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  #1  
Old 25th February 2021, 17:53
limey123 limey123 is offline
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Question OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Anyone else do this?

Checking/re-reading e-mails and other documents you write multiple times before you can finally let them go, not only for work, but even when communicating with family and friends.

I don't do it every single time, as sometimes you have to release an e-mail etc. RIGHT NOW and it's out of your control then, but given the time and opportunity, I do it most of the time. Not only re-reading the entire text looking for errors, but also checking the greetings and signatures many times (did you address the right person?), and scanning the text for keywords, just to be absolutely sure you wrote exactly what you think you did. (Have you written something that the recipient could actually take the wrong way?). I do it less with texts than e-mails, but I still often do it there, too.

This takes up a lot of time and affects work performance, of course. It may partly be a throwback to my previous occupation where almost any mistake was unacceptable, but I think it's wider than that. If someone or a loud noise distracts me, often I have to start from scratch with the checking again. Sometimes I have to do the checking X number of times before I can finally let it go (think this could well be an Asperger's thing).

Not sure if it's OCD or just perfectionism. Or something else. I frequently also double-check (triple, quadruple...) I turned off the hob, locked the car doors, locked the front door, have got my wallet/phone/keys with me, and so on with lots of other things. I suppose it all ultimately comes down to control in a random and chaotic world. And about not being the guy to blame when things go wrong.

Can anyone else relate? How to get a handle on it?
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  #2  
Old 27th February 2021, 17:34
Sisyphus Sisyphus is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Hi limey123,

I can relate to this 100% if not more.

Getting a handle on it was quite tricky and I only managed to improve the situation a bit.

Posting on here is a struggle because of this and I usually give up and just lurk. As for the OCD, the number of times I have driven off and then part of my mind convinces me that I have left the front door wide open. Sometimes I drive back other times I live with the idea but then my mind will not let it go and I am distracted until I get back.

For me these are more symptoms than a condition in themselves. Attempts to address them directly have failed. One thing that does help with the front door thing is that I now park the car pointing at the door so I can see it as I leave.

The writing thing I can control a bit by creating a habit and hoping that practice will improve things. Once I stop for some reason though it takes quite a bit to start up again.

Over the last few years I have taken a different approach to getting better and I am now digging down into the causes of my difficulties. I do my best to control my symptoms and put much more effort now into digging up the roots of my dysfunction. It is a ghastly process but I do feel it is helping.

Edit: To answer the question in the title, I think the two symptoms are rooted in two different issues so they are not the same thing for me.
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  #3  
Old 28th February 2021, 16:22
limey123 limey123 is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Many thanks, guys, for your thoughts.

@Sisyphus: sorry to read you also struggle with these things. Glad to read, though, you've been able to improve things of late. May I ask what sorts of things you are doing to try to improve things?
Totally get the thing with the front door. I do have an experience in this regard though. When I went up to York on short break the year before last, I mustn't have locked the front door (totally unlike me!!) and I'd also left my bedroom window open to keep the room ventilated. The open window must have somehow caused the front door to open by itself due to the passage of air, as when I returned, my front door was wide open! It had apparently been so for several days. Yet I determined that nothing had happened, no-one had been inside. The postie had even laid the post nicely inside the front door on the door mat. OK, I am partly fortunate in that my front door is not really visible from the road, but still, it did make me think a bit about my concerns.

@Nanuq: thanks for your thoughts on the differences between perfectionism and OCD. I'm thinking you have what used to be called Asperger's Nanuq? (I was diagnosed last year at the grand age of 45!). Folks with Asperger's or the like are known for their love of order, predictability and planning. It does sound like what I have is more like perfectionism, and it's interesting to read that you report similar impulses. Yeah, it's mostly about ensuring everything is done right and in its proper place, but of course, it's ultimately a control thing. The thing with the checking documents is rather intrusive, I would say, it bugs me until I've done it, which may take some time. The other checking less so: once I've checked a couple or few times, I'm content and can let the concern go. I know things are in order.

Sorry to read your son suffers from OCD. That does indeed sound quite different from what I (and you?) experience, and it sounds like it causes him quite some distress. I am sorry about that. Is he having some treatment to try to improve matters?

Take care!
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  #4  
Old 1st March 2021, 10:29
Jen. Jen. is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by limey123
Anyone else do this?

Checking/re-reading e-mails and other documents you write multiple times before you can finally let them go, not only for work, but even when communicating with family and friends.

I don't do it every single time, as sometimes you have to release an e-mail etc. RIGHT NOW and it's out of your control then, but given the time and opportunity, I do it most of the time. Not only re-reading the entire text looking for errors, but also checking the greetings and signatures many times (did you address the right person?), and scanning the text for keywords, just to be absolutely sure you wrote exactly what you think you did. (Have you written something that the recipient could actually take the wrong way?). I do it less with texts than e-mails, but I still often do it there, too.

This takes up a lot of time and affects work performance, of course. It may partly be a throwback to my previous occupation where almost any mistake was unacceptable, but I think it's wider than that. If someone or a loud noise distracts me, often I have to start from scratch with the checking again. Sometimes I have to do the checking X number of times before I can finally let it go (think this could well be an Asperger's thing).

Not sure if it's OCD or just perfectionism. Or something else. I frequently also double-check (triple, quadruple...) I turned off the hob, locked the car doors, locked the front door, have got my wallet/phone/keys with me, and so on with lots of other things. I suppose it all ultimately comes down to control in a random and chaotic world. And about not being the guy to blame when things go wrong.

