How to help obsessive complusive personality disorder.?

Question

I thought I had obsessive compulsive disorder but it turns out to be OCPD. I expect to much from my girlfriend friends and family and I want it to stop especially for my girlfriend. I know Im putting a lot of stress on her and pushing her away and I want to stop. She has put up with it for 5 months now and I know she loves me for dealing with me. Its going to be hard for me to stop because she doesnt make it easy with some of the things she does but I need to get my problem out of the way so I can rationally deal with our problems. Thank You.

Answer 1

If there's an actual diagnosis, then there should also be treatment. I'd recommend letting all involved with you know about the diagnosis, and follow the treatment guidelines like therapy and recommended medications. This should ease the burden not only on the ones you love, but yourself as well.

Answer 2

I agree to let your girlfriend and maybe a couple family members know, but the first step to solving a disorder is to realize you made it so you can undo it.

It's simple... if you can but drop your ego long enough to yourself to let yourself do it.

As someone who also has OCD and/or OCPD and a family full of them, I have had to teach myself to relax and let people live in the same way I would enjoy living- without others trying to tell me how to be or do. Especially to survive my family and learn to love them (even though most of them do not know how to be happy, content or love others in a pure and unconditional sense).

I will explain that all disorders are like knots; To get through the problems, we have to undo the top parts first and slowly work our way back down to the bottom of it. There is always a few factors that cause us to step on other's toes first, and then those few factors can combine and make a terrible mess. All big things started with small things.
I also do not believe in disorders. I believe in people's lack of desire or ability to admit wrong or back up a few paces, to allow others or themselves to show them what they can see about them, and in people not second-glancing their behaviours and needing others to pick them up off the ground when they are stuck.
We all get stuck sometimes, because our eyes are in our sockets, solo, and cannot see from outside in. It is only when we cannot see a problem and admit it that we are helpless and it is able to be labeled a "disorder" as it has the power to control us and not us to work with it.

..You do not have a disorder. You have a passion that's given you two metaphorical left feet when dealing with people you want to love but find it hard to love them for their simplicity or in their short-sightedness. This is something you have made in order to hold yourself upright somehow, like a brace, when you felt like something else was failing you. Maybe society? Maybe you wanted more self discipline? Perhaps you wanted more control over your own life?

I cannot tell you the exact reasons why you have this need to keep things around you tidy and contained. For my brother and father, it is a matter of feeling in control of their environment. Myself not one to try controlling people, I had to admit I wanted perfection that I myself felt I had already somehow understood or mastered, and I wanted desperately to see it in other people so I would know I was not so strange or different. And my own way of working is, in MY life and MY eyes, perfect, but only perfect for ME and not for others. When others get involved with me, it becomes a whole lotta mess if I do not try to allow them to have the chance to be understood... Sometimes it takes me even kneeling at their feet with all my "perfection" being dropped in order to try giving them even a chance to seem "worthy" being involved in my life.

Again, this is my own observation of my family's, and friends' and my own troubles with seeking perfection where there is usually nothing but chaos, because we as humans are chaos.

Some questions to ask yourself to pinpoint a few troubles you may have-
How do you feel the people around you have failed? Do they fail you, themselves, each other, humanity?
What do they fail in and why do you believe them to fail?
Do the people you tend to blame for their actions realize or hate the way they take care of things or do they seem to not notice or care?
Do you feel sometimes you care more than they do?
Do you get frustrated because they don't seem to care enough about what they are or what they do?
Do you resent or hate them for being absent in their own personalities and lives?
Do you feel left alone often?
Do you feel misunderstood or lonely?
Are you lower or greater than the average person as an individual? Why?

These questions can tell you just how deep your passion for this perfecting of people is. We all have and hold expectations. It is obvious that those of us who have put ourselves through tougher situations and disciplines though, or hold ourselves to "higher-than-normal" standards, more or less isolate ourselves until the right person holds some sort of empathy or pity on us... or we are just isolated because of our stubbornness indefinitely.

Let it be known that this "disorder" as well is within everyone, not just you and me. Everyone has biases and quirks where they will or will not accept others for certain things; looks, the way the person acts, the way the person talks, etc etc. We just happen to have a more precise idea and a more stubborn want (a feeling "this is the way it should be or it just won't/can't be this way at all") of how things aught to be.

Also realize the only reason why you are different from others is because you feel you MUST be the way you are now because you have proven that other methods and ways to doing things cannot make sense or be as progressive as your own. This is true, in your own eyes. This cannot be true, though, through another's eyes, because no one will ever truly join you in your own perfection... Simply because it is your own and not theirs.

If your female companion is as patient as you have said, she can help you. Sit down with her at meals and ask her to give you insight about you. Ask her what she thinks your best traits are and what your worse ones are. With humility and a grain of salt, ask her what she thinks you could do to make yourself better or what you might be able to do to make her understand your love for her.
Realize you will need these types of opinions from many people on a regular basis so you can now learn how to analyze yourself just as you analyze everyone else. Talking to a counselor is one thing I do when I get myself into a terrible bind where everyone seems to only be able to say, "I don't know what to tell you..." They are better than the average person at finding things and explaining them to you. Instead of treating the counselor like he can make you better, try going into a session ready to treat them like they are your best friend and make it a chit-chat about your problem and sincerely try seeing what they have to say about it.

To get outside of this mess, you must come to understand the world around you and how YOU must look in it. You'll find, as time goes on, by talking like this with friends and family, you yourself will always have quirks that indeed, from their viewpoints, make you less than perfect.
The whole thing will send you reeling, and that is the point.

To have the ability to pick at other people, you have to have a stable and very secure idea of who you FEEL you are (but to interact you must realize how little you really can know about how you must seem to others). The problem with the statement, that you know yourself perfectly, in itself is the idea is oxymoronic; We cannot see how we are through each other's eyes, truly, no matter how hard we envision. So you will always be half blind.

Humanity is a pot of chaos that has one law- Choice.
We all have the ability to chose and live by what we chose.
What beauty is in a universe that has all the planets in rows and columns? What diversity and depth can possibly be found in perfect order?

The true order and beauty, then, becomes chaos.
And in this awe-striking sense, you can love anyone, for anything, no matter what.

If you feel you have something more you'd like to add or if you think I was on the right track but need more to think on, I'd be my pleasure to be of more assistance. [e-mail]

Congratulations on your desire to give those you love and care for the benefit of the doubt instead of looking down your nose at them the rest of your life like most people do... I wish you the best of luck...