Understanding Me, Myself and I

I have been keeping a daily chart for nearly 3mths now and I’m starting to learn things about myself and my mental health. Overall this is a good thing as I can’t manage it if I don’t understand it, but also it’s making me wonder about other things I hadn’t even considered.

I had always thought that I was driven, but now I’m wondering if what I actually am is controlled by compulsions. I am starting to see patterns (large and small) in how I manage (or not manage actually) my time. I tend to get locked in on a task, focusing to the point where other things are put off, ignored or cancelled. I feel COMPELLED to finish. Whether it’s a series on Netflix or a chore at home or at the yard (I have a yard) or a task at work. I hate not finishing to the point it’s stresses me, it affects my sleep and my mood. The need to complete means I struggle with balance – which means then I feel stress, pressure and unhappy about things that have been sacrificed to make way for the focus of my compulsion,

It’s weird to explain how it feels….. My detached rational self understands that most things I feel this compulsive behaviour with don’t have strict deadlines (there is no specific target date except the one I give myself). In other words it would be fine to stop, nothing bad would happen and yet the pull to complete controls me and defies this logic.