Some people can’t stop trying to do the right thing—whatever the consequences. Conscientiousness is a primary value for them. But trying too hard to be good is a questionable virtue. Sometimes it backfires.

Let’s think of conscientiousness as a way to get somewhere, somewhere joyous or meaningful. Like driving to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Since all the other drivers are obviously devoid of integrity and are driving dreadfully, you get really wrapped up in driving well. Going only 6 miles over the speed limit, using turn signals at every lane change, and restraining yourself from yelling at the kids, you’re so engrossed in being a conscientious driver that you miss your exit.

Oops.

You’re conscientious alright. But now you’re driving nowhere.

One of the defining characteristics of people with OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) is that they score very high on conscientiousness. In fact, diagnostic criteria tell us that they are overly conscientious, conscientious to the point that it’s maladaptive.

You forget where you’re going and miss your turn.

But this doesn’t apply only to people with OCPD: plenty of plain old perfectionists suffer from the same habit.

But how could anyone be overly conscientious? Hard to go wrong being right, right?

Wrong.

Actually, it causes problems, and I’ll describe these in more detail below. For now here’s the skinny:

1. Loss: We forget the original, specific, intentions of what our conscience has to offer.
2. Rigidity: We become rulebound with little regard for the consequences of our behavior.

I’m not suggesting that you start robbing banks, breaking cues, and spitting in other people’s beer. Rather that you bring awareness to what guides your decisions about conscientiousness so that you’re more skillful and the results are more satisfying.

And so that you remember where you wanted to drive to.

But first we need to straighten out what it actually means to be conscientious.

The Lost Meaning of Being Conscientious

Conscientious Vs. Conventional

Originally the word conscientious meant carefully following one’s conscience, to be with (con) what one knows (science). We’ve confused that with conventional–what we’ve (supposedly) agreed upon.

These aren’t the same: These days we typically think of conscientiousness as being hardworking, disciplined, exacting, detailed, careful, thoughtful, etc., which is really just a very conventional take on it.

We’ve lost the understanding that conscience is actually a response to an inner sense of what the right thing to do is in a particular situation, rather than a response to an external conventional demand. Again, where did you want to go?

Dancing to Real Conscientiousness

Isn’t it possible that for once my conscience would tell me that the right thing to do is to drop everything and go dancing, even though I have work to do, because otherwise I’ll drive myself–and everyone around me–crazy with the unbearable heaviness of being?

Truly following our conscience may lead us to break with convention. It might even lead to breaking with what we had said we were going to do because we are now aware of other factors in our decision. Like the need to loosen up and go dancing.

Problem is, if you’re just following the herd of convention, we all end up believing that the earth is flat and the center of the universe, that stress causes ulcers, and that bloodletting will cure you of your obsession with the Kardashians. No-one is left to think more critically and creatively to find the truth and solve communal problems.

Worse, your conventionalized conscience leads you to join in the fun and burn witches rather than share your deep conviction that it’s wrong to set anyone on fire. Apparently the Puritans followed convention and thought it was the conscientious thing to do.

Following the Conventional Rules: A Story of Tragic Loss

There’s a story about a monk who goes to live in a monastery where they copy ancient manuscripts by hand. After a while he notices that they’re copying copies rather than the original, and that any mistakes get passed on, ad infinitum. He tells the head monk, who then goes down to the copying room in the basement to investigate.

Soon after they hear the head monk wailing uncontrollably. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” they ask him. When he’s finally able to speak, through his sobbing he tells them, “There was a mistake. The original said we should celebrate, not be celibate!”

They lost the original intention.

Losing the Specific Intention of Your Individual Conscience

Those of you who have had chance to read my other posts may notice a theme here: to live on the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum we need to look deeper within, past our habitual rigid controlling tendencies, to see what the original impulse was to accomplish.

What’s most important? And where do we want to go?

For instance, if my conscience tells me to treat people well, I won’t lambast them for not treating other people well, but rather I’ll be curious and concerned about why they’ve become so unsympathetic. But if I’ve become “conscientious” in the conventional sense, I might lecture them for not being more diligent in their respect for others. That could seem like the “right” thing to do.

Missing the Point; Why This Matters

This, in essence, is the narrative of the unhealthy compulsive. One of the most important factors that determines whether someone with compulsive personality traits is healthy or unhealthy is whether they miss the point of their original impulses.

You might have an almost irresistible impulse to make the world a better place so that people can be happier. But if you end up becoming so “conscientious” about that, and become so strict and severe that you lambast people for moving too slowly to make the world a “better” place, you’ve missed the point.

So let me change the question that I began with. The question is not really whether one can be too conscientious. This is not a question of quantity, but of quality. Are we still really following conscience if we lose track of our original motivation? Is it really conscientious to act out of a more conventional sense of the good because we want to be “conscientious?”

Marie’s Dilemma

Marie is clearly a conscientious teacher. She went into teaching to help people make good lives for themselves and others, and it seems to her like the right thing to do is to never let up on her students. Letting them off the hook would be lazy on her part, and not diligent nurturing of her students.

But one of her students, Sharon, has to care for her two younger siblings while her mother is caring for Sharon’s dying grandmother. Sharon is falling behind on her work.

Marie is torn. She thinks that the conscientious thing to do is to press her on her homework and her falling grades. Otherwise, she’d feel like she was slacking off. And besides, what would the administration and other faculty members say?

But her internal sense, her conscience, tells her that she should cut her some slack and get her some help.

The conscientious thing to do in this case turns out to be pretty obvious. But start paying attention and you’ll probably notice that too often you might choose the conventional answer rather than the conscientious answer. You may have lost track of what the original intention was.

Like passing up that exit on the way to Grandma’s.

