Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 9 - The Drive of Demand-Sensitivity, Thinkaholism, and Orderliness

This post continues with The Driving Forces: The DRIVE OF DEMAND-SENSITIVITY, THINKAHOLISM, AND ORDERLINESS from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

THE DRIVE OF DEMAND-SENSITIVITY, THINKAHOLISM, AND ORDERLINESS

As I discussed in chapter 5, obsessives tend to be acutely sensitive to both explicit and unspoken obligations. This heightened sensitivity can make one's work load heavier than that of a less demand-sensitive person. For example, when Mona's boss began working weekends, Mona felt compelled to join him in the office for at least a few hours. "He never once asked me to come in," she said. "But somehow I got the feeling that he really did think I should help out."

Thinkaholism can exert a different kind of pressure on those already overburdened individuals. Work provides rich fodder for the obsessive's tendency to dwell on problems. At the end of the day or the end of the week, many workaholics find it hard to shift their thoughts and attention away from their jobs, and as a result they may be preoccupied and "not fully present" with loved ones or in leisure activities.

Yet another contributor to workaholism can be the obsessive's need for orderliness. Work organizes one's time, it imposes an order upon existence. I can't count the number of obsessives who have told me that while work is hard, they prefer it to the uncertainty or unstructured time. At least, when they have tasks laid out before them, they can enjoy a sense of movement and virtuous productivity as they dispatch them. Orderliness many also increase their work load if it drives them to spend a lot of time on such activities as cleaning, organizing, and straightening their desks. Or they may feel compelled to stay late, until all the "loose ends" have been attended to.

***

Work is structured. Work is competitive. Work can offer measurable results, unlike, say, child care or housework - you might have just changed a diaper or wiped a runny nose, but you'll have to keep on changing those diapers or wiping noses. You can wash a floor, and people will track in more dirt, pet hair, etc., usually within minutes.

Whereas if you finish writing a report, or filing a stack of bills, or building a house, once it's done, it's DONE. (Of course, there will be other reports to write, others bills to file, other houses to build...)  Paying work is more tangible than "hanging out" with family and friends.  If you don't want to go home, you will always find "loose ends" at work to keep you from doing so.

I just got back from a conference (hence the late post, and no pictures) and though it was certainly very fun, it was also WORK. It was workshops and networking and "building relationships," even during meals and drinks at the bar.

As a society, we support, rather than discourage workaholism. We give validation and praise to the "hard workers" and the people with the spotlessly clean desks. When someone brags/complains about working 60-70 hour weeks, we don't roll our eyes and say, "Wow, sounds like your life is really out of balance."

But maybe we should.

Do you spend a lot of time at work "straightening"?
Does your brain stay at work even when it's time to be with family?

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 9 - Work as Protection

This post continues with The Driving Forces: WORK AS PROTECTION from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

WORK AS PROTECTION

Work can also serve to buffer the obsessive from things he or she would rather avoid. For instance, work makes for an admirable barrier to intimacy.

<snip> Evely was an extremely conscientious teacher who complained bitterly about her loneliness. She blamed her job for the fact that she was single and had virtually no social life; she put in phenomenally long hours both in the classroom and at home in the evenings and on weekends. While Evelyn said she hated this grind, she was passionately devoted to her students and couldn't imagine doing less for them. She felt she was only giving them what they needed and deserved, and she couldn't understand how other teachers could work less in good conscience.

<snip> Being an altruistic, ultra-dedicated teacher was so crucial to her pride and sense of self-worth that she couldn't bear any hint that her motives might be mixed - that is, that her workaholism might be a self-serving defense mechanism as well as arising from a desire to serve others.

photo via MorgueFile

A second way in which his work can protect the workaholic is by providing him with a noble excuse for avoiding various personal demands - demands with which he might otherwise feel duty-bound to comply. "It was much more fun to be a big shot downtown than to go home and change diapers," admitted one banker who reformed his hard-driving ways after suffering a massive heart attack. <snip>

Immersion in work can also protect one from awareness of one's emotions. "I always overworked," Belinda, a research chemist, told me. "But when my husband died a few years ago, then I really became obsessive about it. I had no reason to go home. I see now that I was using work to mask my feelings and to keep myself at bay."

