5 Steps to Respond to an OCPD Diagnosis

I was asked to write a post that would give instructions for a quick start to dealing with an OCPD diagnosis (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). This is understandable. While getting a diagnosis is a relief for some, for others it’s upsetting and overwhelming. It can be hard to know where to start when you get news like that.

So this post is designed for those who’ve recently received an OCPD diagnosis but aren’t sure what to do about it. Quick fixes and life hacks are not effective with personality disorders. They serve instead as distractions and detours. But there are effective ways to respond that will serve you well in the long run. Here are 5 key steps to help you start removing the disorder from your potentially healthy obsessive-compulsive personality.

It may seem daunting at first, but if you focus on these steps in your daily life you’ll be off to a great start.

Responding to an OCPD Diagnosis

The key to hope is realizing that the same energy and determination that’s gone into your unhealthy obsessive-compulsive tendencies can be enlisted to turn things around so you can become a healthy compulsive. Personality doesn’t change easily or completely, but it can change. Focus on taking the disorder out and cultivating the positive aspects of your personality. Make your wellbeing a priority and you’ll do well.

Use the acronym RAILS to remember the following tools and get you where you want to go. The highlighted links will take you to posts that will give you more guidance about those particular subjects.

In order to keep this succinct I’ll need to be straightforward. Please know there is compassion behind it. We are using a psychiatric diagnosis here only as a starting point, not a pigeonholing label.

1.    Respect Yourself.

 

An OCPD diagnosis doesn’t mean that you’re bad or that you’re cursed for life.

 

In fact, you’re in good company. Lots of people who have obsessive-compulsive personality have contributed significantly to the world. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or stupid or immoral. In some cases it just means you try too hard. And in the wrong ways.

 

The obsessive-compulsive personality manifests on a spectrum from healthy and adaptive to unhealthy and maladaptive. Both start with the same psychological material; the unhealthy version is frozen and the healthy version is free-flowing.  Melt the rigidity and you have great potential. Like ice to water.

 

So, don’t picture yourself as fundamentally flawed. Just frozen. Self-respect helps to melt the ice.

 

Otherwise, unproductive self-criticism prolongs the condition by freezing the water. And straining to get respect from others is often part of the problem.

Self-care will be essential as well. Good sleep, a healthy diet, and exercise create a secure base to work from and make it less likely you will slip into old habits.

 

2.    Acknowledge the Costs of Maladaptive Perfectionism.

But you’ll also need to fess up about how you’ve hurt yourself and others by criticizing yourself or others for not being perfect. Maladaptive perfectionism, criticizing yourself when you don’t reach your aspirations, destroys self-respect. The costs include low self-esteem, depression, irritability, damaged relationships, and all of the draining stress that comes from trying to compensate for insecurity so typical of an OCPD diagnosis.

When and where might your perfectionism and control have hurt you or others?

What is the future like if you continue living this way?

To melt the OCPD diagnosis, take responsibility, not blame. Responsibility and respect together are like the parallel rails of a railroad track.

3.     Identify your protective strategy.

Figure out what purpose maladaptive perfectionism has served for you. Typically, we use maladaptive perfectionism to try to prop ourselves up for the things we feel insecure about. The insecurity is often about whether we are morally good or competent. And we do this whether we are aware of it or not. Our perfectionism is often unconsciously intended to compensate for the aspects of ourselves we don’t feel secure about.

Here are four common protective strategies, all of which can be turned around. We can use the energy productively instead. In most cases, natural and healthy tendencies have been hijacked to prove worth. These four strategies are simply different ways of using perfectionism and control to try to gain security rather than pursue passions. There are many more strategies, and yours may be different.

• Rigidly assuming you know the only correct way to do things, and telling others how do them

• Overworking

• Pleasing others as a form of control

• Overthinking, overplanning and procrastinating

Try to identify when you use these strategies and question the inner voice that says you must use them.

4.    Let Go and Feel

People with OCP use these strategies because they tend to be risk averse. They try to avoid risk by holding on to control, ideas, time and money. The main risk they feel is experiencing uncomfortable feelings such as shame and anxiety.

Sit with these feelings rather than avoiding them with protective strategies. This is the path to change. Take the risk of not holding on to control, ideas, time and money. Cultivate the skill of letting go.

This probably won’t feel good. Learn to live with the discomfort rather than hoping that it will go away. The key is to acknowledge the feeling without identifying with it.

Rather than telling yourself, “I am anxious, ”say to yourself, “There is anxiety.”

This helps you distance yourself from the anxiety without trying to avoid it with protective strategies. Otherwise you continue to pay thugs to protect you against your own self-judgment. It’s an extortion racket.

Experiment with letting go of your protective strategies. Practice by starting small. Learning to let go and take chances is more important than getting things right.

Feelings rise and fall like waves. They are not permanent. Ride the wave.

5.    Set Your Priorities

OCPD is a disorder of priorities. Your values are out of order. You’ve lost track of what’s most important to you and what’s authentic to you.

 

• Name the five most important things, people or values in your life.

• Write them down.

• Put them on your refrigerator door, screen saver or other places that will help keep them foremost in your thoughts.

• Observe how your strategies prohibit you from honoring these priorities.

• Honor them with your actions.

Draw a circle. Divide it into sections representing you priorities. The draw a circle of how you actually spend your time and energy. Making the two the same is your new priority.

 

*   *   *

Remember: R-A-I-L-S:

• Respect

• Acknowledge

• Identify

• Let Go

• Set Priorities

     *   *   *

 

For decades you’ve laid down neural wiring to protect yourself from disturbing feelings.  That’s a lot of axons, dendrites and synapses. To take the disorder out of an OCPD diagnosis, you will need to lay down new neural pathways (railways) over the old ones by reaffirming and integrating new ways of living.

Like learning a musical instrument, you’ll need to practice.

Here are some ways to practice:

• If you can, go to therapy.

 

• Journal daily about how you have used protective strategies and the five tools.

 

• Read or listen to a post from this blog or an episode from the podcast every day for 30 days.

 

• Read The Healthy Compulsive book to build a strong foundation

 

• Attend a support group.

 

• Tell your friends and family you are making a commitment to change.

 

This is how you lay down new neural wiring to override the old wiring of an OCPD diagnosis.

Or, to return to our original metaphor, these are the actions that melt the ice so you can move toward the healthy end of the obsessive-compulsive spectrum.

Good luck on your trip. And enjoy the drive.