Negative Obsessiveness
Here is a list of OCPD characteristics, or traits, that form the OCPD personality. As previously stated they should only be used as models; nor is this list exhaustive. It should be utilised in conjunction with the article titled Positive Obsessiveness in order to illustrate the simultaneous positivity and negativity of those specific OCPD traits as I define them. It follows, as mentioned earlier, that the positivity and negativity of an OCPD trait is neither static nor absolute.
- intense concentration: Mr. OCPD is focused on his asymmetrical chest and this reminds him of how “imperfect” his body is. That disturbs him greatly and he is suddenly sucked into a negative form of concentration, in other words concentrating on negative elements.
- high acuity and receptivity to details: Mr. OCPD often peeks at his own chest, first the left side then the right side, left, right, left-right again! By looking at it repetitively and constantly, he begins to notice details that had never come to his attention before: “are those details new? have they always been there or did they pop up just recently?” Mr. OCPD is hypersensitive to details that can be totally unimportant.
- desire of things well done: Mr. OCPD wants things to be well done and believe me, he will make sure they are well done! So well done, in fact, that it will be destructive! For example, Mr. OCPD can not tolerate to have a belly; what will he do? He will strive to make it perfect by sometimes adopting inappropriate behaviours, so as to accommodate his “false reality”.
- very stringent standards and ideals, high morality: Mr. OCPD wants a perfect body because that is what is shown to him; perfection. Mr. OCPD is an intensely cerebral individual and as we all know, the mind likes perfect and flawless ideas unlike Nature makes them. Hence you want a slim body and you want a symmetrical chest just like mathematics could create them.
- “fatalism”: Mr. OCPD has a tendency to think in “black and white”. Grey zones seem more difficult to conceive: if Mr. OCPD does not live the perfect moment or does not have the perfect job, then he is not content.
- perseverance: Mr. OCPD thinks and rethinks about having a symmetrical chest and only does God know how disturbing it is ! Nevertheless he perseveres and goes on thinking about it, one additional loop, two more loops, three…
- fertile imagination: Mr. OCPD imagines things that do not exist; Mr. OCPD notices details that disturb him but are not necessarily disturbing; he sees tiny differences that do exist but that go unnoticed by other people; Mr. OCPD has endless thoughts, irrational and rational, too many.
- out-of-the-box thinking: Mr. OCPD has the habit of deconstructing and analysing every event of his life, seeing things in a uncommon perspective ; a thinking that others qualify as “neurotic”.
- being a thinker: Mr. OCPD sits down at home to think - can be many hours at a time - about negative thoughts. He thinks too much and that prevents him from being active and productive.