While the title could imply the looks of girls or woman - no, this post is adressed at something else.

I have a huge perfectionism problem to the point where it ruins my life. I need to rewire my brain and behaviour if I ever want to live a healthy life.

For me everything is always all-or-nothing. There is no middleground. It's either 100% or fail.

I always strive for excellence and it's killing me, because everything I do is just attention seeking. My self-confidence depends on what I archieve and how others praise me for it.

I am so afraid of failure that it entirely stops my personal growth. The amount of procrastination I do is insane. If I don't have a perfect execution plan in mind or feel like I won't excel on my first try then I don't even bother starting.

To give this some context: I started going to a special college in my country this year and I always got 96%-100% on all my exams except one time. One time I got a 83% back and it killed me. I didn't even want to look at it. I thought about all the disappointment I'd bring. I knew I could've done 100% easily if I just tried harder.

This insane thinking pattern leads me to lots of sleepless nights, because of my high expectations I tend to procrastinate until I give up to the pressure to perform so I pull an all-nighter just to be 100% sure to know everything.

Sometimes I end up so tired that I can't show up. And even worse: I recently started skipping school to avoid taking the exam so I'd have more time to "learn". This leads to missing more information on that day and more insecurity -> more skipping, an endless destructive circle that I already experienced once in my life.

People ask me everyday what's wrong with me. Tell me that I look tired and sad. Ask me why I never smile. I legit have no energy to do this anymore. I feel tired all the time and am not happy.

The controversial part is that even if I would not properly prepare I'd probably get atleast 70% which is actually completely fine. I just need to graduate and the grades don't matter too much in my field.

Some of you might think "Dude, stfu you have good grades, what's your problem?"

I just want to function like a normal human being. It's not only school where I suffer from this shit, but mainly. I don't want to pull all nighters to gain extra learning time. I want to learn at normal times, want to participate school without insane pressure to perform.