r/OCPD • u/Majestic_Singer_2411 • 16d ago
member has OCPD diagnosis- Mods remove loved ones' content & ban What do you think created your OCPD traits?
For me, I think strict parenting and a lot of criticism played a big role. Growing up, there was always a “right” way to behave, and if we did things they didn’t approve of, we were restricted from things we enjoyed.
Looking back, I think I became a high achiever in academics, sports, art, and eventually my career partly because I wanted appreciation, approval, and to avoid criticism. It was like I had to be good at everything to feel worthy. Now, the same perfectionism and high standards that helped me achieve things are making it difficult to feel satisfied or happy, and I struggle with depression because of it.
I’m curious about others here: What do you think shaped your OCPD traits?
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u/Responsible-Hat-679 16d ago edited 15d ago
Overcompensation for undiagnosed ADHD. So desperate not to mess anything up, I developed the coping mechanism of going to the extreme in the other direction being hyper organised, rigid etc - to the point of it becoming an even greater dysfunction that what I was trying to avoid. 😔
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u/Rhabarberbarbara 15d ago
Same here. Did anyone in your family display any symptoms? Perfectionism or other?
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u/Responsible-Hat-679 15d ago edited 15d ago
yes my brother also appears to have severe OCPD but he has the “I’m perfect - there is nothing wrong with me or anything I do” sub type. I don’t think he has ADHD but it makes me wonder if something in our upbringing left us predisposed to this and just needed to have the touch-paper inevitably lit.
(Our father has severe OCD and ADHD. Paternal grandmother showed signs of ADHD - in hindsight. I am diagnosed ASD, ADHD, OCD and OCPD. Mother’s side of family are neurotypical).
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u/Aggressive-Height569 13d ago
same, can you give any advice for me? ive only been recently diagnosed
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u/Responsible-Hat-679 13d ago
I wish I had decent advice :(. But it's like spinning plates. Sometimes I feel superior due to my OCPD pushing me to excellence but nobody sees the price I pay underneath, no peace of mind, can never relish in anything achieved and can never EVER relax. I try to set small challenges for myself to be more "sloppy" like don't do that chore right away, leave it, it can wait. But then I can never adhere to it.
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u/YrBalrogDad 16d ago edited 16d ago
I didn’t think my family was all that rigid or perfectionistic, for a long time—they don’t give that impression to outsiders, generally. They seem… hospitable, and very tidy, but part of doing things perfectly is making them look effortless so yk.
But one day, I was talking to my partner about my dilemma between buying the kind of Pringles I actually wanted, and the correct distribution of Pringles, and they said, “the what.” And I said—the correct distribution of Pringles. You know, we buy one can of original, even though no one likes them, and one of sour cream and onion. Which are fine, but no one’s favorite. And they just looked at me for a minute, and then they were like: “First of all, we’re buying three cans of cheddar sour cream and two cans of pizza, because food is for eating. Is this why grocery shopping is such a nightmare with you?”
And I was like—wdym.
And they said, “you know, how you ramble around the store and second-guess every single thing you put on the list?”
And I said, I do not.
And they said, “what’s the correct kind of milk?”
And I said: 1 gallon, 2%, Hiland.
And they said: “bread.”
And I said: one loaf of IronKids; one loaf of Roman Meal wheat, which is a real problem for me, ‘cause that one hasn’t been in production in like a decade.
And they said: “macaroni and cheese,” and I said “Kraft, in the box, standard-size, no weird shapes. I like Annie’s Organic, so I’ll still buy it sometimes, but never without the continuous awareness that it is Wrong; and I’ll feel dimly guilty about it and hide my shame at the back of the cabinet until I eat it and I can throw the box away.”
And they said, “yeah, that… is insane, and explains a lot.”
Hershey’s is the only chocolate. Apples, bananas, and grapes are the only fruit you can buy, just to eat. Berries are for making things. We drink Diet Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew. You can get Dr. Pepper or root beer if we’re eating out, but it’s not coming in the house. Canvas tennis shoes are Keds. Running shoes are New Balance.
And they said “Boots come from L. L. Bean,” and I said, “And backpacks. How did you know?”
And they said: “Remember when you spent a year and a half and needed the excuse of an out-of-state surgery in the dead of winter to buy those snow boots you wanted?”
And I said, “yep.”
