OCPD

 Expressing anger only goes so far. I am not a fan of a turbulent mind and body and anger keeps you dysregulated. It has to be heard and felt for sure, but it can't go on endlessly. There comes a time when you have to adopt a new strategy.

Ideas tend to come to me in the quiet five or ten minutes at the end of a yoga class and I found myself saying to myself, 'There needs to be a neutral environment inside now. Not necessarily gushy love and anger which you are swinging between but neutrality - nothing space'.

As I drove home this idea percolated and transformed into - stillness of mind. That would be the antidote to all this mayhem that had been left behind for me to clean up. Not be still, rarely possible as yet, but be still in the mind. 

Now that's an impossible challenge right now. My mind is so heckled at the idea of unfairness and victimhood and being upset with myself that I hadn't instituted boundaries much sooner in my life, and all that, that stillness can moot into angry thoughts so fast that I can't catch them. It will take diligence to train my mind back to a place of ease, but that's the goal.

The other strategy I am using to try to still the mind and find peace is to divide my husband's loving heart, his sweetness within the family environment, from the disorders that he had that made life difficult for us in an abundance of ways and keep me challenged daily.

Should you find yourself in relationship with someone with OCPD, 'OCPD Foundation' has some good ideas to get some traction with those people afflicted who believe themselves to be 'right' and therefore impervious to advice - even the medical advice of medical doctors, say, at the very top of their field.

Personally, I did not have much success with swaying my husband to accept the advice of people who, for example, manage issues of the heart all day every day. He, against all medical advice, believed he shouldn't be on blood thinners, and that belief was what brought his life to an end in an untimely fashion. His eldest brother, a medical doctor for the past 40 years could bring no bearing on his brother's faulty thinking. I found myself in the position of soothing his distress lately, that he had no influence over my husband, but no-one did. We tried and we failed, all of us.

To this end OCPD is a deadly disorder. I wonder if the leader of the Western world is similarly afflicted? People like to throw the word narcissism around, and it often fits but OCPD, according to all my reading, is the correct fit in my personal situation.

I am not sure there is adequate research to say to what extent this personality disorder is inheritable, but I am happy to say with confidence that neither any of my children nor grandchildren show any signs at all of the debilitating condition.