Obsessive Compulsive Personality

Today is all about Obsessive Compulsive Personality.

OCD is talked about a lot because it's such a life destroying disorder, and so is quite obvious if someone has it. But when it's a personality trait people can often just get labelled as "difficult" and they don't seek help.

Transcript

Richard: 0:02

And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and this episode is all about obsessive compulsive personality. And if you are ready, we'll start the show. Hello, you beauties. We've got another flipping bank holiday again, and if you're listening to this at the end of May, then there'll be another one. This time of year always throws my schedule out the window,'cause Mondays are usually my Therapy Natters podcast, editing day and having to make up for lost time can be a bit of a head spin for anybody. I'm okay with it. I just need to make sure that I schedule everything that needs to be done into my diary. Doesn't matter to me if I'm doing something at the wrong time to when I usually do. I'm fairly flexible. And I wanna talk a little bit about flexibility today with, as I was saying, what's called OCPD, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, which is different from OCD, and I'd say OCPD is probably more common a personality disorder than Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And yet we hear and talk about those things all the flipping time. The thing is, most people with OCPD don't seek help. Because they probably don't think that there's anything wrong with the way that they behave, whereas having OCD makes it pretty obvious that there's something not right. Someone with OCD knows that it's over the top to bleach the kitchen every day, but they can't stop themselves. Whereas OCPD is when the extreme behaviors feel so natural that it's normal, and so they aren't questioned. Well, they might be questioned, but it's usually by other people, friends, family, coworkers. But the person with it, they think it's completely normal to strive for perfection and criticise even the slightest mistake. So these folks, they're not very easy to work with and they're even more difficult to live with. So what is OCPD and how do we know if we've got it? Well, let me tell you a little story about a man called Jeff. Long-term listeners will know My fictitious men are always called Jeff. Apologies to every real Jeff out there, but this Jeff is a health and safety manager at an engineering firm. He has a set of rules and regulations and refuses to budge from them. Even if they're massively outta date, even if they're unnecessary. So the people who work with Jeff, they find him stubborn and those that work for him, they say he's a control freak. So his department's got this higher staff turnaround than other departments.'cause one of the reasons he's so difficult to work for is because he doesn't delegate. So his staff get bored, unfulfilled, and they're walking everywhere on eggshells as well.'cause they can't live up to his standards. So he doesn't trust that others will do as good a job as him. And he ends up taking on everything himself. So he gets stressed, he gets angry, and he goes home feeling undervalued. And he's not trying to be difficult at work'cause he genuinely feels anxious when things aren't done right, so called. So he goes home full of stress. As if it doesn't matter how hard he works, it still isn't enough, and his home life is kind of the same. He likes structure, routine, makes meals with recipes to the letter, and gets angry when his wife Joan, doesn't follow the right recipes or does things differently.'cause to him different is wrong. If the recipe says a Romano red pepper, heaven forbid Joan uses a red bell pepper, what are you thinking, Joan? But to him, he's right. It's everyone else doing things wrong that make him stressed. It's not his fault. To Jeff, it's almost like people do things wrong on purpose just to wind him up. So he's really angry when somebody's late. Because he always tries to be bang on time. There's no flexibility in his expectations. So that's Jeff, the man with obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Now, like I say, people like that don't really think that there's anything wrong in their attitude, so they don't come for therapy for that. They come because of the anxiety, depression, or panic attacks, which has developed because of their personality disorder. And it takes a while for them to realise that this is what's going on. Because tackling any personality disorder means shaking the absolute foundations of who they are, literally their personality. It means altering their entire viewpoint on themselves and the world. And that's quite a scary thing. I mean, sometimes they might suspect that something wasn't quite right in the way they do things, but so more often, therapy is really very insightful as they start to challenge their ideas and behaviours. And it helps to explain so much when people get that Aha Moment, as we call it sometimes, when they say, Oh. Does this explain why my Uni dissertation had 15 different versions that I kept on trying to improve on until I had no choice but to submit it at the last minute, and it still felt it needed more work. Yes, Jeff. Yeah, it