Perfectionism and Excessively High Standards
Good related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvgfucVF5cU It seems I have caused a lot of mental anguish and stress for myself due to unrealistically high standards imposed from Narcissistic parenting. This manifests in many of the ways Dan talks about as far as these symptoms of spreading oneself too thin, making myself very busy, etc. It plagued my sex/romantic life as well, as far as the last relationships go, I would be broadly unenthused about the women and subconsciously pushed away, even though they were good people and partners, because I was only very mildly attracted to them physically. The practical makes sense as far as cutting tasks, etc. But it seems as far as my emotional reactions, both neurotic stress as well as ennui and anhedonia, comes from lingering ridiculous standards for my future. At some fundamental level, emotionally, I seem to get a sense of despair when considering the fact that: 1) I'm a research mathematician, and just an OK one at that, and it is to be expected that my income will be modest and job security tenuous 2) I'm an OK musician, and it is to be expected that busking and open mics are where I should aim to perform, experience says trying to perform at popular venues or release music online is a waste of everyone's time. The healthy and mature Stoic perspective would be to dedicate my life towards enjoying math and music in their own right. Certainly working in dedicated practice to improve, but without "swinging for the fences" and with modest targets and contentment with relative obscurity. Emotionally there is a lot of internal resistance to this. Is there some mindset aspect, psychological exercise, or even theme of psychotherapeutic intervention that could fix this? Or is this a matter of just becoming more disciplined in general as well as more specifically with meditation and spiritual and gratitude practices, and over time this greedy ambition will dissipate, and I am being perfectionist about recovery :) ?