Personality is the psychological equivalent of a person’s physical appearance; we do not choose it voluntarily and it characterizes us since childhood. It is what makes us think, feel and behave in a certain way in our daily life.
Personality is a mixture of hereditary traits and environmental influences. The healthiest thing to do is to keep it flexible and adaptable to the circumstances we encounter throughout life. When personality traits hinder the flexibility necessary for “normal” functioning, due to their rigidity, and do not allow adaptation to these environments (academic, socio-family or work), we speak of a personality disorder or PD.
Typologies of personality disorders
There is a wide variety of disorders and we can group them into three main categories:
– The rare, eccentric, isolated (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal).
– The emotionally overwhelming, overflowing, colorful (histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial and borderline).
– Those dominated by anxiety, fear and emotional repression (dependent, avoidant and obsessive-compulsive).
What are the features of obsessive-compulsive PD?
This type of disorder refers to people who are preoccupied with order and are extremely rigid in their schedules. In their planning, they stick to rules and control. The main characteristics are:
– Little capacity to show emotions of affection and tenderness.
– A preoccupation with perfectionism that prevents a global vision or understanding of the situation.
– Insistence that others submit to their “best or only way of doing things”.
– Excessive devotion to work and productivity, even to the exclusion of leisure time or pleasure. Some are so busy in their task, that they almost never enjoy what they do.
– Indecisiveness due to the thorough and exhaustive analysis of each option and eagerness to make the non-existent “perfect” decision. They leave nothing to chance, since chance could be wrong.
– Feelings such as anger, sadness or rage are not allowed to surface.
Treatment
Although initially the help of an anxiolytic or antidepressant is necessary, the most appropriate treatment is long-term psychotherapy. The best therapy is based on “mindfulness”, which focuses on the here and now, emphasizing the emotion, the feeling instead of the concrete thought where they are always located. When improvement is achieved on the part of the patient, it is good to continue with group therapy, to understand how his personality contributes to his frustrated interpersonal relationships.
It is convenient to distinguish this type of PD from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. The latter refers to people with real obsessions and/or compulsions, which are very unpleasant and intrusive in spite of their will. Although sometimes they coincide, and both pathologies can occur in the same person, OCD is much more disabling and the therapeutic approach to OCD is different.