a look into Marjani's life, living with an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
DISCLAIMER:
I am not a licensed physician and cannot diagnose anyone. If you think you have OCPD, it is best to see a psychologist to seek help and a diagnosis. I was diagnosed with OCPD in 2017 by my psychologist in the military. This is MY experience on how OCPD manifests in my life. I have other mental illnesses that may inflate or create tension with the OCPD.
What is OCPD?
"Obsessive-compulsive PERSONALITY disorder is characterized by a pervasive preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and control (with no room for flexibility) that ultimately slows or interferes with completing a task. Diagnosis is by clinical criteria."
- Mark Zimmerman, MD, Rhode Island Hospital
How did it happen?
There is an excellent chance that the childhood trauma of needing to be perfect and adhering to strict rules caused my OCPD. I was raised with very high expectations with equally as high consequences if I failed...
So I never failed.
List-Making
A trait of those with OCPD is obsessively keeping lists and lots of them. I keep tons of lists on my phone, and I have multiple notebooks filled with lists and unfinished tasks. Sometimes I get held up by finer details and never finish the tasks. I am so obsessed with keeping lists that I make it a habit to PREP for list-making, including buying colored pens, markets, fancy notebooks, and more to make lists striving for perfection. I spend much time making sure my lists are perfect for when I reference them.
Control Freak
If you do not do it my way, we cannot do it together, nor will I let you do it for me. Imagine how this affects me in everything in life, lol? You will rarely see me delegate specific tasks unless someone does it the way I taught them. To me, my way is the best. We can both follow the same recipe for a cake, but if you whip your batter differently or use a spoon instead of a whisk, I will rationalize that you have a failed product.
It has to be perfect.
Yall may see me or someone comment that a post has a typo. This is a huge trigger. It bothers me so badly that I have recently paid for a Grammarly subscription to edit my posts (captions soon). If a post has a typo or is off-set, the post is a failure to me. For you all, it may be harmless; for me, it is useless. I have dreams about mistakes. It has to be perfect. I am driven by perfection up to my standards.
Empathy Impairment
To be clear, I am also diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), which has an impairment to empathy as well. There are times when just because I said it's okay does not correlate to how I feel. Why do I do that? Masking and manipulation - and the manipulation is heavily fueled by the ASPD. The masking manifests as a way to avoid lengthy conversations on why I do not care or how I find someone's line of thought flawed...which is imperfection.
You can't tell.
OCPD manifests differently for every person. Unless you know me personally, you probably will be unable to pinpoint anything. You may just think I am rigid or a control freak. Also, be advised that I am really good at masking. I've tried to be "transparent," which can quickly turn into an HR complaint, micro-management, and heated arguments on how you are wrong morally. I also tend to avoid situations where there is group work, and I always volunteer to lead. I am incredibly argumentative and will go to great lengths to prove my point. I am an air traffic controller and train dispatcher in my occupations, and currently, I am a supervisor. One of the reasons why I isolated myself to the 3rd shift is my OCPD & ASPD. I do not like exceptions to the rule or being interrupted from the best path to complete a task. On the 3rd shift, there was no one to interrupt me or offer exceptions to the rule because I only wanted to follow what was written, lol.
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