Still one more "protective" quality that the obsessive may find in work is a superstitious one. On some level he may feel that his diligence is racking up countless points with the Cosmic Scorekeeper.  By putting in all those long hours, he denies himself pleasure for the present - but can expect to be rewarded someday, somehow, for his self-sacrifice.

Some people can't spend money on themselves without going through eleaborate mental gyrations about whether they've earned the self-indulgence. "I owe it to myself," they'll state when telling me about some personal expenditure, adding pointedly, "I've worked so hard."

***

I totally believe that many people with OCPD, major or minor (and people without OCPD, as well), use work as an excuse/armor to hide from social situations, obligations, and feelings they just don't want to deal with. It's easier to say, "Gee, I'd love to, but I have to work," than it is to say, "No, I'd rather not."

I could explore this subject at great depth (and probably will, sometime soon) but right now, uh, I have to work. 

Do you use work as a way to hide from feelings 
or unpleasant  activities?
Or know someone who does?

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 9 - The Driving Forces The Pressure of Perfectionism & The Angst of All-Or-Nothing

English: perfectionist measuring and cutting grass (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This post continues with The Driving Forces: THE PRESSURE OF PERFECTIONISM and THE ANGST OF ALL-OR-NOTHING from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

The Driving Forces

Every workaholic isn't necessarily obsessive. But most strongly obsessive people are workaholics - driven to overwork by any number of their obsessive traits, including the following leading culprits.

THE PRESSURE OF PERFECTIONISM

The person who can't tolerate making mistakes, or who has to be perceived as irreproachable, is more likely to find himself at his deak late at night, laboring to catch any possible error and striving to make his work perfect. Lydia, for example, was a thirty-one-year-old travel agent who worked until eight or nine o'clock every evening - two or three hours longer than all the other agents in her office. She was not paid for putting in the extra hours, but she couldn't bear the thought of overlooking any of the details that would give her clients the best possible trips. <snip>

"I really enjoy my time off," Lydia insisted. "And my husband has pleaded with me for years to come home earlier. I'd like to, but I really empathize with my clients, and I simply have to do my best for them."

<snip> One other aspect of perfectionism also can foster workaholism. Remember that subscribing to the Perfectionist's Credo often results in unproductive and time-consuming behavior patterns. Fear of making an error may cause the perfectionist to procrastinate, for instance, or he may waffle over decisions, or be unable to wrap up his projects. As a result, some perfectionists have to work long just to accomplish the same amount as someone less perfectionistic.


THE ANGST OF ALL-OR-NOTHING

The familiar force of all-or-nothing thinking also shapes the work-heavy lifestyles of many obsessives. They seem to feel as if cutting back on their work hours even slightly will lead them to cut back more and ever more, eventually bringing them to a horrifying state of indolence.

Many find it hard to start certain projects, knowing that once they start they'll have trouble stopping before the task is completed (and perfectly, at that). Their reluctance to interrupt the work, in turn, comes partly from their knowledge that if they lose their momentum it'll be hard to start up again. It's a vicious cycle that is conveyed by one character in Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again:

"I've got an idea that a lot of the work in this world gets done by lazy people. That's the reason they work - because they're so lazy.... It's this way: You work because you're afraid not to. You work because you have to drive yourself to such a fury to begin. That part's just plain hell! It's so hard to get started that once you do you're afraid of slipping back. You'd rather do anything than go through that agony again - so you keep going... til you couldn't stop even if you wanted to... Then people say you're a glutton for work, but it isn't so. It's laziness - just plain simple, damned, simple laziness, that's all.

***

I was helping my ex with a set of back bank reconciliations. It was off by eleven cents - and he had to find those eleven cents. No matter how long it took.

Logically, that's not cost-effective. If you make, say $20 an hour for your services (I charge a lot more), each minute of your time is worth at least thirty-three cents. I tend to want to look for that dime, too, like filling in the last line of a crossword puzzle, but I have learned that devoting hours to prove that the bank cleared a check for $xx.56 when they should have cleared it for $xx.66 is not the best use of my time.

