Perfectionism and Parental Figures

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So I was thinking about how I am quite perfectionistic and how I hold myself up to somewhat higher expectations than most people (at least in regards to my career) and I thought about parental figures. Now, I'm not blaming my parents for how I turned out because, ultimately, I decide what person I want to become. However a lot of sources I've read about perfectionism assert that children who are brought up by controlling or pushy parents tend to internalize this as perfectionism in adulthood. However, I don't think it's quite the same with me.

My parents didn't expect me to excel, nor did they expect me to fail. My parents had no involvement with my career choices or hobbies and never played an active role in my education (except my mother, who would sometimes help me with my homework). But I do remember that my father seemed perpetually dissatisfied with everything.

He hated his job, hated his house, hated the state of his house and blamed everyone but himself for how sh***y his life turned out. To be fair, he did has a troubled childhood, but he always found a way to make his own children feel guilty for having a better life than him. I remember feeling helpless and ashamed because I enjoyed a quality of life that he never got to enjoy in his youth and he always found ways to rub it in our faces.

He would get mad that his children didn't do enough around the house, but never actually led by example. He would slander our mother, calling her lazy and a bad mother even though she was ill and disabled. He was never grateful for anything he had in his life and pissed his life up the wall.

For a while, I felt sympathy and I wanted to do whatever I could so that he would just be satisfied with his life. But as I got older, I was ashamed of him and I resented his worldview and victim-complex. So I strove to not end up like my dad.

Sometimes I see him in myself and it terrifies me; his foul temper, his pettiness, his ego, his self indulgence, his propensity for addiction and impulsivity, his emotional stupidity, his victim mentality, etc. At my absolute worst, I can be an awful little s**t. But now I feel like I have created a self fulfilling prophecy because my obsession with being better than my dad has made me very much like him. I have the same resentment issues and the same anger about "why am i not like so and so?" "why do they have to so much better than me?" "why can't I keep up with everyone", etc, etc.

So I guess I'm writing this to document a moment of clarity (as well as my propensity for oversharing on this website) and I'm going to try and continue to refocus my efforts into just doing my best and just being happy to have what I have. I need to finally not allow him to make this impact on my life in such an insidious way. I can't believe it has taken me this long to admit that I'm still butthurt about this stuff, yikes!

Could you take the personality qualities you may have inherited from your father, and use them to do Good instead of Evil? For example if you feel dissatisfied could you channel that feeling into some healthy form of competition?

I also inherited my father's personality including the bad traits, and I've been mindful all my life to use these traits to help others and also be a good person.

My parents are somehow like that too- they're never satisfied with what I do, even though I do good in school, don't do crazy things like people my age, go learn something after school but they never seem to appreciate that, I'll also add that I don't start something at home when they keep making fun of my special intrests and telling me to stop practicing them suggesting to me to go and do something 'useful' instead and this stays in my mind and gets me depressed, it can be called mental abuse with the way they do it, you know I'm a human too so I'd also like to rest and do what I want sometimes instead of doing 'useful' things only all the time. Only thing which holds me from 'disrespecting' my parents is my religion to be honest. Oh and they never even got involved in my studies or whatever I learn; they never helped, they also want to 'manipulate' my life wanting to be the ones choosing what I study in college.

He's not evil, he's just really really dumb and selfish. I don't want to be as miserable and ungrateful as he was. He created a self fulfilling prophecy and allowed his past to define him and destroy him and I refuse to be like that. I originally thought that if my career path was based on something I was passionate about, then maybe it won't be like that for me. Turns out that's even harder to do something you care about, but I own that decision and I'm glad I'm on that path.

I think he believed that he would be happier with more material possessions or more wealth, but he never tried to confront his own demons. He just brought everyone else down with him. I used to do that a lot and sometimes I still do, but I try not to burden people with my own problems too much.

But you are right - those traits don't have to be a bad thing. For instance, he was notorious for buying "bargains", even though it was all crap. But I actually do my research and I make good investments (though that's partly because of my mum being sensible). I can actually be trusted with a budget and he was always needing my mum to pay the bills and manage the household spending. He would drink into oblivion and sometimes start fights while I am generally quite sensible with my drinking and I have never hurt anyone while inebriated. So I guess it's not the end of the world to be bit like him. I can't really help it if we share 50% of the same genes.