Healthy amount of self control

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The topic spawned in another thread and I believe it deserves a thread of its own:
How much self control is healthy?
What are symptoms of too little self control? How to help with it?
What are symptoms of too much self control? How to help with that?
What are symptoms of misused self control? How to help with that?

My own experience:
I've definitely came from the "too much self control" angle. That means strict performance of whatever I found "convenient" and not even realizing existence of my own needs, feelings or discomforts.
Result: mental illness.
CBT aimed at controlling my emotions and reinforcing rationality made the mental illness worse.
Long and through training in recognizing and adressing my feelings made me able to climb out of mental illness.

I can imagine someone coming from completely opposite direction. There is some region of healthiness and it's bad to leave it in any direction.

I was born into a tough family and grew up in a rough neighborhood, plus I was 'gifted' with what we now call Asperger's.

Survival required a excess of self-control, the discipline to not expose yourself to punishment. The ability to play the waiting game, to defer pleasure and happiness.

All of that self discipline made me sick, and resentful, and undermined any sense of identity.

And it also led me to, years later, cut loose and not worry, for once, about consequences in a very serious situation that ended up costing me pretty much everything.

Never cutting loose before, I did not know how to do so with any sense of realism or moderation.

Over control may well lead to an outwardly successful, but inwardly empty and miserable existence. By the time you reach whatever lofty goal all of the sacrifices were made for, there may not be anything left of the nice child that made the fatal decision.

It appears there are many terrible therapists. If by self control it's meant to suppress your emotions and needs to avoid problems, that's really bad advice. While controlling or suppressing emotions can be a good short-term solution if it's necessary to avoid assaulting someone or harming yourself, it's a terrible long-term solution that will only make problems worse. Instead, it's better to understand your emotions and what causes them so you can feel better by thinking about things differently, identifying your needs, and finding a way to meet them.

I was raised by an abusive, bigoted, bipolar alcoholic, and grew up in a neighborhood full of bullies.  Back then, Asperger's was not a diagnosis; but "daydreamer", "lazy", "stubborn", and "troublemaker" were labels often applied to me.

Survival required patience, strategic planning, diligence with schoolwork and studying, and learning how to pass unnoticed by people looking for an easy victim.  All of this took self-control to defer short-term pleasure in favor of long-term success.

All of that made me what I am today -- a soon-to-retire, university-educated, electrical engineer with a lovely wife, healthy children and grandchildren, a fat pension, and real-estate holdings overseas.

Had I been diagnosed back in the 1960s with any form of perceptive disorder, I would likely be just another fat, unemployed, and lonely old man living in a cheap motel room (or on the street), wondering whether or not I deserve to live another day.

Self-control -- not self-pity -- has been very, very good for me!

One of my favorite writers, the late Colin Wilson, once wrote that, "the decision to be out of control is always a mistake".

I generally try to live by that.

Of course, the amount of self control sufficient to act responsibly is absolutely healthy.

Maybe the problems start when one insists on trying to control what they can't really control, e.g. one's natural needs or content provided by senses.