care.

... and I suck at posting in forums rather than just being an occasional lurker, but I am going to try:

I just found this board and reading through it found that I really related to a lot of what people were saying. I had joined another similar board awhile back, but felt terribly guilty and uncomfortable posting as it was for survivors of "abuse" and being that I was "only" emotionally "abused" and feel uncomfortable using the term "abuse" I felt partly like an imposter and partly ashamed (Feeling like I was a really terrible person for posting like *I* was abused, who did I think I was? Clearly I'm just an overly sensitive cry-baby whining over nothing). I feel a bit that way now, too, actually, but the fact that this comes from Out of the Fog makes me feel a bit better as I'm pretty certain my father had BPD, and have occasionally visited the OOTF site many times in the past. I also relatively recently found c-PTSD and it really seemed to fit me.

About June of last year I got of my anti-depressants, and then immediately thereafter got into a fight with my friend's mother and lost my only close friendship where I live, excluding my boyfriend (not that she and her mother were particularly healthy people to be around - they are very likely narcissists). My mother, who I am very close to, moved back out of state in August. I've been really struggling with feeling depressed and lonely, but I don't want to go back on anti-depressants as they were making my hair fall out and I know it isn't a chemical thing so much as the fact I am very painfully perfectionistic, have low self esteem, and am in general making myself miserable. I just don't really know *how* to stop thinking the way I do - and I even have an undergraduate degree in Psychology! I both cannot currently afford a therapist (and I mean that, I'm leveraging everything I have for my current life plan that I really don't feel like going into in order to prevent having to defend what I'm doing - Its a very good plan, I just don't have a dollar to spare at the moment), and never trust them enough for it to work. I'm hoping maybe from here I can get some ideas on things to try.

I'm really struggling with feeling worthless and unproductive, while being trapped by fear of failure (and fear of success as well, which is apparently obvious to everyone but myself). I absolutely hate to try anything I don't already think I'm going to succeed at - I rarely do, and then when I do try I hold myself back and feel excruciatingly uncomfortable and inhibited at the same time. Considering I highly value people who are unafraid to fail first and who take risks, and I 100% believe success is dependent upon failure, I feel like such a failure that I can't even TRY much less TRY and FAIL and TRY AGAIN like I should be able to if I was "good enough".

To add insult to injury, I am still grieving my father's death and part of me still does feel like it was my fault. Though it was him and his side of the family that caused most of my emotional trauma growing up, I really miss him. He was the only person who was any good at cheering me up or making things seem less scary / freak-out worthy even when I was having panic attacks. It also sucks to think of all the things he will miss in my life, as he died of a heart attack not even a month after my 24th birthday (I just turned 26).

While I logically know that it wasn't my fault - that he was terribly depressed, wanted to die, and absolutely refused to go to the doctor - the fact that he died right next me and if I had just watched the stupid basketball game he had on (rather than the sci-fi show I was watching with earbuds on my laptop) I might have noticed and called 911 sooner still makes me feel culpable at least in part.  I'm not even sure of what his last words were, just the gist of them, and that really hurts.

I feel like I'm just holding on to everything by a thread and I hate it so much. I don't want to be sad anymore, or broken, or flawed.

I don't even know how to conclude this - I just seem to have gotten onto this forum and started rambling...

 

Hi Reluctant

I just registered and was feeling like I wasn't justified in posting when I saw your post. I'm wondering if maybe it's a common thing to doubt if your experiences really qualify as something that could cause c-PTSD (something like an internal gaslighting, perhaps, a dismissal of your own conclusions as 'crazy' or clearly wrong)...

My father too loved me a lot, and I feel bad using the word 'abused' because I feel like that is judging him as having been a 'bad person' rather than having done things that were hurtful. A shaming vs. guilting thing. Though I very much loved him and in many ways wish to be like him and remember all of the great things about him, that doesn't change how I felt I was constantly walking on eggshells and felt like the only way to ever really be 'good enough' for him was to be perfect (Ironically, part of the reason the rest of my family was so mean to me was because he was constantly bragging about me to them. I just never heard about that until after he died).

I'm not sure I really have a point there, as I feel guilty even expressing that my perception of his actions were as hurtful. I certainly perceived them that way, but I feel like I shouldn't say that because *I* shouldn't have perceived them that way. Like it's my fault/deficit for being too sensitive / thinking the world revolves around me too much - if I wasn't flawed I wouldn't have been hurt.

I don't want you to think I'm hijacking your thread, so I'll shut up now. Be gentle on my really long-winded attempt to show I relate!

P.S. I'm pretty sure my dad had a PD -  the one time that my mom got him to go to a therapist before they divorced, the therapist suspected he had BPD, which seems to fit.