[ArcheM]

Half-past 2 at night, today I had an impulse to try my sort of hobby again, which is game development, which I had to abandon due to obsessiveness and perfectionism, essentially. I looked at a project which I gave up on previously, and thought I made some headway, but sort of got stuck again, and I can't fall asleep because I got up late, and I hate my hands which is related to my skin-picking problem, but more importantly, that gamedev project has been stuck in my head, to the point that I don't even know if I care about it, which is really just compounding my misery. And I'm finding it really hard to focus on anything else or get interested in so as to be able to drift to sleep. I hope posting this and reaching out to virtual people will add some perspective or something.

[scarlett35]

Oh I too struggle with perfectionism. I never related it to ocd before but maybe people with ocd are more prone to it. It is kind of an obsessive trait.

I think the hardest thing is to let go. When time passes you will hopefully give it less thought (this is what happens to me!) When I'm working on my project I get frustrated, I spend a bit of time away and can't stop obsessing over how to make it perfect. After a bit of time the anxiety passes though and I start to forget it. It's then I can think a bit more clearly. I can get to this stage quicker if I'm busy

I found something that helped me yesterday was trying to get into the mindset of just trying to improve my work rather than make it perfect. I just looked at each section and thought 'how can I make this a bit better than it was before?' Made small changes and then moved on. One of the problems I find myself stuck in is going over small bits again and again trying to make it perfect. I think key is accepting that you can only improve things and nothing will ever be completely 100% perfect.

Easier said than done. I know!

[ArcheM]

Yeah. The problem right now is that I have no project to improve. The process for me is starting with a complete idea, working obsessively on it until a point where either my abilities are exceeded, or the initial idea is proved to be not that good, then giving up in complete mental chaos and frustration... And sometimes there's a bug that I have to hunt for hours or days, and I suspect that doesn't help my general mental health... It would be better to get distracted with something, but that's the problem with obsessiveness. And with this "fit", I told myself to only solve this one problem, but then I just couldn't stop because it's connected to other things and I kept going until complete exhaustion and misery.

[Fuzzybear]