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OCD Personality Disorder

M

Merkury

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 16, 2019
Messages
39
I always force myself to do "what I HAVE to do", instead of what I would like to do. I've been diagnosed with OCDP (personality disorder). Basically I have to control everything and the result of everything. This leads to feeling disconnected from the body quite often. I used to create music freely, but since I've started having this disorder, I don't find pleasure anymore in music, because it has become "something that I HAVE to do" (otherwise I will be a failure, that's what I think).

If i smoke, all the rumination stops and I can lose myself in the present moment.
However I'd prefer not to have an addiction, because then I'll get OCD on it.

The only thing that seems to help is exercising, however I cannot exercise all day......
I'd like to know if there are some methods to get out of rumination / "should - shouldn't" way of thinking
and to enjoy the present moment without the feeling of "impending failure".

P.S. I feel writing this post was liberating somehow.
 
Hi, well, that's what everybody seems to suggest me. The nearest thing I do is some combination of stretching or weight lifting, the rush of endorphine usually calms me down.

However, if I had to sit down and 'meditate', I'd have the impression of being idle (wasting time), plus my racing mind would make the experience kinda draining.

Maybe I just don't know what meditation is
 
Ive read that in normal ocd the thoughts are egodystonic and in ocd personality they are egosyntonic. I suffer from normal ocd and for me atleast the thoughts have always been egodystonic. Do you get egosyntonic thoughts?
 
Merkury said:
I always force myself to do "what I HAVE to do", instead of what I would like to do. I've been diagnosed with OCDP (personality disorder). Basically I have to control everything and the result of everything. This leads to feeling disconnected from the body quite often. I used to create music freely, but since I've started having this disorder, I don't find pleasure anymore in music, because it has become "something that I HAVE to do" (otherwise I will be a failure, that's what I think).

If i smoke, all the rumination stops and I can lose myself in the present moment.
However I'd prefer not to have an addiction, because then I'll get OCD on it.

The only thing that seems to help is exercising, however I cannot exercise all day......
I'd like to know if there are some methods to get out of rumination / "should - shouldn't" way of thinking
and to enjoy the present moment without the feeling of "impending failure".

P.S. I feel writing this post was liberating somehow.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but please don't have kids until you are medicated or stabalized. My dad ruined my life with it. I never made a choice all of my own until recently (23 years). I had terrible anxiety because if I didn't squeeze the right part of the toothpaste or forget to screw the cap back on he'd come raging. I had to fucking SLEEP facing a certain way and I'd better pray I don't roll over in the night and have him see when he came to inspect me. He controlled my opinions and every aspect of even my thoughts. He's very anti-LGBT+ and threatened to kick me out the house when he caught me watching RuPauls Drag Race.
As for yourself an SSRI/SNRI would probably be prescribed, maybe with a benzo. You need therapy to learn to stand up to yourself and do what you WANT, not what you feel compelled to do.
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Sorry, but please don't have kids until you are medicated or stabalized. My dad ruined my life with it. I never made a choice all of my own until recently (23 years). I had terrible anxiety because if I didn't squeeze the right part of the toothpaste or forget to screw the cap back on he'd come raging. I had to fucking SLEEP facing a certain way and I'd better pray I don't roll over in the night and have him see when he came to inspect me. He controlled my opinions and every aspect of even my thoughts. He's very anti-LGBT+ and threatened to kick me out the house when he caught me watching RuPauls Drag Race.
As for yourself an SSRI/SNRI would probably be prescribed, maybe with a benzo. You need therapy to learn to stand up to yourself and do what you WANT, not what you feel compelled to do.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your (*shocking !*) life experience, I will keep that in mind. It sounds like growing up in hell. I was raised from a Bipolar and NPD parent so.... that's why I developed an extreme need to control .

The SSRI I got prescribed a couple of years ago ( actually I ASKED the doc for it ), Paxil, worked WONDERS for the train of thoughts, however I ended up feeling like a speaking robot, my feelings were gone. As a musician, my feelings are quite important so I would like to investigate other options if possible.

Benzo scares me. They are extremely addictive.
 
