Finding The Meaning of Compulsive Personality Traits

I came across something the other day that perfectly expresses my own thoughts about the meaning of compulsive personality traits. The writer teaches high school English and happens to have taught both of my daughters:

“Our compulsive glances at our phones are not really focused inquiries about what time to meet someone for lunch, but anxious urges coming from a place deep within us that desires meaningful communion with other human beings.” This is from Jennifer Gavin’s marvelous book, Dear Students: Reading, Writing, and the Art of Smelling Books.

While I might be extrapolating here, I take Gavin’s point to mean that rather than just write off compulsive behavior as neurotic, as contemporary culture encourages us to, we need to look beneath the surface to see what those urges are really calling for. Then we can understand the deeper intent and how these urges could contribute to our wholeness. Otherwise, if we just dismiss compulsive behavior as pathological, we miss the potential purpose and meaning underlying it.

The next time you check your watch ask yourself, “What is my time for?”

Destructive or Redemptive? Finding the Meaning of Compulsive Personality Deep Urges

Some people don’t just engage in occasional compulsive behavior. Their entire personality is driven by perfectionism, a need for order and a need for control. And I believe that Gavin’s point applies to this personality style as well.

In their original form, compulsive personality traits have purpose. Being meticulous and conscientious, and always trying to solve problems, can lead to a productive and satisfying life. It’s when we feel insecure and try to use those traits to prove our value that those traits become rigid and unhealthy.  In these cases the individual slowly sinks into obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), rather than living with a healthy personality style.

The following story illustrates the importance of looking for the purposes inherent in personality differences, rather than pathologizing them.

ADHD Problem Child or Brilliant Dancer?

In an interview on NPR, Dame Gillian Lynne, a phenomenally successful dancer and choreographer (she choreographed Cats and Phantom of the Opera) describes a transformative moment when her mother and a medical professional realized the purpose inherent in her struggles.

Teachers at Lynne’s school thought she had a learning disorder. Her attention span was very short and she couldn’t stop moving. They called her Wriggle Bottom.

She moved compulsively.

Her mother took her to see a specialist. The specialist listened to her mother describe Lynne’s problems and observed her behavior at the same time. He told Lynne, “I need to speak to your mother in private for a moment. Please wait here.”

He turned on the radio as they left. They watched her from outside: Lynne leapt and danced all over the room. She was having a great time.

The specialist told her mother: “There is nothing wrong with your child. She’s a born dancer.”

I find this story very moving, because in that moment they realized who Lynne really was, the purpose of her personality. It helped her mother to see and to cultivate her authentic self. Eventually it helped Lynne use her natural traits, those deep, almost uncontrollable urges, in a fulfilling way.

Lynne’s obituary in the Guardian implies that Lynne had other compulsive personality traits as well:

“What drove her was the dancer’s all-consuming discipline, not the ambition of her male directorial counterparts. Interviewed in the Times in 2014, shortly after the release of her exercise DVD Longevity Through Exercise, she said: “Of course I have done pretty well. The royalties from Cats and Phantom come in week in and week out. I could have retired on my royalties, but I didn’t want to stop working.”

Thank goodness.

What’s the Purpose in Your Compulsive Personality?

What might the specialist who interviewed Lynne have said of you? “He or she is a natural born…”? Would you have been straightening pictures? (Have you considered a career in quality control or engineering?) Perusing his books to discover the patterns in his interests? (Systems analyst, psychotherapist?) Organizing his shelves? (Project manager?) Resetting his clock to make it accurate? (Shot clock operator for the NBA?)

Obsessive and compulsive traits can evolve and be used in many positive ways, from accounting to artistry. I see determination, meticulousness, and obsessive planning as just a few of those traits.  They can be both personally rewarding and beneficial to the larger world.

Making Meaning: Suffering and Learned Compassion 

But being compulsive isn’t all victory and glory. It can be torture at times. Even if we do find the purpose in being obsessive-compulsive, we’ll never completely escape the urge to get things just right. And that causes suffering. In order to experience some degree of peace after finding purpose, we may also need to make meaning of this condition.

Yes, this is relative. Lots of people have suffered far worse than the need for perfection, completion and production. And that’s where I’m going.

Whatever the degree of suffering we experience, we can learn compassion from it. Other, non-compulsive, people suffer in different, and far worse ways: discrimination, poverty, disease, psychosis, disabling depression, and loneliness just to name a few. Our own suffering can help us to feel into what life is like for those who have it worse than we do, just to get a hint of what they go through.

Still other people seem to wander through life unphased and oblivious. I can honestly say I would not want to be one of those people. To merely stroll on the surface of life and never dive into the depths to experience all of its dimensions seems empty and pointless to me.  It’s just another, less obvious, form of suffering.

Tolkien’s Eucatastrophes

In her book Gavin tells us that the writer J.R.R. Tolkien coined the term eucatastrophes, destructive events which, in the long run, turn out for the good. The “catastrophe” of compulsives, of never being able to  completely relinquish the habit of obsessing about the best way to do things, can become a “eucatastrophe” if we realize that life isn’t perfect for any of us and we develop compassion for others as well.

There’s a fork in the road when you get to suffering. It can either lead to a pity party (“I just can’t catch a break! Why me?”) or it can lead to compassion for all sentient beings (“Life is hard for all of us and we’re in it together”).

While some suffer more than others, we all suffer. It’s the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. Personalizing it makes it worse. Understanding its universality leads to compassion and some relief.

In that way, as interminable problems solvers,  we can make meaning out of our suffering.