Sitting on the Bench - Giving up Control and OCPD

At my office, we have a fairly set chain-of-command, and I land somewhere in the middle. Being the over-achieving perfectionist that I am, I find myself wanting to scoop up task that should go to someone below me, or any intern.

Even at home, I always want to do it all, and do it all right now. Laundry? I'll do it. Dishes? Done. Dog washing? Seriously, if my boyfriend tries to wash the dog I will pull the soapy little critter out of his hands!

But.. I have a feeling this has more to do with OCPD than some kind of super-work ethic.

BBC- Science offers an article about Perfectionism , that has a lot of information. There, at the bottom it notes a symptom:

Doubting of actions:
Feeling uncertain when a job is finished is a common feature of perfectionism. As a result, these people are often reluctant to give up on tasks and sometimes need to be told to 'leave it alone now'. Doubting can also make perfectionists very indecisive.

Maybe, my desire to do it all, and keep doing things past the point of completion, is hurting my mental state. After all, no one wants to spend all their time on repeating simple tasks. And the nagging self-doubt, and doubt of others, undermines my own happiness.

Giving up control and walking away from a project or chore is hard. It's like a athlete sitting on the sidelines, yelling at the coach and the playing teammates. But he or she knows at some point, everyone has to ride the bench, and take a breather. You can't play all 4 quarters, as athletes know, injury and pain are sure to hit an exhausted body.

You realize - I can't be in the game all the time, I can't keep re-running plays again and again. I have to trust my team, and myself, that what is getting done is good enough.

I can't control it all, and I can't always be in the mix, doing a job again and again until its right. So maybe the best thing  I can do is sit back, and let someone else call the plays.

Worry Wart - Anxiety and OCPD

I found this great article in Good Housekeeping ( like housekeeping alone doesn't cause some worrying!). For anyone with obsessive tendencies, worry is an arch-enemy, but also acts like a comfort. How can worry be comforting? This quote from the article puts it well:

"When you worry, you think you're doing something productive," says Keck, "but you're not; you're just spinning your wheels."

That means, when I'm worrying, I'm not doing anything to fix what I am worried about. The catch-22 is, to me, fixating on a problem and obsessing over it makes me motivated to fix it. Sometimes I feel the only way I ever can get anything done is to beat myself up over it, or worry myself into a frenzy.

But the truth is, the worry is a stop-gap for action. So why not check the real reason behind your worry, and realize maybe behind the curtain of anxiety is an action you don't want to take! You can spin your wheels until you run out of gas... but then you miss out on the journey!