Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder: What is it?

Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCD), which should not be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), is a type of mental disorder that characterizes people whose eagerness to make all the pieces of their lives fit together perfectly have been taken to the extreme. Somehow, it can be said that the problem is in a kind of vital perfectionism pushed to its limits.

Normally, in this class of patients they feel the need to have total control over how the events of their life unfold, and This causes them to experience a lot of anxiety and anguish whenever plans do not go as planned, which happens with a lot of frequency.

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

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What is this disorder?

The concept of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is a diagnostic category used in manuals such as DSM-IV that is used to define what happens in a type of people

whose perfectionism and need for control over their own lives they 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 with doing the things as they should be done, without experiencing dissonance between your plans and what happens in the reality.

This disorder belongs to the category of cluster C personality disorders (anxiety disorders), next to Avoidant Personality Disorder and to Dependency Personality Disorder.

Symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder

Diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Personality DisorderLike any other mental disorder, it should always be performed by duly accredited mental health professionals, and through personalized case-by-case assessment. However, as a guide, this list of symptoms can be used to help detect this disorder.

The main symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are as follows.

1. Extreme concern with details

This manifests itself in practically every aspect of life. For example, the person plans very precise schedules that cover everything that should happen throughout the day, create rules for all kinds of social events, decorate the 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, as distrust your ability or willingness to follow instructions exactly and the rules on how they should do things.

3. Constant search for productive activities

Another symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is the tendency to shift 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 in the formal aspects of what is considered good and bad than in a deep analysis of the ethical implications of one action or another.

5. Extreme perfectionism

The need to make everything go as planned makes many tasks take too long, which causes them to overlap with other plans. This mismatch in schedules creates intense discomfort.

6. Tendency to accumulate

This type of diagnosis is associated with a tendency to save and accumulate; very little money is spent and objects are preserved whose future usefulness is unclear. This has to do with the need to know that there are means to face future problems and with the extreme need for stability.

7. Obstinacy

Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder they hardly change their mindas your belief system is rigid and offers stability.

Differential diagnosis: similar disorders

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

TOC

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

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

Instead, in the TOC, obsessions are not perceived as something that is part of one's own identity. In addition, in this disorder the compulsions are of a specific type, and the rigidity does not permeate all aspects of one's life.

• Related article: "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): what is it and how does it manifest?"

Autism Spectrum Disorders

People presenting symptoms associated with Asperger's Syndrome, today subsumed in the category of Autism Spectrum Disorders, differ from those who experience OCT in their difficulties in carrying out related mental processes with theory of mind (like reading between the lines, detecting sarcasm, etc.) and in their poor social skills, mainly.

• Related article: "Asperger syndrome: causes, symptoms and treatment"

Causes

As with all personality disorders, the specific causes of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are not clear, as it is a complex and multi-causal psychological phenomenon, based on variable and constantly changing psychosocial mechanisms that, however, generate very stable and persistent symptoms over time.

The most widely accepted hypothesis about the causes of OCT is based on the biopsychosocial model, so that its origin is assumed to have to do with an interrelation between biological, social and learning elements that have been internalized by the person.

Treatments

When it comes to alleviating the harmful symptoms of OCT attendance at psychotherapy sessions is recommended. The cognitive behavioral therapy can help to modify habits and thought patterns based on extreme rigidity, to detect the moments in which perfectionism is reducing quality of life and introducing more leisure and rest time in the day to day.

In some cases, medical personnel may 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 antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) It has been shown to be effective in many cases if its use is accompanied by psychotherapy.

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