Unlike with cognitive behavior therapy, where new thoughts help you overcome old feelings, many who are struggling with depression hope for positive, new experiences, and the positive, new feelings they elicit, to help them overcome old thoughts. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
If overthinking is making you worry about the distant future or obsess over your essence, whether you’re truly a good or bad person, then it should be considered harmful. However, if used to assess meaning and cultivate joy, then it’s a necessity. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
My overthinking mind plays an important role in motivating me despite my seemingly innate inability to find meaning in any particular thing. I learned to distance myself from my immediate feelings, including disappointment. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
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Even if you somehow justify a regime-changing war in Iran, you have to admit that these ruthless numbskulls aren’t the ones to be entrusted to engage in it.
We can make a similar case for romance. While many search for a spark, perfectionists have to be honest with themselves about two things: 1) You hardly ever feel it because of your expectations. 2) When you do, you’re eventually disappointed anyway. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
In perfectionism, love is the valley of an idyllic future but with the peaks of a tempestuous beginning. It’s one reaching but also feeling out of reach. And it’s the juxtaposition of “I need you but don’t love you” and “I love you but can’t have you.”
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As a perfectionist, it’s challenging for me to feel grateful for much of anything; most of the joy I feel stems from hope, as opposed to real-world experiences. Few of them turn out as wonderful as envisioned, thus few ever silence my mind. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
When people say they want something external to help them feel better, they tend to mean they hope for something to make them happy by silencing their overactive mind. While this is possible in some cases, it’s much harder with perfectionism. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
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Your feelings don’t always matter—again, unless we mean moderate-severe pain and/or dislike. For perfectionists, they may matter less than they do for the general population, largely because they’re often based on unreasonable demands. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
Unlike with cognitive behavior therapy, where new thoughts help you overcome old feelings, many who are struggling with depression hope for positive, new experiences, and the positive, new feelings they elicit, to help them overcome old thoughts. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
As a perfectionist, it’s challenging for me to feel grateful for much of anything; most of the joy I feel stems from hope, as opposed to real-world experiences. Few of them turn out as wonderful as envisioned, thus few ever silence my mind. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
To even say that a perfectionist wants immature love fails to capture the reality. For in reality, it isn’t love at all. Love, like every other perfectionistic fantasy, is some nonsensical hodgepodge revealing the perfectionist’s true desire: limitlessness. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
Buddhism teaches that while there is no self that survives death, the elements comprising us split apart and recombine to live on in a new life, which shouldn’t be confused with reincarnation, the process of the soul moving into a new body in the afterlife. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
The fantasies are fueled by a mix of naivety, grandiosity, low distress tolerance, resentment, greed, and wishful thinking. Sometimes, there’s little sense of how the world works; at others is the belief that one can and will be the exception to it. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
In the scene, Hart recounts a favorite book of his and says it taught him a valuable lesson: In love, one adores and the other allows themself to be adored. While this is a somewhat cynical take, it speaks to a significant truth. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
Perfectionists struggle with making sense of the world, fluctuating between extremes. This crops up in existential concerns, as well as more common ones. So, the world either feels magical or meaningless. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
Whatever meaning is, it must be wrapped up in your choices, and if it’s associated with others (which I can’t imagine it not to be), then they have to feel that you chose them—with your time, space, patience, and humility. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
What if that felt void more so represents the limits of your interpretations than your life or even life itself? What if it symbolizes excessive expectations, misinterpretations, rigidity, unreasonable self-doubt, and even mental illness? www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
In perfectionism, love is the thrill of chasing aloofness while bathing in admiration. It’s adrenaline but with security. It’s unconditional love with conditional acceptance. It’s comfort without the required vulnerability. It’s everything at once. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
Buddhist thinking is far from empty. It helps us grasp a middle ground between the extremes of nihilism and profound spiritual purpose. It teaches us that we may find the flow of meaning within the unavoidable chaos. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
In Blue Moon, Hart recounts a favorite book of his and says it taught him a valuable lesson: In love, one adores and the other allows themself to be adored. While this take is cynical, it speaks to an important truth: Love can’t exist solely on our terms. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
If I chronically feel empty in my relationship, I’m taken for granted. If I feel chronically empty in my job, it must mean it’s meaningless. And if I feel spiritually empty, it must mean that life is meaningless. But what if that void isn’t meaningful? www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
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“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist." -George Carlin www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
If we think of perfectionism as a response to one’s uncertainty about oneself, a strategy devised to conclusively prove one’s worth, then we can also consider it to be a response to one’s uncertainty about others, in particular, how much they care. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
What is love to the perfectionist? Is it accepting some limitation? No. Love is everything at once. Love is the thrill of chasing aloofness while bathing in admiration. It’s adrenaline but with security. It’s unconditional love with conditional acceptance. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
The absence of the certainty of a grand delusion of superiority is expected to produce a state of emotional emptiness in those with narcissistically-structured personalities. For them, life is “all or nothing.” This is true for all perfectionists. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perf...
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