CBT and mindfulness are pretty useful tools to help change automatic thoughts, like "should/shouldn'ts". Meditation can be a form of mindfulness, basically just being mentally aware of your own internal dialogue. It's important to listen to yourself and understand your own reasonings, this way you can use CBT to analyze and reveal any cognitive distortions you may be commonly using. Here is a list of 15 common cognitive distortions. There are inaccurate patterns of thinking that everyone is susceptible to.

For example, lets dig into a statement you made: you mention having a creative block musically because you feel and believe that if you don't practice or try hard enough you will be a failure. Now a number of distortions may seem to fit, but it will be up to you to decide which one(s) you are truly using at the time. In this statement, there seems to be some polarized thinking(success or failure, no middle ground) as well as some catastrophizing(expecting the worst if you don't practice). In reality, you can still be successful if you miss some practices and you don't have to be the best in the world in order not to be a failure. Also, going forward, I think it'd be important for you to clearly define what your goals are, so you can have a very clear definition of what you as success and you as a failure look like. If your goal is to just simply enjoy music again, you might be putting a great deal of unnecessary pressure.

The question you'll have to be asking yourself, is why do you think that you HAVE to do all these things instead of what you'd like to do. Obviously there are some things you have to do, like work in order to pay the bills, but all the extra stuff- why? Ask yourself and then listen for the automatic thoughts. "Or I will be a failure" is the automatic thought in the example mentioned(music), possibly other areas as well. Once you recognize the distortion, then you can start rationalizing and correcting your automatic thoughts. So now when you think about needing to practice and you think "or I will be a failure" you can stop and correct yourself. The truth is that you need to practice in order to achieve the goals you set for yourself. If you are unsure what your goals are, work on daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. This way you are practicing to actively pursue your goals, rather than trying to avoid being a failure. Might seem like a small difference in perspective, but one is very hopeful and one hopeless. One is chasing a goal, the other is running from fear.
 
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate your insight. You just made me realize that those thoughts are AUTOMATIC so I cannot control them, but certainly observing them, writing them down, really listening to what they are trying to tell me will be a huge step forward, as well as the 'goals' suggestion.

Looks like I've been trying to actively control the subconscious, which is not really possible as it doesn't speak the same language as the rational mind.
 
Merkury said:
Looks like I've been trying to actively control the subconscious, which is not really possible as it doesn't speak the same language as the rational mind.
Click to expand...

Depends on who you are. I can filter them for e.g, it's easy once you learn the process of day-dreaming.
 
schizopath said:
Actually I suffer from purely O(c)D without compulsions. So purely obsessions with 0 compulsions.
Click to expand...

Do you mean obsessive only obsessive compulsive disorder - where you just have constant ruminations and intrusive thoughts but no rituals / behaviours to exorcise them and make you feel better? I have that. CBT very helpful in managing it.
 
Merkury said:
those thoughts are AUTOMATIC so I cannot control them
Click to expand...
you might not be able to control them in the moment, but you can gain some control over them in the long term. The thoughts that pop up are your thoughts, whether they are true or not and whether they make you feel good or not. In all likelihood, you've trained yourself to think this way(or you've been trained by parents/gaurdians) and by giving in to these thoughts/not correcting them, it reinforces the habit/automatic thought.

It's like biting your nails when you're nervous, or balling your fist when you're scared. Or whatever similar sort of automatic reactionary behaviors that everyone has. Likely everyone has their own little unique habits like these, some of which may become problematic and difficult to stop, like nail biting for some. It may not always be possible to stop yourself from doing whatever compulsion once you've developed the habit, but unless you take some sort of action the behavior probably wont stop itself. So this is where mindfulness can really help. Mindfulness, in this example, would not only be noticing you are biting your nails, but taking note of what sort of situations and thoughts are happening when you bite your nails.

So applying this to your situation, I think a good question you might start with is "why can't I allow myself to relax and have a good time?", and then try to do something leisurely like create or play around with a chord progression. Listen to your own thoughts and inner dialogue.

Think of it like stretches for your mind. It takes daily stretching to really gain flexibility, but over time you can really make some big progress.
 
Mafioso said:
So applying this to your situation, I think a good question you might start with is "why can't I allow myself to relax and have a good time?", and then try to do something leisurely like create or play around with a chord progression. Listen to your own thoughts and inner dialogue.
Click to expand...

I will try to do that, thanks. Actually I think it all comes down to having unrealistic expectations that need to be resized back to normal.
 
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