Do people who are obsessive-compulsive and perfectionistic get more rigid and discontent with age? Or do we get more realistic and savor what’s left?
At the risk of sounding snarky, that’s up to you.
Even though we may worry about getting swindled, sick, isolated, and helpless, not to mention kicking off, research indicates that most people actually become happier in their 50s, 60s, and 70s.
But if you are aging with OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder), your default coping strategies may block the potential for happiness in old age –unless you use your character traits more effectively, stop trying to fight the process of aging, and welcome what it has to offer.
I’m going to set the scene for our discussion with a poem and a brief story. This way you’ll have images illustrating my points to carry with you once you finish this post. I offer the poem as a model of how to handle the challenges of aging, and the story as a model of how not to handle them.
Contents
Welcome All Moods and Events: The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
by Rumi, 13th century Persian poet and mystic
Keep the door open, Rumi tells us, no matter how awful the guest looks.
Closing the Door: Sisyphus Vs. Death
The anti-hero in the story that I’ll now tell you did not have the benefit of Rumi’s advice, and didn’t welcome his guests gracefully. (Disclaimer, I’ve tweaked this a little to make my point.)
Sisyphus was a Greek king who loved his control like a pig loves mud. One of the ways he expressed this love of control was to kill people who showed up on the doorstep of his palace. The virtue of welcoming people (or moods or events) was too limiting for him. But killing them didn’t make them go away. They just hung out haunting him as ghosts.
But it gets worse. This haunting punishment wasn’t enough for the gods. They were really ticked off at Sisyphus, so they decided to put him in his place.
They sent Thanatos (the god of Death) to chain him up. Sisyphus wasn’t too welcoming of Thanatos either. And while he didn’t kill him, he did manage to chain up him instead, with the result that no-one could die. This of course angered the gods even more, especially Mars because it ruined all his fun.
They punished Sisyphus for being so unwelcoming and controlling by forcing him to roll a boulder to the top of a hill every day, only to have it roll back down. It was as if the gods were saying, “You want to try to control life and death? Go for it! Here’s what that’s like.” 
His life became meaningless and futile. You can still see him pushing that rock up the hill whenever you see someone trying in vain to maintain unrealistic control. This is what happens when you try to deny death.
The author serving punishment for trying to be perfect.
The moral of the story is to give up overcontrol, quit fighting death and welcome the many kinds of visitors that come into our lives rather than killing them or trying to control them. It only makes aging worse. But this is exactly what many of us do; we fight death. Even if we seem to be winning by not dying, the price we pay psychologically is at least as bad. We’re haunted by the feelings we keep trying to deny, and burdened by pushing that rock up the hill.
The inevitability of death can amplify our insecurity and trigger our need for control–unless we see it as a natural process that we roll with, rather than against. We don’t really live until we’ve accepted death.
Research on Aging with OCPD (Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder)
Enough with the poetry and mythology. Let’s get to the science, such as it is.
As with OCPD in general, research on aging and OCPD is scant and sometimes contradictory. Some studies indicate that OCPD can remit over time. As many as 38% of the people diagnosed with OCPD no longer meet the criteria after 2 years, even without treatment. But those studies were done largely with younger people.
There are also indications that OCPD gets worse with age and no treatment. One large study indicated that OCPD is significantly less common in young adults, implying that people get more compulsive with age.
This may be because without intentional work or professional help, the collision between compulsive personality traits and the nature of aging blocks the very things that could help us change. OCP strategies such as control don’t allow us the flexibility to age gracefully.
Research on OCPD Related Traits
Research on a few typical obsessive-compulsive character traits also shed light on the question of whether OCPD gets worse with age:
Perfectionism: A review of research on the news site Vox reported that “as people who score high in perfectionism age, they seem to become more prone to experiencing negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and irritability and they also become less conscientious.”
Hoarding. Another trait of OCPD, hoarding, also tends to get worse with age.
Frugality. We tend to spend less as we grow older. For those who are already frugal, that tendency could become exaggerated as we age, missing the possible benefits of generosity on many levels, not just financial.
Rigidity: People generally become less flexible as they age. There appear to be changes in the brain that lead to this. Research on mice shows that particular neural mechanisms linked to the capacity to change are also found in humans and deteriorate with age. Our ability to develop new strategies to meet goals is diminished.
Procrastination and Delaying Gratification. If we continue to put things off as some of us tend to do, you will not experience the possible benefits of aging. One man told me of a neighbor who bought a boat for leisure, stored it in his garage for decades, and died before he ever took it out on the water.
How the Circumstances of Aging Interact with OCPD traits
Other negative OCPD traits could also be exaggerated by the life circumstances we typically encounter in older age. These are the guests you may need to allow into your later years:
Holding on and Discomfort with Change. Compulsives generally don’t like change. They score lower on openness when tested. But change is highly characteristic of aging; our bodies fail, our friends die, our cognitive functioning decreases, and younger people tend to respect us less (e.g., the patronizing phrase, “OK, Boomer”). If we don’t learn to come to terms with these changes and let go of our attachment to how things were, we increase our suffering.
Less Gratification from Productivity. As our bodies grow weaker, our thinking foggier, and we conclude our formal work life, it gets harder to experience the gratification of productivity. Losing such a source of fulfilment and meaning can upset a balance that we’ve worked carefully to achieve over decades.
Difficulty in Delegating. As it gets harder to do things on our own, we need to rely on others more. Fight it at your own peril. And consider the frustration you cause to the people who are trying to help you if you fight them.
