Obsessive Compulsive - Aren't We All?

According to the psychiatric world Obsessive Compulsive Personality  Disorder is characterized by a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.

I, and for the record MANY  people I know, fit this description as if it were written for me. I obsess over tiniest details and structures in my life.  I rely on structure for my very stability and comfort.  When my routines or structures are compromised everything in my world runs amok and goes askew and my balance is lost.  Sometimes I can recover within seconds, sometimes it takes minutes, and on extreme days it can take hours.  My reactions can be seen as bitchy or irritable, when in fact I am simply uncomfortable with the change.  I don't mean to be snappy or short, I am just managing the shift of my expectations and the results which are not what I anticipated. 

Things in my world, have a place in space, in time, in  emotion.  I test myself frequently for my ability to manage chaos buy moving things around or allowing someone else to put things in a different order, and I've gotten better, but there are still moments in my head when I panic that i am losing control of my surroundings.

Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder is approximately twice as prevalent in males than females, and occurs in about 1 percent of the general population. Like most personality disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder typically will decrease in intensity with age, with many people experiencing few of the most extreme symptoms by the time they are in the 40s or 50s.This is good news for me because I am in the right time of my life for the pressures I place on myself and those around me to wane.

I thought about this last night as my son and I were having an intense discussion about my expectations and perceived lack of patience with him and others when I arrive home from work each day.  In my head I envision my home a certain way, the couches, the tables, the kitchen,  things are in order. So when I walk through the door and things are askew because real people live in my home (I realize this) I suffer from an end of day panic.  I have little control over my world at work, except for what is in my workspace, so when I get home I want to regain my control. When it doesn't meet my expectations I react with an immediate laundry list of instructions and request that, to a 16 year old, seem petty and unimportant.  I can't expect him to understand my psychosis, but I can find a better way to ask him to pick up after himself.  I'm working on this, every day.  Some days are better than others. I notice s significant increase in my agitations on days when work has been notably more demanding.  In the time I have to learn to breathe through my panic and let people relax around me.

I wonder if OCPD is genetic or if it is just part of our evolution.  I see various signs in both of my sons, but I see them in many other people as well. I think its much more common place than most people realize.  We all have things in our worlds that we want to control. That we obsess over.  Don't we?  Don't You?  I acknowledge that my level and need for control is probably more prevalent than some, but there are many who are more severe than I. There are many who lose productivity and the ability to complete even simple tasks because of their OCPD.  It takes work, and conscious choices every day to let it ride, to things slide and be o.k. with it.  I have days when its O.K. to eat things on my dinner plate in an ensemble fashion and to allow the different foods to touch, and I still have days when everything must be separated and eaten one element at time.  Its all relative to the stress in my life, where I find my balance and how I manage it.