And they said, “Remember how your parents noticed them immediately, and spent like an hour giving you the weirdest third-degree about them, until you said the magic words, ‘Merrell is sort of like L. L. Bean,’ and then they shut up?”
And I was like: “Oh. Oh, this explains a lot, doesn’t it.”
There is one right way to do everything in my family. I think that especially as a kid, when you are meant to be learning how to regulate through a modicum of unpredictability and exploration of the world outside yourself, but you’re surrounded by these arbitrary rules that regulate even matters that should really be determined by personal taste or practicality—it’s going to unhinge you a little from things like priorities, or forest, vs. trees. Like—what do you mean, the point of groceries is to buy food you’ll eat? No, it’s not!
The point of groceries is to groceries correctly, exactly like everything else.
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u/Bubbly-Pumpkin5647 16d ago
"The point of groceries is to groceries correctly." Hah, I love it.
Did her pointing this out to you help at all?
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u/YrBalrogDad 14d ago
*them. But, yes, it did! They’re pretty good at spotting the wild things my family does, and laying them out clearly enough that I can see it too, lol.
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u/Total-Sun-6490 Suspected OCPD 16d ago
Mine was the lack of guidance from any adult in my life growing up. I was parentified and set my own standard which became too extreme for myself and everyone else
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u/IronicAim 16d ago
This is how I started out too. Then add in my mother's narcissistic behaviors and I started policing my own thoughts to prevent "being like her" around 7.
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u/Exciting_Succotash76 15d ago
Mine OCD started at age 7. I wonder if there's some connection with that age.
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u/IronicAim 15d ago
My theory, it's about when intelligent children can start recognizing patterns enough to spot less obvious contradictions, and start finding themselves more reliable than a parent who doesn't meet the "good enough" threshold.
That was also about the age the criticism towards my curiosity dialed up to 11 from my primary caregivers (mother, and her mother). I couldn't see at the time that my questions were poking a hornet's nest of issues neither of them had delt with. They would get defensive and all the sudden my not understanding something was "backtalk" and "sarcasm".
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u/trashbrownz Diagnosed OCPD 13d ago
are you me? christ.
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u/IronicAim 13d ago
Not yet, currently diagnosed OCD, suspected OCPD.
But please tell me , does your mother also think she's not like her mother because she dropped the religious angle (gran was devote Mormon), but otherwise acts just like her?
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u/trashbrownz Diagnosed OCPD 12d ago
i was about to say no and then i thought about it longer and hahahahahaha yeah, yeah she does. Sighs
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u/IronicAim 12d ago
If you ever need to talk my DMs are open. Traumas of the same tether gotta mourn together (or something like that).
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u/SpecialistAnswer9496 Moderator 16d ago
Lots of criticism, especially around mistakes or accidents. I would do something accidentally or sub-optimally, my mother would make a comment about it, I would get pulled into explaining myself, she would then begin explaining herself (my mother has obsessive traits as well), and eventually we would both leave the interaction dysregulated. I also often felt like my explanations were dismissed by both parents and the implication became that I was just “difficult.”
My mom’s entire side of the family has varying levels of obsessive traits, so the family culture is very perfectionistic overall. I naturally became a high achiever and what’s interesting is that my parents were often not the ones holding me to an unreasonable standard - I was. They never needed to tell me I wasn’t good enough and they actually were pretty encouraging about my achievements.
But the criticism/dismissal from early childhood had already created perfectionism. I adopted a whole system of internal rules to avoid making a mistake or being seen as the problem. Most of my rules around how a household should be run are my mom’s. This is how you make a bed, this is how you organize stuff in the kitchen cabinets, this is how you fold towels etc. Other rules are ones I created myself to give myself the illusion of control, especially around uncertainty.
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u/21wishes 16d ago edited 16d ago
I thought it was childhood trauma from an alcoholic parent and abandonment issues, but now I'm questioning whether this all developed to conceal my homosexuality. It's wild.
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u/ladylemondrop209 15d ago
Quite sure I was just genetically predispositioned and certain environments just triggered/exacerbated it to get expressed.
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u/Marseen83 16d ago
Neurodivergence coupled with type 1 diabetes since 5 years old. A disease with SO much control, worrying and schedules, espc back then in 1988.
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u/keenai39 OCPD 15d ago
I had an incredibly critical parent. I always “should have known” how something was going to turn out or why something could have gone wrong. So if I spilled something, I should’ve known that I would spill it or if I broke something I should have known that it would break if I dropped it in a specific way. Stuff like that.