does. And to figure it out for themselves, why their friends don't invite them on weekend mini breaks anymore.'cause they take over the whole weekend with structure and order and put everybody's nose out of joint is quite the eyeopener for someone with OCPD. They've often got a spare room just for USB leads or fuses or electrical adapters, that sort of thing.'cause they don't like the idea of throwing something away that might be useful in the future. So there can be a bit of a hoarder, although it's more about the utility of the things that they keep, compared to an emotional connection that people with hoarding disorder find. So it is different. And they might even do the same sort of thing with money as well, saving for emergencies just in case with a separate bank account just for if the roof collapses and they won't use any of it to pay for a holiday because, well, what if the roof collapses the week after we get back and we've spent the money on the holiday, Joan, what are you thinking woman? Now I'm painting these characters in a bit of a bad light here.'cause obviously those negative traits are the ones that get noticed. Whereas actually someone with OCPD is likely to likely to be a very conscientious and thoughtful person as well. They've got a great attention to detail. They've got a good, honest value system. They're nice people. They're just rigid and inflexible. There's a theory in fact that OCPD is an exaggerated conscientiousness, and conscientiousness is part of the OCEAN acronym of personality traits. If you are new to my podcast series or you are new to psychology and you've never heard of this before, then I'll fill you in. OCEAN is what we call the five factor model of personality traits. So quick crash course into the five factor model for you over the last. 60 years or so, psychologists have attempted to group all the words that describe a trait of someone's personality into groups. Back in the 1930s, there was something like four or 5,000 words to describe somebody's personality traits, and bit by bit they've been grouped together until we've got now five that describes someone on a spectrum of each one. So we often use the acronym OCEAN to help us remember, because the Big five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And it's long been acknowledged that if there's a way of describing someone's personality. Any word you can think of can fit into one of those five categories somewhere. And so obsessive compulsive personality disorder might well be when someone is really high on conscientiousness, which means to be competent, orderly, and disciplined. I mean, who doesn't wanna be that? It's not a bad thing, is it? Better that than be the opposite, which is careless and unreliable. But the thing is, OCPD can actually backfire and make people unreliable sometimes because they try so hard to make everything perfect that it takes 10 times longer to do something, and then someone else has to step in and take over, or it's just not gonna get done. So someone with OCPD should definitely not organise a last minute hen weekend or something. They'll just spend a day working out a schedule of what needs to happen before they even book anywhere. So if you think of conscientiousness on a continuum, it's got total reckless impulsivity at the lower end and it blends into spontaneity and then flexibility. And then at the top end we've got rigidity. And given the choice, we probably want to be in between spontaneous and flexible.'cause that's gonna keep us contented. That's gonna keep us happy. And mean we're able to deal with whatever the world can chuck at us. But OCPD pushes us into that top end of rigidity with everything. And it's not realistic to think that we can live there happily. And treating it is tricky because as I say, people with it think that it's everybody else that needs to change, not them. If only everyone else fitted in with their viewpoint, then they wouldn't be angry or anxious or stressed all the time.'cause I think that their view is always the right one. So the first step is insight. Awareness. It's recognising that they have this overly conscientious personality that gets in the way of a normal life. It's been long said with a thousand different problems that the first step in overcoming it is recognising that you have the problem. And so maybe this podcast episode can do that. Maybe not for you, maybe for your partner or your friend. I doubt though that someone with OCPD is gonna take too kindly to being emailed a link to an article all about it with a, Hey, saw this and thought of you note. But there's probably some subtle ways of bringing it into conversation, even if all you do is say when it's appropriate, you know? I do worry about you, Jeff. You seem far too conscientious. Ah, I dunno how you live like it sometimes. That that need for rigidity must make things really hard in a world that is so unpredictable. You know, I dunno, maybe that could go one or two ways. Another reason why it can seem so normal to have these traits is that it tends to run in families. Now is this nature or nurture? Who knows? Probably both. But it could well be that someone with OCPD was brought up with a parent who was the same. And so it cements in this idea that