The Healthy Compulsive Project: Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality

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 tormenting or fulfilling?

The answer isn’t simple, and getting from torment to fulfillment isn’t easy either. You’ll never be completely free of the drive. But it is possible that you can be the driver, rather than being driven by unhealthy impulses.

The goal of this Project, including the blog, the podcast (coming soon to a platform near you), and the book, is to share what I’ve learned as a clinician and human about how to make this shift. It’s intended for people who are by nature obsessive, compulsive and perfectionistic. And those that live with them.

I love having a project. And ones that have a personal component for me, and that can also be of benefit to others, are especially gratifying.

I love to write and I love to think about personality, what motivates us and what fulfills us. I love to focus on a challenge and bring it to completion, as perfectly as I possibly can. And I love to work, whether it’s helping clients, crafting a clear and engaging lecture, balancing my checkbook, or doing battle with my archenemy, the obstinate, invasive vines that threaten the woods near my home.

All of the traits that I’ve just described about myself could be described as compulsive.  They all rise from inner urges that are hard to resist. These passions all spring from within me and I feel compelled to act on them.

I’m Driven.

And that could be a problem if I’m not driving consciously, if I’m not taking the wheel.

A Style with Extremes: The Compulsive Personality Spectrum

Anyone who has compulsive tendencies can become a victim of these urges. They can become rigid, judgmental, over-controlling, reactive, rushed, miserly and workaholic in order to meet their goals. They can become mean, Puritanical and destructive in the name of doing the “right” thing. They can also become anxious, burnt-out, and depressed.

The compulsive personality style can lead to extremes: really productive and caring, or really neurotic and callous. The American Psychiatric Association calls the negative end of this spectrum Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. (People often refer to it by its acronym, OCPD).   The APA has no name for the positive end of the spectrum. It takes conscious effort to take the wheel of compulsive energy and guide it to the healthy end. That’s what The Healthy Compulsive Project is all about.

A healthy compulsive is one whose energy, passion and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of love and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy, passion and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread.

In this blog I’ll be exploring the inner workings and outer manifestations of the compulsive personality, or, as I prefer to call it, the Driven personality. I’ll be getting into the nitty gritty of how these tendencies show up in everyday life, and the bigger picture of how to enlist them meaningfully. I’ll be writing about how to become a healthy compulsive.

Taking the Wheel of Passion and Energy

But just so that you have a rough idea what I mean by this I’ll give you a bare bones preview. My personal experience, clinical experience, and study of the research literature have led me to conclude that there are a basic steps we need to take in order to take the wheel of this energetic disposition:

 

• Acknowledge that you have a compulsive personality style and take pride in it. The people who don’t acknowledge it, and so don’t see the dangers in it, are usually the ones who go off the deep end.

 

• Slow down enough to look inside and remember what your deepest passions are. Where do they really want to go? A sense of accomplishment? Mastery? Fulfillment?  Contribution?

 

• Ask whether another part of your personality has taken over the wheel: Insecurities? A need to be respected? A need to prove yourself?

 

• Ask what coping strategy you enlisted to deal with insecurities: Overworking? Being perfect? Pleasing others? Controlling others? Planning and preparing?

 

• Take back the wheel by honoring the original intention of your drives, and don’t get caught in a blind and rigid execution of them. Given the realities of your life, how can you find peace, self-regard, or a sense of accomplishment?

 

• Don’t allow your tendencies to work, perfect, control, plan, and judge crowd out your other desires, such as enjoying and nurturing relationships, taking time for leisure and play, and savoring what’s good in the present moment.

 

I’ll be going into greater depth with these in future posts.

The Larger Project: Individuation

The way I see it, together these steps constitute a larger Project that everyone has the potential to engage in, compulsive or not: cultivating our unique gifts in a way that benefits us and the world around us.  Psychiatrist Carl Jung called this Individuation.

Much of the good that’s accomplished in the world is accomplished by people who have compulsive tendencies. They get the job done. And much of the bad is wrought by people whose intense willpower gets hijacked by fear. Even if they do get the job done, they achieve it with lots of collateral damage.

(I need to add a caveat here. One type of compulsive, the type who tends more toward obsessing and thinking does not get the job done, despite ambitious intentions. Their way of handling their anxiety is to procrastinate, and all the work goes on in their mind. I’ll describe the four types of compulsives later.)

The fate of our world is determined not by the people with the best ideas, but by the people with the most determination. Most of these people are Driven—often to their own detriment and the detriment of others–by judgement, punishment, and unrealistic expectations. Many who end up in leadership positions are compulsive, and many of them are unhappy, unhealthy, unbalanced, and, worst of all, unconscious. We need their energy, but we should also be asking how we can help them drive better.

That’s one reason why I’m taking on this project: to create awareness of the condition and to help people use their Driven nature in a more constructive way. Research tells us OCPD is too often not recognized by lay people or clinicians, and the result is that it too often turns destructive.

I’ll be exploring how the Driven personality operates, and how to get it running smoothly. I’ll be looking at it from very different perspectives: psychological research, Jungian psychology and spirituality, personal stories, and film and literature reviews.

Please join me in this project. We have good things to do with our drive.

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