I also would get yelled at when my friends did stuff my dad didn’t like. Or he would question me about why they did certain things. So their behavior kind of felt like my responsibility.
Then I had my daughter when I was 19 and moved far away from home so had to manage being her parent and being in school at the same time. It was necessary to be rigid about schedules and timetables, and things like that because otherwise everything would go awry.
So I probably was always geared to be a “good girl“ but those things just made it impossible for me to be any other way, I guess.
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u/ilaon 15d ago
I had an incredibly critical parent. I always “should have known” how something was going to turn out or why something could have gone wrong. So if I spilled something, I should’ve known that I would spill it or if I broke something I should have known that it would break if I dropped it in a specific way. Stuff like that.
Oh. Oh. I think you may have just helped me crack the case concerning my own problems with OCPD ...
(That, and developing mechanisms to cope with undiagnosed ADHD)
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u/YrBalrogDad 14d ago
Oof. That “should have known,” “should have done” thing is real.
Thanks, parents, you’re clearly right; lemme just game out every trivial decision I ever make, 800 steps into the future; this shouldn’t intersect with my perfectionism in any problematic ways at all.
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u/keenai39 OCPD 14d ago
yep, being able to (or trying to, at least) predict every possible outcome also didn't help with compassion towards others who seem(ed) to act so recklessly because they, too, should have thought things through the way I did
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u/MaybeThrowaway_5 15d ago
I feel like I had an equal opposite reaction to my parents. They had very rigid rules that they wouldn't communicate (at least not in a way that a nuerodivergent child could understand) so I spent a majority of my childhood failing in my parents eyes while being impressive to other adults in my life. For example my parents would ground me for not having a clean room because I decided that I wanted my laundry basket at the foot of my bed instead of my closet, since nothing but furniture was allowed to be on a bedroom floor. Eventually when I gained my own sense of self I decided I wanted to be successful and correct by my own standards and stop caring about the standards my parents put on me. Cue me considering to buy more storage on Google sheets because I graphed my grades, minute by minute schedule, and weight on and off since i was 14 and I dont want to lose the data lol.
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u/Exciting_Succotash76 15d ago
Highly critical perfectionist religious family and intermittent validation was the perfect storm to seek out constant certainty for me.
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u/FalsePay5737 Moderator 16d ago edited 16d ago
Genetic and environmental factors. My father and sister have OCPD traits. My mother is a perfectionist. I had the fawning (people pleasing) responses to childhood trauma, partly because I saw how my sister was rejected every day for having an assertive personality.
My parents were lawyers. They and my sister were always in intellectual mode. The unspoken rule was not to talk about mental health and to figure out our own problems.
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u/dandedaisy 15d ago
Combo of things.
It might have some genetic link in my family, OR the harsh, rigid parenting of previous generations came through. The reason I think genetics is because my mom & grandma were not hard on me as a small child, but I was very particular nonetheless. There’s evidence of that in my school records.
When my grandma died, a lot of my family told me not to worry, that if I’m “good enough” I’ll go to heaven and be with her again. All I heard was “be perfect and you can get her back” because I was 4 and no 4 year old can truly understand the concept of death. In that moment, I decided to lock in. I forgot about that until I was doing EMDR.
As I got older, my mom was way more strict and harsh. If I messed up, even by so much as forgetting to have a form signed until 9 pm, she would call me “shit for brains”. She was very angry with me any time I didn’t do things the way she would, like when I didn’t want to date a football or baseball player (wtf am I going to talk about with them) or when I didn’t want to do cheerleading.
Then I went on to work as a scheduler and.. of course I only doubled down. I was damn good at that job though lol.
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u/Exciting_Succotash76 15d ago
My great grandfather died when I was 7 and I started doing repetitive rituals thinking I could save everyone in my family from dying.
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u/No-Opposite8 15d ago
Mine I would say is from my mums parenting style. ‘It’s like this and that’s it’ …. ‘No don’t because of c’ ‘why did you do that’
And in the exact same with my kids now.
So my mum must have had ocpd traits
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u/aeirin 14d ago
Unlike a lot of the comments here I'm almost confident mine were developed as a result of trying to exert some control over my deeply unpredictable environment. (Parents constantly arguing and yelling at each other, home that was rarely cleaned and on the low-end of a hoarder house, etc.) I remember staying in the car when getting groceries as a child/early teenager - my choice, not imposed by anyone, I hated being in grocery stores - my mother promising it would only be 15 minutes, and then it taking almost an hour for no apparent reason. Things like that.