Illness. When you get sick, and you will, it’s hard to tolerate that things aren’t “just right,” and perhaps even harder to tolerate that it may largely be out of your control. To accept illness graciously goes against our grain. The question is not whether we should take care of ourselves and get medical care, but the attitude we adopt toward the inevitable.
Threats to Self Esteem and Security. Depending on how things went in earlier decades, we may look with disappointment at what we’ve achieved. Further, our capacity to continue to generate reasons for self-esteem may decline with age, depending on how tied they are to material and external success. Unhealthy compulsives tend to rely on achievement to prove to themselves and others that they are worthwhile, rather than adopt basic, foundational self-respect.
Each of these can serve as triggers, leading to obsessive-compulsive traits getting worse. The default strategy for most obsessive-compulsive people is to push harder to control. And that doesn’t work for most of these situations that come with aging. It’s just pushing a rock up a hill to have it roll down again.
The Buddha’s Take
I decided to check in with the Buddha, always a good source, to see if he had any ideas about aging and how it might affect compulsives.
I couldn’t reach him directly, but his Communications Director drew my attention to the Buddha’s brief but pertinent and cheery white paper entitled The Five Remembrances:
1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
Bummer.
In many other contexts he suggests that because of these inevitabilities it’s not wise or skillful to cling to people and circumstances as we have known them in our younger years. That would be like pushing a rock up a hill because it’s futile. (Note that this doesn’t mean we can’t savor the time we have with loved others. It’s the clinging that causes the suffering.)
But the Fifth Remembrance holds out some hope.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
I say that this Fifth Remembrance is hopeful because, even given change all around me, what I do makes a difference in my experience. Even with all the painful things he lists about the body and people in the first four remembrances, choosing how to live, in itself, has meaning and makes a difference.
Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, developed a companion theory about how we think:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Man’s Search for Meaning)
So, we can’t control the world but we can control what we do in it and our attitude toward it, for instance, our attitude toward aging. Do we plant trees, paint flowers, and play Metallica, or do we shrink more and more into a limited behavioral repertoire and mindset of just pushing a rock up a hill?
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t fight cancer, take your statins, or consume copious quantities of blueberries every morning. But beware closing your door on all that comes with aging.
Our Capacity for Change: The Hopeful Part
Having a compulsive personality does not doom you to become mean-spirited or socially and psychologically decrepit as you age. While compulsive tendencies could take us down the road of rigidity and bypass potential benefits of aging, they can also provide the energy and determination that drive us to meaning rather than despair.
As I’ve discussed in a previous post, both research and my own clinical observations confirm that while certain core obsessive and compulsive traits are stable, how they are expressed can change over time.
Just as an example, I once worked with a man who had stored hundreds of boxes in his parents’ suburban basement, meticulously organized and documented. At some point though he turned around, and, becoming just as systematic and adamant as he had been in his earlier years of collecting, he began dispersing everything he had stored. He used the same compulsive energy, but turned in a different direction.
So too our energy can change direction in older age if we choose to work at it. While life with an obsessive-compulsive personality will never be easy or simple, there are advantages. Once acknowledged, these traits can be used wisely.
Releasing the Rock
Here are some suggestions for releasing that rock and making the most of maturing:
Let Go but Don’t Give Up: As limits on how much we can produce and how much we can perfect begin to show up on our doorstep, we’re faced with cynicism or acceptance. Giving up or letting go. Don’t go black and white about the possibilities of aging.
Come to Terms with Your Past. No, it wasn’t all perfect, but it was all you. Grieve what you were unable to resolve and accept that you were doing the best you could.
Skip the Pity Party. Yes, you’ve got lots of reasons to mourn, so mourn them and move on. Don’t focus on all the negative things to prove how bad (your) life is. Your situation has less impact on your emotional health than your attitude does. (See my posts about depression if this interests you. Or listen to podcast Episode 3.)
Welcome All Your Guests. To experience the possible benefits of aging, we need to practice acceptance, including acceptance of the inevitable decline of the body and the mind. Whenever you find yourself saying, “OH NO!” keep the door open and let them in. The physical sensation is one of softening the gut rather than bracing for a punch. Things tend to get calmer when you let the guests in.
Review Your Priority List. What will feel fulfilling at this point? Pushing the rock up the hill by trying to control everything? Or spending time with your garden, your grandkids or your god? Ask yourself this: “What are the things I most want to invest myself in in the years I have left?” If you put the same energy into these new priorities that you had put into your job, cleaning the kitchen, and constructing spreadsheets, you’ll do just fine.
Stop Procrastinating. One possible benefit of aging is having good reason to stop procrastinating. Procrastination is usually motivated by a fear of imperfection: “I won’t do it until I know it will be perfect.” It’s time to ask, what are you waiting for? You might have been able to justify delaying finishing that short story when you were 25 because you knew it could be better. But now?
Stop Delaying Gratification: Similarly, another possible benefit of aging is that the limits of time can serve as incentive to do what you’ve always wanted to do. It’s time to do the things you’ve been putting off. If you’re not going to enjoy yourself now, when will you?
I’ve been reading Steven Levine’s book, One Year to Live. It’s been liberating in that he encourages us to experiment with the idea that we will be dying within a year and to make decisions based on that. I suppose you could use this as an excuse to push back lots of deep-fried Oreos as you binge on episodes of How I Met Your Mother. But you can also use it to justify finally doing the things what would really bring you fulfillment, and not doing the things you don’t want to do.
Whatever else happens in old age, we can control whether we become cynical and despairing, or grateful and present. That challenge requires the sort of stubborn determination compulsives have at their disposal.
Use it wisely.
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