...but it feels like I'm acquiring one! Maybe it's my meds =)
If you care about music immensely, like I do, it can be easy to pressure yourself into trying to be the Best at Everything All the Time, because no other music is Good Enough To Be Music. The downside of that of course is that very little music you make will achieve those standards, which means you won't finish it or share it, which leads you to get down on yourself for not producing enough, and so on and so forth.
I can't say definitively how to break that cycle. It's a slow shift with many different influences. One thing I can recommend beyond any doubt, is getting one Serious Hobby. Preferably one with black and white metrics for success—in contrast to the nebulous standards of art and artistry.
See, if you're getting serious about music, you can't really make music to relax anymore. Occupational hazard. You need something different to occupy that place in your life now. And you need something to obsess over a little bit besides music. Otherwise all your obsessive energy will pour into that negative feedback loop we're trying to defuse.
The reason I said it has to have clearer-cut definitions of success is that, surprise, your Serious Hobby is also training you to perform differently when you go back to music. Getting good at your hobby will require you to define success differently, and behave differently to achieve success by the new rules, and THAT is the superpower you will bring back to music making. A new perspective on what success can be and how to achieve it. That's huge in breaking the cycle.
