Is it OCD or are they just hobbies? The profile of maniacal people

Many of the people who come to a psychological consultation arrive desperate for not being able to control obsessive thoughts or attitudes that control their lives. Is it OCD or does he just have manic traits? I tell you the real case of Danielle, a person controlled by manias who did not meet the clinical criteria to be diagnosed as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). What is the profile of a manic person like?

The profile of obsessive people

Daniella was a woman controlled by her manias. At first, His worries were focused on small details like always using the same fork or place the clothespins in a certain order. Later, she added some more striking obsessions and his problem worsened to the point of having lost several partners because they couldn’t stand some of his mania.

Often, as in the case of Daniella, people with a tendency to obsess:

They are usually moops smart.They have a very active mind that is always busy thinking and planning all the details.There is also an inclination towards perfectionism in people of great intelligence or High Capabilities. From an early age, these boys and girls, to feel safe and control their level of anxiety, They seek symmetry and balance in their lives. For example, they order the clips by color, the pigtails have to be at the same height, they throw away a drawing if it hasn’t turned out perfectly or they get very frustrated if they can’t find the last piece to complete a puzzle.

If these little ones do not have adequate emotional support that makes them feel safe and teaches them to manage their frustration and relativize if something does not go as planned, They can radicalize their search for perfection until they fall into real obsessions.

how to control obsessions

Learning to relativize, working on flexibility and lowering the level of demand are the keys to stop being governed by this controlling part of the mind.

One of Daniella’s concerns was that her four-year-old daughter was imitating some of her behaviors. She told me: “I see things in me that are repetitions of what my mother did. Now I’m realizing that my daughter is just as worried as me and I don’t want her to learn my obsessions. I want her to grow up free of all of this.”

I reassured her by explaining that obsessions are not transmitted genetically, but rather they are learned. It is true that there is a genetic component to intelligence and that a common trait in intelligent people is the inclination to worry excessively and the pursuit of perfection. But, the way, balanced or extremist, to cope with these tendencies is learned depending on how the environment and the family model work. I also clarified that if the obsessions are due to poor learning, there is always time to unlearn them and find a healthier way to relate to them.

In the education of these children it is fundamental, In addition to offering them a powerful feeling of protection and security, helping them find a balance between the search for excellence and reality, so that they do not become radicalized and feed obsessions.

Of course, striving to give the best of yourself and not settling for mediocrity is very positive, but always you have to keep your sanity and control so that obsessions do not end up dominating life.

therapy to reduce obsessions

In therapy, part of the work focused on helping Daniella bring her worry down to bearable levels. To achieve this, one of the aspects on which we placed the most emphasis was learn both to relativize situations and to make their posture more flexible.

We tend to focus on our particular way of seeing things, believing that it is the only and the best, but we have to work to broaden our field of vision and consider other alternatives. Perhaps in these other options we will find interesting and enriching new learning for our lives.

To help Daniella learn to relativize and make herself more flexible, in addition to the work we did in therapy, her partner was involved in her healing.

He began to “provoke” her with small daily challenges that pushed her to reflect on her hobbies. She would add some new ingredient to the usual recipes, change the order of the colors of the socks in the drawer or modify the routes of her walks to help Daniella to achieve this mental change that cost him so much.

In her therapy, we also focus on lower the level of self-demandand search for perfection. Nothing happens if everything is not ordered and matched.

It is impossible to achieve perfection, therefore, let’s relax our mind and our level of self-demand.

Little by little, with her work in therapy and with the invaluable help of her partner, Daniella managed to go leaving aside his obsessions to reach a more balanced level in which she was the one who controlled them, instead of being dominated by them. Obviously, she preferred to continue eating with her favorite fork and she did it whenever she could, but she no longer worried about using another if hers was dirty.