Perfectionism vs OCPD vs OCD: What You Need to Know

[Music] when it comes to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder there are plenty of myths and signs to be aware of here to walk you through those is triple boards certified forensic and neuropsychologist dr judy ho dr judy welcome and thanks for being here hi kyle great to be here as always i've heard of ocd but now could you explain ocpd absolutely well people with ocd or obsessive-compulsive disorder interestingly have actually some level of insight so they have these obsessions sometimes they have these compulsions and behavioral rituals that go with that uh but they're they're somewhat aware that these on these thoughts these behaviors are kind of unreasonable that maybe it's a little excessive but people with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder which oftentimes gets confused with ocd actually um believe that their way is the right and best way usually they feel comfortable with their self-imposed systems or rules and generally people with ocpd are fixated with procedures to manage their daily life and so it's a little bit different from ocd because ocd sometimes feels a little bit like um they're doing these things that feel super excessive completely gets in the way of them doing anything else whereas people with ocpd they apply their rigid and perfectionistic um and very black and white thinking to all of the things that they are doing so sometimes they can actually be very productive but it makes it really hard for them to get along with other people because again my way or the highway that's very hard for relationships of all types what are the common symptoms of ocpd well as we talked about personality conditions tend to be extremes of a spectrum and so i definitely don't want people to be watching and listening to this and thinking okay this is me or this is my husband or wife or my best friend or my sister or brother you know i think a lot of people have some traits of ocpd but as long as they're not impeding in your life causing you distress or distress to your relationships sometimes they can actually be very adaptive like some of the perfectionism that can be good um some of the rigidity well in some cases you want to be a little rigid and i'll give you an example of people who are researchers as a living if that's your job you kind of do want to be extremely careful and a little rigid especially as it uh involves your work but you know that you might have a problem if you meet several of these symptoms of ocpd excessive fixation with things like lists rules and minor details a perfectionism that actually ends up interfering with you finishing the task on your list so much of a rigid following of moral and ethical codes that it makes it impossible for you to actually dialogue with other people and to actually have a social circle that you would accept excessive devotion to work that completely impairs your social and family activities maybe causes arguments among your family and people who care about you an unwillingness to assign tasks unless other people perform it exactly as you're asking so there's just a really high level of micromanagement and sometimes people with ocpd also have this extreme frugality without good reason meaning like their finances would actually um support them buying a couple of nice things on amazon here and there but they're like no absolutely not and nobody in my family can get anything either and every once in a while people with ocpd also have some types of hoarding behaviors where they just again in their minds they're thinking what if i need this later and they don't want to throw something away but then that can cause a lot of distress to themselves and the people that they live with now if somebody asked me to describe dr judy i might use the word perfectionist i mean everything you do all the interviews we do all the collaborations we've done you do it as as best as possible i mean higher end as possible but it serves you uh you know i you you seem that it seems that it's not adding any negative uh consequences to your life so why can you dr judy leverage perfectionism to have a better life and other people will lean into perfectionism and see it and it will actually have negative impacts well thank you first of all kyle although i don't believe that i do everything perfectly and maybe that is part of the hallmark of a perfectionistic person is that you never actually believe what you do is good enough um but i would say that a lot of people who i really appreciate a lot of my colleagues we always joke that all of us have some dimension of the ocpd personality now we don't have the condition but we certainly are on that spectrum and sometimes it's caused difficulties sometimes i have been so perfectionistic where i'm working on something for five hours and then i realize what am i doing i've just been focusing on the art aspect of a powerpoint slide and who cares nobody cares about this only me right and so you kind of notice that those types of things can come up or i am somebody who is very scheduled and i get very cranky if my schedule gets affected at the last minute like somebody wants to change something on me last minute all of a sudden they want to reschedule a meeting with five minutes to go i will be the first to admit that i'm not very good with that and so i think that people can find that they're on this dimension but then even if i'm not very good with that i might have that inner dialogue of like this is very annoying this is stressful but outwardly i'll say of course i understand you have to reschedule and then we just move forward um versus somebody who might have bona fide ocpd and have the diagnosis they may completely blow up at the purse and they may say well forget it then from now on we're never going to have a meeting like this business deal is over right and so you can kind of see that it could be a level of extremes and that is one very common thing among people who have the diagnosis is that they have this overwhelming rigidity the adherence to the rules and regulations are so rigid that they can't see the forest from the trees and so again you can find somebody last minute scheduling or not following through annoying but it's quite another thing to say well i'll never speak to you again and you're just out of my life and sometimes people with ocpd will do things like that when they become upset yes med circle has a wonderful series on this disorder ocpd featuring clinical psychologist dr romini dr romney and dr judy will both be in our live panel tonight if you would like to register for that use the links below when we come back we're going to talk about how these symptoms can affect relationships but right now here's an inside look into that series on ocpd for example you might see in somebody with ocd they might have a symmetry obsession so some things that all out of order it would actually make them anxious to see that with ocd with ocd okay right so something's not squared to the corner of a table or something that would make them very anxious so much so that they wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it they'd actually not even be able to stay in a conversation they'd be so focused on it and then they either the obsessions would be intrusive or they'd have to engage in a compulsion as an offset you'd never see anything like that no cpd something wasn't they would make sure everything's lined up just so but not to an excessive amount of time like once it's lined up they're good so they don't have those sort of intrusive thoughts they will spend a lot of time ensuring that their environment is or money ensuring their environment is exactly as they want it to be but it's not in this way that it feels irrational you can watch that series and more at watch.medcircle.com dr judy how can these extreme symptoms affect somebody's romantic relationship well it can affect somebody's romantic relationship because they are so rigid that they can't really partner with somebody as we all know all relationships especially the intimate