Can anyone else relate? How to get a handle on it?
I definitely do this with texts and emails (but like you, definitely more with emails). It feels to me more like a social anxiety thing than OCD though. It's the fear of typing the wrong word or making a mistake and being judged negatively for it. Worrying about whether starting with "Hi", "Hello", "Good morning", "Dear...", etc, will give the best impression even though in reality any of them would be fine. Thinking I might have missed a word out or made an unfortunate typo that will make me look stupid or give the wrong meaning. Sometimes I've pressed send after checking a dozen times and then pressed "cancel" so I can read through it even more. It's strange... I can be happy enough with some 5000 word story I've written to the extent that someone reading it doesn't bother me in the slightest, even though I know for certain that a mistake or two might have slipped in, but will then needlessly stress about writing the 50 word cover email I'm sending with it. I don't know what the difference is. I'm a lot better now with sending texts than I used to be and I'm happy enough after one or two cursory glances through before pressing send. I didn't consciously do anything to get better at it though, so I can't really offer any advice. Maybe posting on forums and being on chat rooms helped... on forums I usually only have one read through if a post is long, and never read through before pressing send on chat rooms. It could be the difference is you're able to edit or delete those things, but once an email is out of your hands you have no control over it.

I do like my home to be clutter-free, tidy and clean, but I wouldn't say this really borders into OCD because my thoughts don't dwell on it much and I don't have rituals or intrusive thoughts about it. I do worry when I'm sending something in the mail though, going through a package several times to make sure everything is perfect, and worrying that a hair (mine or a cat's) might have made its way into the envelope or box. That's probably more to do with SA than OCD too though, since it's worrying about what impression someone will have about me if I let that happen. I suppose it's the same as an email in that once you've let go of it you have to trust you didn't make any mistakes because there's no reversing it.
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Old 2nd March 2021, 18:09
Sisyphus Sisyphus is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by limey123
@Sisyphus: sorry to read you also struggle with these things. Glad to read, though, you've been able to improve things of late. May I ask what sorts of things you are doing to try to improve things?
This is my personal view and not in any way advice for anyone else.

I do not say I have OCD but simply an unhelpful habit. If I think of it as a disease it is a trigger for my learned helplessness to kick in and I am tempted to shift the responsibility externally rather than where it belongs.

I have lots of intrusive thoughts, mainly pizza, cake, and biscuits, it is just that I select some for worry. These are rooted in old unresolved issues and happen naturally. The difficulty is how I react to those thoughts. If I reinforce the thoughts by reacting to them I am likely to create a problem that isn’t really there.

With the ones I can predict I use rituals, but importantly I do them before the intrusive thoughts are triggered. This breaks the feedback. For example I make a point of checking the door as I am about to leave so that when the trigger occurs just as I turn onto the dual carriageway I can blow a raspberry at the thought.

When an intrusive thought is triggered and I cannot remember doing the ritual I use mindfulness and other CBT stuff to resist the compulsions so that I break the reinforcement. The thoughts tend to persist until I get back but the key here appears to suffer the thoughts but do not act on them. Do not close the loop.

If I do reinforce it I do not berate myself for it but simply drop it.

The key thing for me is not to reinforce the intrusive thoughts by reacting. Sometimes I have a ritual, sometimes I have to rationalize the thoughts CBT style through statistics which doesn’t work so well but does boost my resolve a bit.

The intrusive thoughts are archaic in origin and I am working on digging them out though other means. Once those insecurities are resolved I hope the thoughts will be much more manageable.
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  #6  
Old 4th March 2021, 17:17
limey123 limey123 is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

Thanks, folks, for your new comments.

@Nanuq: Interesting to hear more of your experiences. I can relate to the need for order and context. I'm trying (and mainly failing) to learn a new job now and it's mostly just learning random information and lots of details, but I am missing the overall picture and a contextual basis. I can finish stuff, but when studying, I tend to do things to death and want to cover every possible avenue. I suppose it's a control thing again. Have you found any good methods for helping get a handle on the compulsion to plan everything? And have you read any good resources on Asperger's that have helped?
The way you describe OCD it sounds pretty awful. It sounds like people can get consumed and overwhelmed by their thought impulses? The example with the shoe reminded me of what I once read that Kierkegaard said, that we live in fear of what we *might* do, e.g. throw ourselves off a cliff and these impulses are real. Glad anyway your son is now getting help and she sounds supportive

@Jen: Thanks for your thoughts. It sounds like we do very much the same thing and it's probably rooted in SA and perfectionism, as you said. Like you, I'm less worried about text and chat messages. Perhaps because they are somehow less formal than e-mails? Anyway, I feel like I would be less judged on the former than the latter. I know just what you mean about the posting of parcels etc. too! I do exactly that as well, check multiple times for errors or perceived flaws. Apparently most people don't do these things, though, as they would never get all their work done (e.g. people working in online retail). It's defo something I need to get over or at least manage, but I don't know how, because, as you said, it's very likely part and parcel of the SA...

@Sisyphus: Thank you for your explanation of your thought processes and your way of dealing with them. You seem to have got things well understood in your rational mind? I suppose the challenge is now to actually confront the thoughts, which to some extent are irrational, or at least, out of proportion. Could you recommend any useful reading material?

**
Wow, I only read through this message once before posting, LOL.
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  #7  
Old 4th March 2021, 17:27
Sisyphus Sisyphus is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

^ I have been working on this for a lot of years. A quick think back suggets that the first thing I did was to try to understand and know myself. That was a painful process.

Denial is a huge obstacle because I didn't accept I was in denial. I thought I would know if I was.

Shame was something I had to overcome too because that stopped me looking at and accepting a lot of my past.

I am still a work in progress.

Give me some time and I will think about what books I have read and will post something in a while.

This was a quick post too.
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  #8  
Old 9th March 2021, 18:39
limey123 limey123 is offline
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Default Re: OCD? Or just perfectionism? Or are they the same thing?

^ Thanks Sisyphus
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