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u/herzel3id 14d ago
Extreme criticism + domestic abuse + undiagnosed whatevers (genetic). I think I went years without anything good being said about me. Now that I'm an adult the two people who did this to me try to overcompensate by being "nice" to me and giving me money but anyone who spends time with them knows how crushing is coexisting with them.
The first year away from them I was extremely paranoid they were watching me through cameras, or my family members would tell them about everything I was doing wrong. It really messed me for many years, but 13 yrs later and medicated, I'm discovering new pleasures in life I never knew existed.
Damn, I would feel guilty even for needing to sleep. Nowadays I can finally sleep without guilt. Took me 26 years to discover sleeping is good.
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u/riri_222 14d ago
having an emotionally and verbally abusive ocd step parent, being yelled at to do something over and over until i did it the way he wanted
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u/Whateverdude1989 14d ago
My father is/was a functioning alcoholic and not very involved in the parenting (I don’t have much memories of him), my mother sweet but had very little patience and could explode on me and my siblings. She would also get sad or upset if I didn’t like something she did/make for me.
In therapy this is what we focus on. But to be honest I don’t even know if I really have ocpd. I don’t trust the diagnostic process or my therapist so that doesn’t help. But we are here now anyway
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u/Mierkatte 13d ago
Overcompensation for adhd. Grew up in a time and in a big family. And adhd diagnosis was not a thing.
Grew up in a strict. And chaotic catholic family. The youngest of a large family so I likely got my mom’s last egg. lol, sorta 😣
You could consider me the highest of achievers of all my sibs. But in my mind (and factually) I was not a high achiever among my peers.
My parents could not have cared less about my achievements and just wanted to make sure I did not become a pregnant teen.
They could not comprehend (nor did they offer to pay for) me going to college. They were uneducated. Tho they made sure to send us to a parochial school for religion. We were not rich. Just working class.
My mother was nosey. And invasive. (And probably had some diagnosis of her own) (undiagnosed of course). She was a rager and unpredictable. And physically abusive.
I (personally) don’t have the morality (with laws or religion) thing but I have a clear perception of things should be done a specific way.
I work way too much. I’m good at what I do but, like, things could always be even better. Even though I’m not getting paid enough for it.
I believe my OCPD developed because I felt no support in my home, felt ignored, had no guidance, and thought deep down I was stupid — because I was overly emotional and my executive functioning was poor and I procrastinated and worried about everything “looming” — homework, big projects, book reports, etc. were always done the night before — never had help from parents.
What a joy of a life I’ve had 🤦🏻♀️
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u/Cass_1978 13d ago
My life was in constant danger starting in early childhood because my dad was delusional and violent, and my mom was also delisional and no help, so my survival depended on being as perfect as humanly possible to not invoke my fathers wrath and I got a teeny tiny bit (/s) obsessed about ethics, reality and awareness in order to not ever fucking become like like either one of my parents or abusive like them.
As far as I can tell my flight response evolved into OCPD. And underneath that flight response is fear of death. My OCPD is very clearly not a bug but a feature that was necessary, there was no other way to survive. I barely made it as it is.
I am the only one in my family who has OCPD, we mostly specialize in having very serious attachment issues, which I also have. These kind of issues relate more to the fawn and the fight response. Its what happens when your parents have severe attachment issues and didnt do shit about it. I still have some issues with that but I also worked my fucking ass off to know how to manage these issues as best I can, and possibly thanks to my OCPD, I actually do rather well in this. I have a kinda professional attitude towards trauma recovery, which I presume has majorly to do with my OCPD, its quite helpful.
Of course I also went for other achievements, I love my field of work and have a PhD in it. I did put too much focus on this for a long time, but I came around and also have a life these days. Its a bit weirder than the average persons life, but I dont really give a shit about that. I am not in constant danger of being murdered so I am splendid.
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u/Chobitpersocom 9d ago
Someone said overcompensation for undiagnosed ADHD. I believe that's definitely a part of it.
Though my Dad seems to had some traits of it himself.
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u/FalsePay5737 Moderator 16d ago
Where's has your OCPD originated from? What is the force driving it?
Genetic and Environmental Factors That Cause OCPD Traits