I, too, fear losing momentum. But not finishing something isn't the worst thing in the world. I *have* been able to pick up again where I left off.

These are the two things facets that (to me) seem to link OCPD to hoarding (again, not all OCPD'rs hoard, and not all who hoard have OCPD.) But hoarders can't think big picture. Their attitude is, why even start unless you're prepared to devote the entire day or weekend, keep going until you're done?

Sometimes this makes sense.  For instance, when it's the middle of the rainy season, here in So Cal, and there's the forecast for two days of sunshine, is not the smartest time to try to have your roof repaired. But most jobs CAN be tackled in small bites.

And when you keep adding more things to the room/closet/garage, you will never, ever be able to finish in one day.

Do you know someone who stays up late correcting minor mistakes?
Who works extra hours to make sure his/her work is perfect?
Or who won't start a big project unless it can be done?

Your thoughts?

Fighting to BE in the Moment

swimming pool (Photo credit: freefotouk)

So my new (two years now!) apartment has a swimming pool. And the weather is finally warm enough for me to get into it on a regular basis.

So why can't I just swim and enjoy it?

I find I am having a lot of trouble, these days, to keep the pool simply as an activity of fun and/or relaxation, rather than turning it into a chore.

Swimming is good exercise, we all know that, and I need to get in more exercise. So I am swimming laps, and I enjoy swimming laps, but I am trying not to let that become a chore. To have it become, "You must swim XX many laps."

I am trying to enjoy the texture and temperature of the cool water as my arms and legs move (ungracefully, but nobody's watching) through the water, the feel of it flowing through and around my fingers and toes, the faint smell of chlorine, the the shimmer of the water, the warmth of the sun on my face and back.

And that's another thing. The pool isn't heated, and like many apartments in SoCal, it's in an unnatural canyon. Between the shadow of the buildings on the east, and the ones on the west, the pool only gets direct sunlight for perhaps 5-6 hours each day, even in July, and the temps can drop as much as 30 degrees at night. So the water temperature tends to stay cool, even on days when the temperature reaches the 80's or 90's.

This means, since I am not a fan of the cold, I like to lie out long enough to get heated up, before getting into the water.  (Yes, I always use sunscreen. No, not always all over - later on I generally find a spot or three that I managed to miss.)

I lie out, get warm, or hot even, get in the pool and swim some laps till I am tired and/or cold, then repeat.

Can I simply lie in the sun, enjoy the rays sinking into my body with their vitamin D, slowly turning my skin from its natural corpselike white color to a faintly tan color?

No, I feel I have to do something, even when I am lying out. The other day I took pages with me for a speech I am rehearsing. Generally I take a book. Because otherwise how can I justify slicing out 1 1/2 to 3 hours, in the middle of a perfectly good day, when I could be writing/organizing/houseworking or Doing Something Productive?

Yeah, do ya think maybe I should learn something from these posts on workaholics? Yes, I have many Important Events coming up, that demand research and preparation.

And yet, it is still okay to set aside time for pure relaxation. Not just okay, but necessary. To kick back and tell that monkey mind just to hush.

I'm going to try to get in the pool a few evenings a week, plus at least one day this coming weekend,  when I will just BE poolside, and in the water.  Just to enjoy the water, and the sun, and the palm trees rustling in the wind.

I may take a book, if I am reading one that I enjoy, or I may not.

What do you do to beat back the "productive" vibe?

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesday - Chap 9 - The Hidden Workaholic

This post continues with The Hidden Workaholic from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

The Hidden Workaholic

Many obsessives are also "driven" in their spare time. They often feel compelled to use all their time productively. They're usually armed with lists of "things to do." and they're much more apt to fret about the items left undone that to savor the accomplishments of those they've checked off. They shudder at the thought of wasting time. Even in their "free" time, they feel they should be working on chores, projects, or other productive or educational tasks.

"I never relax," Therese told me unhappily. "There's always something to do. I either have to clean the house, pay bills, or something. And if I do take time off, I start to feel like I'm neglecting something. I feel lazy, and in my mind that's reprehensible."

