Overachieving and Perfectionism

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Does anyone on here feel the need to constantly overachieve in school and/or college? For me, I've been striving to be an excellent student since I was in the fifth grade. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my Aspergers, but that innate desire has stuck with me for years. I became a national honor student in my eighth grade year, won over 60 awards throughout my schooling career, graduated high school with a 4.85 GPA, and have done much more. However, I can never feel completely satisfied with my accomplishments and always want to strive for more no matter how burned out I may become. I've actually experienced burnout on many occasions, but, even at the risk of my own health, I'm still a workaholic. The only reason I believe that my passion for school/work has been so great is that I've never had many friends in life. I used to have a lot in elementary school, but, when I reached middle school, I was bullied a lot and dealt with a good amount of trauma. My social life hasn't been great since my last year of elementary school (2009), and I think I have subconsciously substituted friendships with academics to fill in that void. Is there anyone else here going through similar situations like I am?

It sounds like you've achieved enough. Take it easy for a while.

Yes, greatly so. So much that I tell people who want to hang out with me no all the time to get work done. My logic is that, a true friend will not hate me for understandably preferring to work on things that impact my future than go bowling or whatever with them.

I was a bit like that in middle and high school, but things got a lot more complicated at university. I went well on admission exam twice, but decided to drop out for a second time and didn't went so well (still enough to get accept as #2 in a less prestigious but public university). I still have a good average now, but I don't really feel I'm accomplishing anything because it seems that social life has a huge impact on academic success at this point – you need to have contacts and be friendly to get in projects and everything, I'm bad at it. At school, it was just get good grades and be good at exams.

Also, during high school I can see now I was a really good student but I never felt like that. I got 3 prizes in National Math Olympics but I kind of felt everyone was getting it, and I didn't even liked Math. My average was over 9 (out 10), and I got accepted at the best university in the country during my second year... and I still felt lazy and insecure. At the same time, I was really affectionate by my own results because it somewhat gave me a identity. Sometimes I wonder if I dropped out University just because I wanted to have the feeling of achievement for being accepted again and again (because I only stopped when I didn't got accept at my first option). I always enjoyed doing tests.

Oh my gosh, perfectionism and comparing myself to overachievers caused me so much trouble in school. It took me years to break the cycle of comparing myself to others, and even now I catch myself doing it occasionally. It was so bad that I would review my notes over and over again until I remembered every single detail, and I would beat myself up every time I didn't remember something correctly. I used to think that if I didn't get all As on my report card, then I was stupid (which in itself is a stupid thought!)

My standards were based on what everyone else was doing, and I felt that if I didn't fulfill that standard, then I would be a failure at life, perpetually behind.

Honestly, my bad social skills are what hold me back from achieving more. At least, that's how I perceive it. I got good grades in high school, but I was not in any advanced classes or anything, which didn't help my comparing-self-to-overachievers problem.

What helped me was to tell myself to just focus on what I'm doing, and not to worry about anyone else. Only compare myself to myself.

Yeah, but I do it because my parents have super high standards for my performance not because I actually have any innate desire to be the best. Im super lazy at heart, but if I dont please my parents then all hell breaks loose and its not worth it. Im naturally pretty competitive, so a part of me hates "losing" or doing worse than other people. So I always want to be the best and have the best grades and make my parents proud, but I dont have any desire to work hard for it. Eh, typical teenager.