unhealthy perfectionism & neuroticism

[superyoon1]

I just graduated from high school, and I (was) an unhealthy perfectionist. I found myself procrastinating because I doubted my ability to do well on schoolwork, I had some major self-image problems also...I wanted everything to be perfect...

However, I think I'm actually low on N. (I know for sure that I'm high on E, very high on O, high on A, and moderately low on C.) As a child (until) about the middle of high school, self-consciousness, perfectionism, etc was something totally foreign to me. But that SUDDENLY changed in 10th grade.

I felt these feelings that were totally foreign to me. For example, before soph year, my interest in women was just a thing on the side, nothing important. I started liking a girl a LOT that year. Second, before, I just went thru the educational process not caring too much about how I did...but later I suddenly found myself dreaming for Ivy leagues and "prestige" and success... Thirdly, I felt self-conscious about my appearance, something that I had hardly ever felt before...Lastly, I suddenly was besieged with thoughts about death/that whole existential crisis thing. Feelings that I had NEVER had before...suddenly I was wrenched by emotional turmoil. I felt a desire to live my life to the fullest, and I started thinking about what life meant more after that year...I learned a lot about myself, but I lost a lot too.

As a kid, I was praised a lot and felt pretty loved, but also had to live up to really high academic expectations...and I kinda did a lot of things that I didn't truly love to do, I just felt like I had to. I was generally a guy who wasn't really into the learning process as much as the learning itself, wasn't that organized etc...

The biggest trend I notice now is that whenever I became more perfectionistic/cared more about school, the more depressed and neurotic I became.

Am I really neurotic, or was my happy self as a kid (back then I didn't know any psychology/personality stuff) a better indication of my "true self?" Or was my neuroticism "masked" by the fact that people told me a lot of good things about myself, and when I finally faced stress and negativity, my true neurotic self burst out?

Thanks guys.