Perfectionism and Autism?

Post Reply New Topic

Sometimes yes. Alot of times I will type a post over and over again. I try to make sure everything is spelled right and the message is clear. I also think is there too much is there not enough there. I get myself so worked up I will forget how to spell things such as of, as, this and other simple words. I try to make it perfect and sometime just give up all together.

I am a complete perfectionist. If the paper I'm writing on has even just a small ink smear, I recycle it and get a new one. I will rewrite things over and over again to get them right. I check my answers for everything twice. I don't know why, I've just been like that since I was about ten.

I can't answer to question of whether this is autism thing or just personality quirk. I am not expert on autism, i'm just autistic.

However, i answer this thread because perfectionism has been a major block for me in the past in terms of my ability to perform in my chosen task. I went to university to major in fine arts faculty, drawing specialization. The early years of my degree were okay, i was still learning, i wasn't particularly skilled yet, so any mistakes I made I just put down to learning in process. It was in the final year, and particularly more so in the years after I graduated and began to draw professionally, that it become a problem. Once I had achieved a certain skill level, any lapse, any mistake, any flaw, I would obsess over, chastise myself for failing to meet my own expectations. This became worse and worse as the years went on. I began to have performance anxiety every time I sat down with a pencil and sheet of paper to draw something. The anxiety became crippling. The pressure to perform, pressure that I put on myself... it very nearly killed me. Depression got out of control. Undiagnosed (at the time) OCD played into it as well.

The short conclusion to the story is that I quit. Quit drawing professionally. Quit drawing entirely. I may never draw again and I am at peace with that possibility. I have a job that is okay for me right now, totally unrelated to illustration industry or art work of any kind. It has flexible hours and understanding management. I can do it and when I come home there is no stress, no anxiety, no depression. It doesn't pay well but it is enough. Yes I am sad about it sometimes but I must value the health of my psyche first and foremost. Life is not worth living without will to live.

Writeing/grammer and all related have always been a hard struggle for me and I have learned to just deal with it, sorry everyone. With that said I have lts of art and hobbie related work that I will never show anyone becouse of simple flaws only I appear to see. I maybe show 5% of what I do, I am a perfectionist in the feilds of my personal intrests and can spend hours on something that can take someone else 5 minutes. One of the reasons I perfer to use hand tools for everything, drives my boss mad becouse I take longer but my work is always better and what I make lasts longer. I value quality over quanity, just feels right.

This is so much of a problem for me. The solution seems to be simple: keep going and do the finetuning when you've finished. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just isn't that simple for me. I can't seem to stop getting bogged down in details. I am compelled to deal with them before I can move on.

Maybe the fact that so many of us are obsessed with details accounts for why perfectionism can be such a problem for us.

I'm like this with my art work. I think I want every piece to be a masterpiece. So, there's no room for practise/ less than perfect works. So, I have quite a few sitting almost finished. There's a seascape, with a moon and a flat, grey dolphin shape. I've still to paint in the details of the dolphin (which is only a small part of the whole painting), but I'm frightened to start, in case I mess it up. And I have a painting of a rock formation, with a tiny area that needs a repair and just the finishing touches. But, again, I'm frightened that it ends up looking worse that it does just now.

Most artists practise and practise, but I've never done that, other than trying out techniques, on a scrap of paper. Maybe I'm afraid of waste too. Art materials are so expensive and stretching paper takes times and effort, so to then use it for something that's never going to hang on a wall is quite difficult for me.

I know my way of looking at it is completely wrong and I'm trying to get over it. I've got all of my week's housework done, with the intention of spending the last couple of days finishing those pieces and starting some more. Practice makes perfect, doesn't it. I really should tell myself this more often.

I hate practiceing as well, the idea my best work could end up on scrap scares and saddens me.

I´m a perfectionist, too. But I think it happens to have something in common with my OCD, not specifically with my (probable) autism.

My perfectionism is much more caused by my OCD than my AS.

I have this when I paint.

I could work on a picture forever, constantly just tweaking this bit or that. But I've actually learnt that after a point all I can do to a picture is make it look worse, and that I have to give up and some point and just accept it as it is without having to go and change every single little thing. If other people think it is good, even if I do not, then that is enough.

I like/hate writing. Nothing I write is ever good enough. I cannot, for the life of me, get it perfect. I can revise something one hundred times and I will still not be satisfied.

I never meet my own expectations, ever. The entire exercise of creativity is terribly depressing for me, actually. But I find that if I don't draw things, or write them down, then they clutter up my head and I think about drawing and writing too much, so I am compelled to attempt to be creative.

I cannot speak to whether this is an autism thing, a personality thing, a "me" thing or some other thing, but I can certainly say that writing is very difficult for me for this very reason. I agonize over word choice, rhythm, sentence variance, tone, and of course spelling and punctuation. Moreover, it is very important to me that I use the "right" amount of words -- no more, no less -- because I despise redundancy but also want to avoid sounding too practical.

Writing good essays and other academic work can take me days or weeks -- and of course I don't always have that time, and I am also a huge procrastinator, so I end up rushing myself and hating the final product. I often prefer to turn in nothing than to turn in sub-par work, because I'd rather be perceived as lazy than incompetent.

All of this is immensely more difficult when doing creative writing, in which rhythm, pacing and tone are doubly important. I have always had a natural yearning to pursue creative writing, but my perfectionism has made this difficult and as such I have never written more than a couple of pages.

I would say that it is definitely disabling for me, especially in academic or social contexts. I will have to take college English for a third time next year -- not because I didn't read or understand the material, but because I refused to turn in an essay I wasn't satisfied with. If anyone suffering from the same problem has any effective tips for me, I would greatly appreciate if you shared them.

When I was in school my favorite class was English. I was a perpetual procrastinator. At the same time I was a perfectionist. These two traits allowed me to excel. I would procrastinate until the night before my paper was due. I would write a first draft by hand then I would spend the night writing my paper out on my computer without even looking at my first draft. I aced the class. Where I work now I am under harsh deadlines all the time. I am never able to finish anything I do to my perfect standard but I allow myself to reach 90% which fits into the allotted time and more than meets the requirements.