it's normal to think that everyone's got high expectations of you and you should worry what people think. So to bring that up in a conversation can be helpful. Things like. You know, Jeff, you're very much like your Dad sometimes. It does make me smile, and as long as you don't turn into a complete control freak like him who constantly worries about perfectionism, I'm sure you'll be fine. Now, I keep using Jeff here because although women do have OCPD. It's often thought to be more common in men, although that might just reflect on how these traits are noticed or reported. So more studies need to be done. And if there's anybody studying psychology at uni at the minute that's listening to these sorts of podcast episodes, maybe you've got some, you've got, you've got some research to do here. And I've talked about having these conversations really'cause one of the biggest factors in someone dealing with OCPD is the support that their family gives them. Having their family involved is really, really important. And that's for any personality disorder, actually if I'm, if I'm honest. If you can find the most broken part of someone, the angriest, darkest, most spiteful part of them, and love them, not because of those parts, but despite those parts. Then they can heal and you can be proud of both of you, especially when they don't even see that what they're doing is ultimately hurting them. OCPD can sometimes get picked up in marriage guidance sessions or family therapy, and having an understanding family that can support by both accepting someone's problem and challenging them a little is really, really helpful. But they're probably gonna need a psychotherapist to help them with this, to help them to unravel their irrational thoughts, their irrational beliefs, maybe even help them to learn how to repair relationships that might have been damaged, especially at work. Because their work is likely to play a really huge part of their life, far bigger than is fair because they're convinced that the place would fall apart without them. That they are the keystone to everything holding the business together. And of course they're not. It just feels that way. And because of their conscientiousness, they have to put in the work. They have to have an empty in tray and a clean desk. And if they haven't, well then they obviously weren't working hard enough and so probably end up going in at weekends as well. So it is not a fun disorder at all if there is such a thing as a fun disorder, but it can be really very nice to see somebody come through it. Now, it is hard work for them. From a self-help perspective though, the things to focus on would be things like. Emotional regulation, learning some social skills, distress tolerance. Actually practicing feeling out of control of situations, hence the need for the emotional regulation skills. So that needs to come first and embracing novelty, embracing change. But once they see alternatives and can challenge their thoughts, their work life gets better. Their social life and family life improves everything, just feels easier, just takes a bit of time, takes a bit of patience to make it happen. So that's OCPD. And if you or someone you know needs a little bit of help with all of this, then you now know that it is possible to live with it. And maybe even overcome it in time, or at least minimise the negatives of it. The therapy's very client driven. You almost have to teach them to be psychotherapists so they can kind of therap themselves. They might even think that they know more about how to be a therapist than the therapist does, which is difficult for the therapist. It's all because of their problem in the first place. OCPD makes people a little bit skeptical, which is why it's a good idea and why we often suggest things like journaling to help them understand a bit more about the emotions that they're experiencing, rather than just intellectualising everything. When they start journaling, you see, it starts off with a list of things that happened that day. They just describe what they did rather than how they felt, but with time they can gain more emotional intelligence and can actually be quite diligent in doing their homework. So if a therapist asks them to do some relaxation exercises two or three times a week, they'll quite likely pull them up on it and say, well, which is it? Two or three? And if you tell them that three times would be great. But don't worry if they only do it twice, you can pretty much guarantee they'll do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday without fail, and that's not gonna do anybody any harm. Speaking of which, if you need to take some time out for yourself two or three times a week, do remember on Patreon I've got all these hypnotherapy relaxation tracks for you. There's a different one every week, as well as full podcast episodes that are separate to the public feed first thing on a Monday morning. So head over to Patreon.com and look me up if you're not already there listening to this anyway.'cause patrons get my public episodes a day or so early and you can have a chill out with a hypnotherapy track as well, if you like. Anyway, I shall leave you to your week. Have a good one. I'll speak to you later on. Ta ta.