Psychotherapist & Jungian analyst Gary Trosclair explores the perils & potentials
of the driven personality for compulsives and their loved ones–removing the disorder from Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)
The Healthy Compulsive Project:
Healing OCPD & Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality
Featured Blog Posts
Your colleague Mitch works very late hours, insists on perfection in team documents, and can get pretty bent out of shape at meetings, letting people know exactly how they should be doing things. He needs to have things a certain…
Discover Carl Jung’s insights on compulsive behavior and how blocked growth can lead to obsession. Learn how to unlock your potential through individuation.
Compulsive. It’s not the kind of trait that will get you a wink on a dating app. But let’s re-frame this: people who have a compulsive personality have a lot to feel good about–if they manage their energies well. Let’s…
Why A Compulsive Personality Blog? It’s so hard to stop. Hard to stop working, thinking, perfecting, controlling, planning and doing. This drive can be tormenting. But it can also be fulfilling–both the doing and the finishing. What determines whether it’s…
A partner with OCPD (obsessive compulsive personality disorder), can be really difficult to live with. They usually aren’t aware how extreme their rigidity has become and are often convinced that they’re right all the time. Their perfectionistic, controlling and workaholic…
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) As many as one in 12 people have the medical disorder known as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) without knowing it. In fact, while it’s prevalent and well established as a diagnostic category, it is one of…
Constance was meticulous in everything she did. She was famous, and at times infamous, for accuracy at her job, for her fastidiousness in her home, and for her painstaking protocol when running the PTA. Her friends and colleagues said that…
People who are compulsive, workaholic or Type a personality have a, well, special relationship with anxiety. It propels them to get lots done, but it also makes it hard for them to enjoy life. And those at the unhealthy end of the compulsive spectrum, those who have Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), have such pressing anxiety that they may never enjoy life.
Recognizing OCPD and The Driven Personality A woman who recently realized that she had OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) and had been reading my blog sent me a note sharing a few thoughts about her experience. These explain why I began…
[Available in audio format at Google Podcasts and Apple, and Spotify.] As I’ve gotten to know more people with obsessive-compulsive personality through my clinical work, writing, and online groups, I’ve come to recognize that there is a great deal of…
Many people wonder how they became controlling, driven, and perfectionistic. Or, to use the clinical label, they wonder about the origins of OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). Mental health professionals generally agree that a combination of genes and environment, nature and…
I recently finished therapeutic work with a man whom I’ll call Fred. His story addresses the question, “Can someone with OCPD change?” and it illustrates the challenges involved. I was certain that Fred would ruin his marriage with his rigidity…
In a previous post [podcast episode 28] I wrote about the anxiety that people with obsessive and compulsive personalities face, distinguishing surface fears from deep fears, and suggesting four steps for working through the deeper fears that lead to our…
Wait, The Healthy Compulsive? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Not in my book. And I’ll tell you how I got there. Five years ago I launched The Healthy Compulsive Project, starting with a blog, and later adding a book. Today I’m…
Key to becoming a healthier compulsive is identifying the type of obsessive-compulsive personality (OCP) that you inhabit most of the time. If you start watching, you may realize that you gravitate toward certain clusters of personality traits and behaviors within…
This is the third of four posts describing in greater detail four types of obsessive-compulsive personality. These types overlap, and my terms for them are intended as invitations to flexibly explore your own tendencies–not as iron-clad categories to imprison you.…
This is the last in a series of four posts describing in greater detail four types of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality (OCP). You can have the same basic driven, perfectionist tendency of the obsessive-compulsive personality and end up a Thinker-Planner rather than…
Some people seem to use their compulsive tendencies adaptively, while others are used by their compulsive tendencies maladaptively. This could mean the difference between being productive and connected, versus being stuck and at odds with others. This interview explores what makes the difference, and how to get your compulsive tendencies working for you.
We’re all familiar with the results of typical hoarding behavior: newspapers piled in towers reaching for the celling, old mechanical parts bursting the seams of the garage, or a thousand rolls of toilet paper crouching in the basement just waiting…
The Healthy Compulsive book is now available in paperback in addition to hardcover and e-book format:
Healthy Compulsive Book
If you’d like to use your time in psychotherapy more effectively, check out my book on therapy.