ones where you're with a romantic partner sharing a life it involves a give and take it involves some compromising sometimes you're doing things that you don't love doing but you're doing it for your partner because you know it's important to them well people with ocpd will have a really hard time doing those things because if they don't see how it serves them and their rules it will be really hard for them to say i'll do it your way this time just because i know that that's what you want and that sounds a little narcissistic to me well again ocpd individuals do believe that their way is the best way so even if their partner says listen i know that this is not your cup of tea but just do it for me because it's important to me or i think it's a great way to do this particular activity well the person who's ocpd might actually try to get that person to see it their way instead of saying i accept that i still kind of believe that my way's better but fine i i'll leave you alone i'll do it your way this one time they kind of have to have the last word so they'll go in and they'll try to convince the person that actually they're wrong and that they're the ones who really know what's going on you can see how that can be very demeaning in a relationship and just cause a lot of unnecessary fights particularly as we know that with ocpd individuals it's not about like necessarily all the big things i mean certainly they care about the big things of life too but sometimes they're fighting about the smallest things that really are of no consequence like how you line up a plate in a dishwasher for example and they will just have an argument about that for an hour about what the correct way is and why are you doing this other way and that's part of the problem is that they again cannot necessarily see the holistic picture and they get very very focused on the details to the um you know to the detriment of better life better functioning and better relationships so certainly my father is not living with ocpd however his entire pantry is labeled with a label maker for every item and i don't mean here's where the soup goes i mean here's where the chicken noodle soup goes and here's where the tomato soup goes that to me seems very rigid and is a an attribute that i would associate with someone who's a perfectionist i have a lot of those elements did i get the little bit of perfectionism and rigidity i have from my father or was it more from the environment i was raised in well first of all it's really funny that your father does that because i actually do that and when i got married my husband made me take all the labels off of my pantry because he thought that was crazy i don't mind labeling like baking stuff and you put all the baking over there but you labeled like white sugar brown sugar like this is where it goes i labeled i actually put them on the outside which i think also bothered my husband um where i would have on the outside of the pantry it'll be like canned goods um you know soups like i mean i don't know if i label chicken soup versus split pea but i definitely had label like utensils um paper products you know all of this stuff and so anyway he got rid of that but actually he's a little bit of again on that spectrum of perfectionism and rigidity himself and so actually we are very organized in our house but he just doesn't have labels for stuff but there have been times where i'll put something back in the pantry and he'll be like that doesn't go there that goes on this shelf and he'll like go and move it and so anyway like well if i had the label i would have known where to put it thank you exactly that's what i've been telling him so anyway i think that my husband and i will be great friends with your father but um to answer your question about biology nurture versus nature um i think it's a little bit of both so um we have found that people with ocpd like qualities they that that does run in families but it runs in families partially because there might be sort of like a temperament predisposition where you kind of have certain uh personality traits that emulate somebody else in the family but also you watch them do something and then you think that that's the way you do things and so you learn that also just through the principles of observation and learning theory for those on the extreme end of perfectionism where it really is debilitating they may believe that it helps them live a more organized efficient life but in actuality it's actually hurting their relationships and making them less productive because they're spending five hours on artwork instead of just you know finishing the presentation what can supporters do to help maintain a healthy relationship and help the person they love have some joy in their life well first of all uh loved ones of people who have true ocpd should understand a little bit of where that person is coming from and what i mean by that is not just doing that to be a jerk that's not what they're doing in fact it's a coping strategy that they've developed to get them through life so there's something self-soothing about that rigidity that perfectionism because they have that need for control and they need to feed that need for control to feel safe in their everyday life emotionally and physically so understand that it's coming from a place of you know again a little bit of self-protection a little bit of self-soothing as opposed to them just wanting to put you down or make you look bad or or be a jerk to you and then trying to appeal to their senses of self-protection maybe in a different way and i think it's really important to show that you're trying to partner with them and that you understand them and then negotiate once you've had sort of that common link of i get it you know we're different people and this might make you feel good um but is there a way that we can come to the middle so that i can also feel good about this situation or uh what we're going to be doing this evening or how we organize this cabinet like can we sort of think about a way in which we can come to a solution that both of us might feel kind of good about and oftentimes i know that people with ocpd they actually love a lot of people in their life but they may not treat them that way all the time and that has nothing to do with the fact that they don't love people they do and so sometimes it's even helpful as the loved one to really use that um as ammunition and say listen um when you do that it actually hurts me or when you do that it hurts my feelings um so can we find another way to say what you need to say you know sometimes it can really help just to appeal to that that side of them because remember people with ocpd actually have extreme rules about morality so without without being pedantic towards them if you just appeal to their sense of actually being humanitarians they actually really do have a strong sense of right and wrong and that can really come through when they love somebody and the loved one is saying what you do affects me in a negative way it makes me feel hurt it makes me feel sad so can we find some way where i don't feel as bad but you also get a little bit of what you want yeah really really great insight and advice again we have a full series on ocpd that you can watch at watch.medcircle.com we'll see most of you tonight for the live panel dr judy thanks for your insight today i'm kyle kittleson remember whatever you're going through you got [Music] this

Channel: MedCircle

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Keywords: perfectionism, ocpd, obsessive, compulsive, personality, disorder, perfectionist, perfectionism and anxiety, perfectionism anxiety, perfectionism ocd, how to stop being a perfectionist, how to overcome perfectionism, perfectionism and procrastination, ocd vs ocpd, obsessive compulsive personality disorder, mental health, ocd, personality disorder, mental illness, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, obsessions, psychology, therapy, medcircle, video, youtube

Id: maVM6lL1qKI

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021