Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder: Symptoms and Treatment

This personality disorder affects people who notice how their perfectionism wears down their lives.

Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), not to be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD).not to be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), is a type of mental disorder that characterizes people whose anxieties about making all the pieces of their lives fit together perfectly have been taken to the extreme. In a way, it can be said that the problem lies in a kind of vital perfectionism pushed to its limits.

Normally, in this kind of patients they feel the need to have total control over how the events of their life are happening, and this causes them to experience a lot of anxiety and anguish every time plans do not go as planned, which happens very often.

Below we will see what they are symptoms, causes and main treatments proposed for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.

What is Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder?

The concept of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is a diagnostic category used in manuals such as the DSM-IV that is used to define what occurs in a type of people whose perfectionism and need for control over their own lives have become so have become so accentuated that it causes them much discomfort and deteriorates their quality of life.

People with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder experience an obsession to do things as they should be done, without experiencing dissonance between their plans and what happens in reality.

This disorder belongs to the category of personality disorders of cluster C (anxious disorders), together with Avoidant Personality Disorder and Dependent Personality Disorder.together with Avoidant Personality Disorder and Dependent Personality Disorder.

Symptoms

The diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, like that of any other mental disorder, should always be based on the following symptomsas with any other mental disorder, should always be made by licensed mental health professionals on a case-by-case basis. However, this list of symptoms can be used as a guideline to help detect this disorder.

The main symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are the following.

1. Extreme preoccupation with details.

This manifests itself in virtually every aspect of life. For example, the person plans very precise schedules that cover everything that needs to happen during the day, create rules for all kinds of social events, decorate spaces following very clear rules, etc. This attention to detail overshadows the main purpose of the actions.

2. Rejection of the possibility of delegating tasks

People with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder tend to frown upon the idea of delegating tasks to other people, since they they distrust their ability or willingness to follow instructions and rules about how to do things. and rules about how things should be done.

3. Constant search for productive activities

Another of the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is the tendency to to displace leisure and rest time to occupy it with tasks that are considered productive and that have a clear beginning, a series of intermediate steps and an end. This generates great exhaustion and increases stress levels.

4. Extreme ethical rigidity

In personal life, the morality of people with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is so rigid that it focuses more on the formal aspects of what is considered good and bad. on the formal aspects of what is considered right and wrong, rather than on a deep analysis of the implications than on a deep analysis of the ethical implications of one action or another.

5. Extreme perfectionism

The need to make everything go exactly as planned causes many tasks to take too long, which leads to overlappingThis causes them to overlap with other plans. This misalignment of schedules creates intense discomfort.

6. Tendency to accumulate

This type of diagnosis is associated with a tendency to save and accumulateThe person spends very little money and keeps objects whose future usefulness is not clear. This has to do with the need to know that one has the means to face future problems and the extreme need for stability.

7. Stubbornness

The patients with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder hardly change their mindbecause their belief system is rigid and offers stability.

Differential diagnosis: similar disorders

The Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder can be confused with other disorders that do not belong to the personality disorders. The main ones are Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorders. However, there are certain differences that allow them to be distinguished.

OCD

In Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, unlike what happens in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCPDThere is no awareness of having a disorder related to perfectionism and rigidity, since this psychological characteristic has become related to one's own personality and identity.

This makes that this kind of patients do not decide to go to therapy to treat this problem, but to try to solve the problems derived from the symptoms, such as anxiety and fatigue derived from the implementation of their habits.

In contrast, in OCD, obsessions are not perceived as part of one's identity.. In addition, in this disorder the compulsions are of specific type, and the rigidity does not impregnate all the aspects of the own life.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

The people who present symptoms associated with Asperger's SyndromeAsperger's syndrome, nowadays subsumed in the category of Autism Spectrum Disorders, differs from those who experience COPD in their difficulties in carrying out mental processes related to the theory of mind (such as reading between the lines, detecting sarcasm, etc.) and in their poor social skills, mainly.

Causes

As it happens in all the disorders of the personality, the concrete causes of the Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are not clear, since it is a complex and multicausal psychological phenomenon. a complex and multicausal psychological phenomenonbased on variable and constantly changing psychosocial mechanisms that, nevertheless, generate very stable and persistent symptoms over time.

The most accepted hypothesis about the causes of OCPD is based on the biopsychosocial model, so that it is assumed that its origin has to do with an interrelation between biological, social and learning elements that have been internalized by the person. Specifically, it is believed that the onset of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder has to do with the neural networks most associated with the process of detecting patterns in the reality around us. around us. After all, one of the main functions of the brain is to "put order" in the chaos of stimuli to which we are exposed by the simple fact of living on planet Earth (hence we are so prone to detect pareidolias in cracks in the wall, stains on the floor, silhouettes of mountains, etc.).

Treatments

To alleviate the harmful symptoms of COPD and to prevent the appearance of other mental alterations facilitated by it, attendance to psychotherapy sessions is recommended.. However, as with all personality disorders in general, the progress that can be made with therapy is relatively slow, and does not lead to the total disappearance of symptoms.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help to modify habits and thought patterns based on extreme rigidity, to detect times when perfectionism is detracting from quality of life, and to introduce more leisure and rest into daily life.

In some cases, medical personnel can recommend and prescribe psychotropic drugs to be used in a controlled manner and only under medical supervision. In this sense, the use of a type of Antidepressant called selective antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) has been shown to be effective in many cases if have been shown to be effective in many cases if their use is accompanied by psychotherapy.