HEALTH and LIFESTYLE: Obsessive Compulsive Behavior

Off with the stuffs in my head and on with the topic that is SO obvious in my blog. The title itself implies something about myself which refers to my obsessiveness and compulsiveness. Yes, you heard it right OC and I'm going to tell you something about that kind of behavior.

In Psychiatric Nursing, the behavior is under the Cluster C of Personality Disorders, thus, it was termed as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality behavior. Let's define first what OC is:

• Obsessive Compulsive personality disorder is similar to obsessive-compulsive anxiety disorder. People with this disorder are overly focused on orderliness and perfection. Their need to do everything "right" often interferes with their productivity. They tend to get caught up in the details and miss the bigger picture. They set unreasonable high standards for themselves and others, and tend to be very critical of others when they do not live up to these high standards. They avoid working in teams, believing others would be too careless or incompetent. They avoid making decisions because they fear making mistakes and are rarely generous with their time and money. They often have difficulty expressing emotion (Cortez, 2010).

People with this disorder are "PERFECTIONIST" indeed.

My professors and reviewers often use mnemonics as their style for teaching to make students remember the lessons easily. For the characteristics of the behavior they've used "FIRM LAWS" as the mnemonic.

• F: Friendship and leisure activities excluded due to preoccupation on work.
• I: Inflexible, scrupulous, over conscientious on ethics and values.
• R: Reluctant to delegate - unless they submit to exact guidelines.
• M: Misery towards self and others.
• L: Loses point of activity due to preoccupation of details
• A: Ability to compare task (Compromised by perfectionism)
• W: Worthless object (Unable to discard)
• S: Stubbornness and rigidity.

I quite agree to the fact that I'm QUITE stubborn (lol) but not on having a personality disorder, that's why I termed it myself to behavior. Not that I'm protecting nor defending myself, but after seeing the symptoms, I realized that my behavior can't be considered as a disorder yet (I'm a natural born psychologist/psychiatrist, jk) Unlike the people with OCD, I use to wash my hands ONLY when I came in contact with something I assume to be dirty. For example, last night when I'm on my way home from church a lady with two children rode the same jeep that I'm riding. It was so hard for her to get on the vehicle for she was carrying two children. Because I'm kind in nature, I helped her older child to get up on the jeepney. When they're already seated I've realized that the child that I've helped is not so clean. And so, from there till I got home I never touched anything even myself. Then rushed into the restroom to wash my hands :)


Another thing is that I'm so into making some things in symmetry. For instance, I want my shoes, sandals or slippers to be in line perfectly together. Like when I'm going off to bed, I want my slippers to be in place properly in line together. The same thing goes for my shoes when I just got home and when I'm leaving my slippers off the shower room. What makes this behavior bad for me is that I want everything to be in place aside from my clothes. I'm not so critical in arranging them unlike my mother who wants our clothes properly folded and sorted together. You think I inherited that from her, right? I think so too. My mom wants everything clean, as in literally. She don't want to see even a tiny spot on the floor, on EVERYTHING. We grew up in her standards, that is why I think me and my brothers inherited some from her.


Aside from my lining my shoes and slippers together, I find my compulsiveness to the extreme when I want everything to be equal. Like when I tapped my right foot, I should do the same to the other, and take note it should be in the right intensity. I noticed that when I'm not satisfied that they're equal, I will do it again and again not noticing everything around me.I'm not denying it because I also find myself being troubled by this. 


Due to knowing how to manage these behavior, I've learned to limit myself from these. I think I made some improvement that from frequently tapping myself to make them equal, now I'm rarely doing it (but sometimes it still happens a lot). I still want everything to be clean though. But with all of these, I've realized that I can learn to limit myself but I cannot remove my obsessions + compulsion.




* BTW, thanks to my professors, Mr. Joseph Rommel Cortez UAP, RMP, RN; Ms. Leyden dela Cruz RN, MAN and Mr. Jayson Bactat RN, MAN.