Re:Being a Noob
by munificent on Thursday January 30, 2020 @01:31PM
(#22193876)
Are you me? Are you seeing my therapist too? :)
Yes, this is exactly the experience I'm going through right now. My "I'm only as good as what I do" mindset got me pretty far and does materially help me have a successful career which in turn helps me take care of my family well. But right around mid-life crisis time, many of those low-self-worth chickens came home to roost. Parenting meant I no longer had enough free time to constantly make and do things to pump up my self-worth through actions. My self-esteem dropped and I took that resentment out on my wife and kids.
Thanks to a very good therapist, I'm making a lot of progress now.
> Perfectionism is a lot more insidious than most folks realize.
Like most personality attributes I think it has functional and disfunctional characteristics. My perfectionism helps me be a hard worker and create things that help other people like books and open source stuff. It provides real value to my life and the lives of others.
But it also makes me feel like what I do is never enough and by extension I an never enough. And it makes it very hard for me to explore new activities because I dislike the feeling of not being good at something. Figuring out how to manage the unhealthy aspects while still retaining some of the healthy parts is a challenge.
Yes, this is exactly the experience I'm going through right now. My "I'm only as good as what I do" mindset got me pretty far and does materially help me have a successful career which in turn helps me take care of my family well. But right around mid-life crisis time, many of those low-self-worth chickens came home to roost. Parenting meant I no longer had enough free time to constantly make and do things to pump up my self-worth through actions. My self-esteem dropped and I took that resentment out on my wife and kids.
Thanks to a very good therapist, I'm making a lot of progress now.
> Perfectionism is a lot more insidious than most folks realize.
Like most personality attributes I think it has functional and disfunctional characteristics. My perfectionism helps me be a hard worker and create things that help other people like books and open source stuff. It provides real value to my life and the lives of others.
But it also makes me feel like what I do is never enough and by extension I an never enough. And it makes it very hard for me to explore new activities because I dislike the feeling of not being good at something. Figuring out how to manage the unhealthy aspects while still retaining some of the healthy parts is a challenge.