<snip> Although Therese worked only a "normal forty-hour" week, I would call her a "hidden workaholic." A similar drive to be productive at all times can even be found in those who are not formally employed. Claire, for instance, is a forty-eight-year-old homemaker who seems to be in constant motion. Every day she devotes many hours to housekeeping and maintenance, and she continues to practice such vanishing arts as baking pies, drying laundry on an outdoors clothesline, and raising herbs and flowers, which she then dries and mounts. As her three children grew up, Claire became more and more involved with community service organizations, and such volunteer work now consumes at least part of every day. While Claire will occasionally take a break to chat with one of her neighbors, she inevitably excuses herself to get back to her "messy house" or her long list of chores. Her brisk pace continues into each evening until she runs out of hours and reluctantly leaves tasks for the next day. She makes it sound as if she's always behind, and isn't quite measuring up to her own strict standards.

***

One thing that happens not infrequently with disordered people is they project their own traits/feelings/flaws onto their partners. Therefore, I found myself frequently being accused of "not being able to relax, always having to be doing something."

Now, it's true that I do have a busy life. I work full time, and in my time off, I have to do all the normal chores that people do: housework, laundry, grocery shopping, etc. Writing is also important to me; I usually spend a couple of hours every day writing or blogging something.

To relax, I like to read, or work on craft projects, or hang out with friends. My ex liked to watch movies; he wanted me to watch with him, but if I wanted to craft during the movie (especially one that didn't interest me much) he pointed to it as a sign that I "didn't know how to relax." (Mind you, during movies, he always sat stiffly apart from me - no snuggling or holding hands - and usually chain smoked. Ugh.)

English: Liquid hand soap in a pump dispenser, next to a larger refill-sized bottle of the same soap. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He had no day job, so he was the super-housekeeper, like Claire. (All I did was the grocery shopping, the vacuuming, the dusting, cleaning the bathroom, the catbox, and the dinner dishes - or in his words, I did nothing around the house.) Much of what he did was churning - for example, it was very important - to him - to keep the liquid hand soap dispensers filled, so he was constantly checking their level, and carefully bringing them up to full. He would spend hours on food prep - not the actual slicing of vegetables, say, but planning the meal, getting out the pots and pans and cooking utensils, arranging them on the counter just so. At first, I found this touching, it seemed to me that he was knocking himself out to make our dinners perfect, for me, until my therapist gently pointed out that this was something he did because he was disordered, and he couldn't help himself.


I have come to see that busy-ness is a way of hiding from and controlling life. Any time there is something unpleasant or emotionally challenging to be done (clearing out some of the hoard in the garage, say), being busy doing something else is a great excuse not to tackle it.

He always complained of being horrendously busy - too busy to spend time with friends, to spend a weekend morning lounging in bed and making love, too busy to play music. All too often when I would suggest doing something fun, I would get the dirty look and the "Obviously, you don't understand how much there is to do around this place," or the "I don't have time to goof off like some people do."

Yet I was the one who didn't know how to relax? Right.

Do you know a hidden workaholic?
Have you seen someone who makes out as if s/he
is totally burdened by housework or gardening?

Your thoughts?

Too Perfect Tuesday - Chap 9 - When the Workaholic Can't Work & Workaholics and Denial

Workaholics the Comedy Central Show - hilarious
Workaholics in person - not so much fun

This post continues with When the Workaholic Can't Work and Workaholics and Denial from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

WHEN THE WORKAHOLIC CAN'T WORK

When outside forces threaten to prevent them from working, some workaholics to to ludicrous lengths to overcome the impediment. <snip>

If he is actually prevented from working - by illness or a job loss, or by a work block such as those we discussed earlier - then the obsessive's level or anxiety is almost certain to increase and his self-image to suffer. For many obsessive workaholics, their sense of identity depends far too much on their professional role, and if they're seen as anything less than outstanding in their chosen field, they may feel as if they're nothing. A serious depression may ensue.

WORKAHOLICS AND DENIAL

Some of my workaholic patients acknowledge that they set their own frenetic pace. But I more commonly hear a different refrain: "I'm not a workaholic! I wish I had more free time, but I feel overwhelmed by all that I have to do." Like the immigrant seamstress, these people claim that they "have to" work as much as they do because they'll lose their jobs if they don't. Of their clients need them. Or they've got to take advantage of a particular economic or professional opportunity. Is this sort of person a workaholic?