Moral Insecurity and Excessive Conscientiousness

How do we get ourselves to the point of over conscientiousness? There are many ways to get off track, but perhaps the most common is moral insecurity, a fear that we aren’t good or that we’ll get in trouble.

In a recent post I cited research on OCD that I suspect would apply to OCPD as well. It’s worth revisiting this study for our subject today. A study published in the journal Cognitive Therapy and Research, “Subtle Threats to Moral Self-Perceptions Trigger Obsessive–Compulsive Related Cognitions,” found that “subtle suggestions of incompetence in the morality self-domain were associated with stronger activation of OCD-related cognitive biases …. We suggest that self-sensitivities in the morality self-domain may be linked with the activation of cognitive biases related to OCD.”

What they are suggesting here is that if there is some insinuation, even a very subtle hint, that you are not a morally good person, it triggers the kind of thinking that activates OCD responses, and you’ll experience specific obsessions and compulsions. I’d be surprised if the same thing doesn’t happen to people with OCPD, but with bossiness, overworking, people-pleasing and excessive planning as the triggered behavior.

And these can pre-occupy you to the point that you miss the turn and you’re driving nowhere.

Wayne’s Morality Buttons Get Pushed

Imagine Wayne overhearing a conversation in the faculty lounge. Two colleagues are talking about how another colleague had called in sick but was really at the casino blowing off steam. Wayne had recently taken a mental health day and now wonders if he had also cheated in doing so. If he has OCD, he may go wash his hands. Again.

But if Wayne has OCPD rather than OCD, he might double down on the time he spends grading papers, get defensive if someone asks him how he’s feeling, or get more rigid about whether his kids get to stay home sick. He’s resorting to the conventional, rather than remember that his conscience told him that everyone needed him to take a break.

So, my point here is that if you are overly conscientious, you may be easily triggered to think you’ve been bad, and then reactively behave in unhealthy ways because you feel like your identity as a virtuous person is in jeopardy.

Then it becomes about proving that you’re good rather than actually being good.

Being Too Conscientious Can Make Us Rigid

Going Too Far with Your Personal Conscience

But you don’t have to get lost in conventional morality to become overly conscientious. While some may resort to conventional norms in lieu of true conscientiousness, others may take direction from their own “conscience” (really a prophet complex) but go too far with it. You may be so convinced that you have the answer based on your own “conscience” that you become rigid.

Following our own lead opens us up to rationalization—justifying behavior that’s not justifiable. Like parents who are so convinced they are operating out of good conscience that they use severe corporal punishment with their children, or they withhold affection and support in the name of good training.

Both conventionalists and individualists can become overly rigid when executing what they think is right.

Absolute Morality: Deontology and Consequentialism

Perfectionists and people with OCP often subscribe to the ethical view known as deontology (the science of duty). Much simplified, they ask what the correct or right course of action is based on rules and responsibility, rather than what brings about the most good, which is what folks from the consequentialist school of morality advocate. (For more on this philosophical debate, check out Michael Scher’s entertaining book How to Be Perfect.)

So, a deontologist would say that you would be “right” to tell your wife that that traffic signal she just zoomed past was red, not yellow, and that she should be more careful. A consequentialist would ask, what affect would it have on their marriage to lecture her, and would it make any difference anyway?

Some ethics professors may subscribe to deontology, but as a therapist on the front lines I’m suspicious of it.

There is no subtlety about when these rules apply and when they don’t. That feels like conscientiousness to some people, and in real life it may lead them to impose punishments on themselves or others which don’t fit the crime.

As George Eliot said, “Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.”

What may be hard to understand is that some people not only have strong feelings about what’s right and what’s wrong, they also feel that it is their responsibility, their duty, to enforce those rules on others as well.

Recall Inspector Javert from the novel and musical Les Miserables. He pursues Jean Valjean for 18 years because he stole a loaf of bread. Doesn’t matter why or when he stole it, or what good Valjean has done since. According to Javert he was wrong to steal the bread for his starving family and should suffer for that.

I’d say that’s overly conscientious.

It’s this absolute sense of right and wrong that leads those with obsessive, compulsive, and perfectionist tendencies to make trouble and get in trouble:

“You should never change lanes without using your turn signal and you didn’t so I’m gonna ride your butt.” Road Rage and an accident ensues.

“You should always eat everything on your plate so I’m going to force you to eat those Brussel sprouts.” Eating disorders ensue.

“As a doctor I have failed terribly if a patient dies.” Another physician suicide ensues.

Conscientiousness and The Sharp Pain of Blunt Honesty

One way that over-conscientiousness shows up is in the eternal battle between truth and sensitivity. Truth is seen as absolute and nothing else is acceptable. I can think of a couple of times in my life when I erred on the side of truth and lived to regret it.

An acquaintance once suggested that our families get together for dinner again. Knowing that we hadn’t enjoyed getting together with them, and so weren’t interested in getting together again, I said nothing rather than tell a lie.

To lie would have been contrary to my hypertrophied sense of the “right” thing to do. But I could at least have said, “Yeah, sounds good. Let’s get together after the holidays,” rather than giving an awfully awkward deer-in-the-headlights stare when they suggested an evening out together. I probably hurt this man and I wish I hadn’t.

While I still give preference to truth as often as I can, I learned from that episode that there are times to bend.

Conclusion

So, wherever you’re headed, whether it be Grandma’s or a dance club, don’t get so caught up in doing The Right Thing that you miss your turn. Follow your own conscience with a light touch. Conscientiousness is the means, not the end.

If this was helpful, you might want to read my posts The Ten Commandments of the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality and  What Happens When a Compulsive Meets the Archetype of the Saint