Help with being a perfectionist.

I am a perfectionist. I do things bordering on obsessive because of it, it hinders my poker game among other things and I need help with it.

There, just wanted to get that out of the way.

The odd thing is that it is selective. My house is a pigsty. Dirty clothes litter the floor, unwashed plates pile up wherever I happen to eat, and I don't get enough exercise. However, with things that I really get into, I get far too particular about.

That was vague so let me give some examples. About a year ago, I was really into an online video game (Warcraft). However, I never got really good at it despite putting in fairly absurd hours as because as soon as an account I was using had too poor a record, I couldn't bear to use it any more and started a new one. I made a ridiculous amount of accounts but couldn't shake my habit of starting a new one any time I got a record I deemed poor.

Another example is when I was starting out at poker, I watched many high-stakes games to get a feel for how the best played it. (silly, i know). I made a little chart to document the games I watched so I would know who the best players were. However, after I'd been doing this for a while I realised to my horror that I had accidentally recorded 2 6th place finishes and no 7th for one of the tournaments. Instead of trying to fix the error I immediately deemed the whole thing worthless, promptly deleted it and started over from scratch. I know it seems ridiculous but it's a real problem for me.

Now I am having trouble documenting my results because as soon as I deem that I have not played to my potential, or I discover make a mistake in recording my results they are instantly flawed and I delete them all. This is obviously making it difficult to gauge how I am really going.

I don't understand this at all, but it borders on a compulsion for me and I am not sure how to help myself.


I apologise for the long, rambling garbled mess I have written here but I needed to get it out of my system.

I would be GREATLY appreciative if you could offer any help.

It sounds to me as though you suffer from some form of obsessive compulsive disorder.

I have some of the same tendencies, though they aren't as severe as yours. I don't know a whole lot about this disorder, but I think that maybe you should seek professional help to cope with this. Left untreated, it can create a lot of problems with social interaction between you and the people you care about, particularly when you become absorbed in a task to the exclusion of everyone and everything around you.

Wish I could be more help.

Read 'A guide to rational living'. It teaches you how to handle problems like that using REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy or something like that)
I've read it once now and it's good. Everybody with any kind of emotional problem should try that book. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

EDIT: linky

[Reef]

as for poker records, PT should do

[Alex/Mugaaz]

Man I wish I could remove every hand I didn't play right from PT. My bb/100 would be so awesome.