That isn't always immediately apparent. <snip>

Sometimes people have virtually no choice but to yield to unusual work pressues for a limited time period. I think of the software engineer who must put in eighty hours a weeks during the final stage of debugging a major project, or the magazine editor who works twenty hour days when the monthly deadline draws close.

Jeffrey, for instance, grumbled constantly about all he had to do as editor of a weekly newspaper.  <snip>

In fact his boss eventually became so concerned about the possibility of his star employee's burning out that he worked out a plan under which Jeffrey didn't have to come into the office on Tuesdays, the slowest day of the wee. The boss further insisted that he wasn't to work at home on those days, but was to read, relax, and recuperate. Instead of leaping at this offer, however, Jeffrey pointed out all the things that wouldn't get done, or wouldn't be done well enough, if he took this day off. Eventually he did yield, but within a few months he had reverted to scheduling at least a few hours of work on his mandatory "free day." Contrary to his words, Jeffrey demonstrated that he, not his boss, was his toughest taskmaster.

In one obsessive patient after another, I've seen a similar pattern. The complain about the amount of time their work consumes, and the unremitting pressure under which they live. They talk about their demanding bosses, their need for financial security, the pressure to provide their families with a comfortable lifestyle. But in fact, when I go through the schedules of such "overworked" patients, I invariable see areas in which they could change without impairing their efficiency. When I suggest specific cutbacks, however, I am usually bombarded with justifications for every single commitment. The bottom line for the denying workaholic is that he cannot cut out anything. Or so he insists.

***

I've lost a couple three jobs, due to financial downturns in the economy, and once because of somewhat crazy/alcoholic supervisor (I ended up getting a workers' comp settlement.) Regardless of why, even if it's not your fault, it's always depressing to lose a job. If someone is OCPD and has been fired (at least in part) because s/he can't get along with anybody, that's got to be pretty depressing, too. Recently someone shared this story:

I had a go at my supervisor on Friday. I'll face the music tomorrow. Dreading going back to work. Made quite a scene - said she was crap in front of all my work colleagues and then stormed off 'f'ing and blinding. All over my version of work priorities not being the same as others. My set of rules have become an obsession and I've been stressed out that other are not pulling their weight and have the wrong set of priorities at work. I just can't work in a team anymore.

This person never did check in and let us know what went down on Monday, but I can imagine his supervisor was Not Pleased. He may well have been let go, and now is hating life, and himself. I truly hope he got the help he needs.


Keep in mind, there is being depressed, and there is being Depressed.

from Hyperbole and a Half Adventures in Depression

When you are Depressed, or even suspect you might be - even if you have a good excuse reason to be sad, like losing a loved one or your job - please, Go Get Help. You wouldn't try to move a piano by picking it up and carrying by yourself, would you?

On Being in Denial

Bosses don't take kindly to employees telling them they're crap (especially if there's some truth in it). Nor do they appreciate an employee pissing and moaning all the time about how terribly, terribly overworked they are. Can you imagine being Jeffrey's boss, making a special effort to arrange the schedule to give the guy a day off, and shortly he's back to the full court press (and probably whining about it)? Bosses are human too (or least, that's the rumor), and if I was Jeffrey's boss, I would be thinking, if not saying, "ungrateful lout," as he ramped up his schedule again.

My ex would frequently recount stories of how his boss wanted him to do XX amount of work, but he always put in extra time/effort, because what the boss wanted wasn't good enough. So he took it upon himself to continue to work at the task however long it took him, regardless of whether his boss wanted him to wrap it up and move to something else.  I have a feeling if the company hadn't been sold he would have gotten fired eventually anyway.

There's kind of a patting oneself-on-the-back self-complimenting quality to being a workaholic. See, I'm worthy, I kill myself for my job, I'm sooooo much better than those lazy people over there.

Does anyone ever reach their deathbed and wish they'd spent more time at work and less with their family?

Do you know someone who gets cabin fever if s/he can't get to work?
Or who blames other people for a grueling schedule
of his/her own making?

Your thoughts?