Hey there, MisWired here. And today I want to talk about action paralysis. Although it’s something that’s common in society, I think it’s more common in neurodivergent people. And I think that has to do with how we’ve been raised to believe that anything less than best is unacceptable. Although neurotypical people have the same expectation placed on them, the way we internalize it makes us more susceptible to it. We tend to believe that if we don’t make everything perfect, if our work isn’t praised universally, then we aren’t worth anything.

And this goes doubly so when we’re interacting with people in roles of power. We often bend over backwards to make them happy, yet we never seem to do what they expect. And when you’re twice as exceptional, it’s very easy for this pressure to get to us. This is why we struggle to enjoy anything we’re “good” at. If we’re good at it, then we should be able to perfect it relatively easy, right?

I think this mentality is what keeps us from moving forward. We’re able to pick up hobbies really easily because there’s no expectation to excel at it. That lack of pressure is why we’re able to enjoy side projects. But once that hobby turns into a full time job, then that ghost of perfectionist’s past shows up, threatening to overwhelm us. Everyone has an opinion on how we should do our jobs, and nothing we do can match up to their expectations. And God forbid we try to go at our own pace, because that’s usually slower than what we’re expected to move at.

As a 28 year old ADHDer, I’ve been working on getting over that perfectionist nature that had been instilled into me from such a young age. But it’s hard to break a habit when you’re expected to live up to a certain expectation which you’re not sure you’re able to live up to. It’s kinda why I’ve been so hesitant to go back to university. I dropped out because I didn’t feel like I could finish up a degree, which I honestly wasn’t fully interested in. But because I was expected to graduate with a high GPA, I went along with it. And as my grades dropped, so did my emotional stability. Every failed course was a reason why I shouldn’t have joined when I did. And now that I’m going back on my own accord, these failures hang over me like a guillotine waiting to fall. I should be less stressed, but somehow I’m even more stressed.

This is what expectations do to us. You put pressure on us, and then question why we never seem to get anything done. We end up getting paralyzed to the point where we feel like we’re failures. We find it hard to celebrate our successes because we’re constantly told that it isn’t enough. We should do more, be farther in life, have more money, etc, etc. We’re rarely told that good is good enough, told that we don’t have to be perfect. So at the end of the day, we live in a society that expects more than we often are able to do, and doesn’t want to go above and beyond to help us achieve that.