30 Days of Truth, Day One: Something I Hate About Myself

As a way to encourage myself to be better about blogging on a regular basis, I've decided to take on the challenge of something called the "30 Days of Truth".  Basically, each day there will be a theme set out for me to write about.  You can see the full list here:  http://hope.gr/30-days-of-truth/.

Something I hate about myself...my list could go on and on.  There's the physical (my height, imperfect teeth, flat-footed, my weight, etc) and then everything else (the fact that I'm an night owl, far-sighted, scared of spiders, a complete cry-baby), but I will focus on my biggest issue:  perfectionism. 

I have for almost my entire life strived to be what I considered "perfect".  Straight A's, impressive jobs, perfect hair all comprised of this.  But as I got older my need to be perfect led to something awful: a full blow anxiety disorder.  I'd have an anxiety attack because of a test, because I was running late, because I got a pimple.  It'd strike when I was driving, sleeping, on a date, or working.  It got to the point where I more or less stayed home whenever possible so I simply didn't have to deal with anything unexpected but this then led to another issue: I felt completely trapped by my anxiety and this depressed me. 

My depression was never severe enough for me to want to hurt myself, but it did lead to some self-destructive behaviors that would then feed into my "I'm not perfect" induced anxiety (i.e. my weight and overeating were huge issues).  After several years of cognitive therapy and medication (which I've been off for over a year now - yay!) I'm more or less okay, but I still have what my mother and I affectionately call my "existential moments" which cause me to kind of mentally halt for a few days.  I've learned that when this happens I need a mental health day and I do just that - I take a day off from life and do nothing (it's healthy, you all should try it).

In the last few days I realized something else that my perfectionism has led to:  I'm completely scared to try new things because I'm afraid I won't do them perfectly.  I've never gotten over my need to be perfect in the academic sense which has led to procrastination (which I suppose is another self-destructive behavior).  This is something I'm going to have to work on.