Both patterns can leave you feeling exhausted, frustrated, or disconnected from your own life. Even when you know your behaviors aren’t necessary, resisting them can feel impossible, and the effort to maintain control can take a toll on your energy, relationships, and sense of well-being.
- Repeating behaviors or mental rituals until things “feel right.”
- Spending excessive time editing, redoing, or adjusting tasks to achieve exactness.
- Rigid rules, high standards, or difficulty delegating responsibilities.
- Anxiety or distress when things don’t go as planned or are uncertain.
- Tension or conflict in relationships due to inflexibility.
- Feeling burned out, frustrated, or trapped by these patterns.
- Compulsions, rituals, or perfectionistic behaviors consume significant time and energy.
- Rigid standards interfere with work, relationships, or daily functioning.
- Mistakes or uncertainty feel intolerable rather than manageable.
- Anxiety, shame, or distress drives behavior rather than intentional choices.
In other words, these patterns become harmful when they control your life rather than support you.
OCD treatment often centers on Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This helps you face anxiety-provoking thoughts or urges without performing compulsions. For example, if you feel the urge to repeatedly check a door or reread an email, we practice tolerating that discomfort in manageable steps. Over time, your brain learns that rituals aren’t necessary to feel safe.
OCPD and maladaptive perfectionism benefit from CBT, ACT, and self-compassion approaches. Therapy focuses on increasing flexibility, challenging rigid rules, and reducing shame about imperfection, so you can act in line with your values instead of being controlled by strict standards.
Both approaches may include skills for managing anxiety and stress, like grounding, mindfulness, or brief distress-tolerance exercises, which support your ability to tolerate discomfort while practicing new patterns.
Treatment is collaborative and gradual. We set measurable goals, pace interventions to what feels tolerable, and focus on restoring balance, flexibility, and choice in your life.
- Imagine leaving the house without repeated checking.
- Imagine completing a task without endlessly redoing or revising.
- Imagine delegating responsibilities without tension or conflict.
- Imagine resting, enjoying relationships, and living according to your values rather than being ruled by rituals or rigid standards.
- Therapy makes this gradual transformation possible.