Gary Trosclair explores the power of the driven personality and the positive outcomes those with obsessive compulsive personality disorder can achieve through a mindful program of harnessing the skills that can work, and altering those that serve no one.
If you were born with a compulsive personality you may become rigid, controlling, and self-righteous. But you also may become productive, energetic, and conscientious. Same disposition, but very different ways of expressing it. What determines the difference?
Some of the most successful and happy people in the world are compelled by powerful inner urges that are almost impossible to resist. They’re compulsive. They’re driven.
But some people with a driven personality feel compelled by shame or insecurity to use their compulsive energy to prove their worth, and they lose control of the wheel of their own life. They become inflexible and critical perfectionists who need to wield control, and they lose the point of everything they do in the process.
A healthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of passion, love and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread.
The Healthy Compulsive: Healing Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality, will serve as the ultimate user’s guide for those with a driven personality, including those who have slid into obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Unlike OCD, which results in specific symptoms such as repetitive hand-washing and intrusive thoughts, OCPD permeates the entire personality and dramatically affects relationships. It also requires a different approach to healing.
Both scientifically informed and practical, The Healthy Compulsive describes how compulsives get off track and outlines a four-step program to help them consciously cultivate the talents and passions that are the truly compelling sources of the driven personality. Drawing from his 25 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and his own personal experience as someone with a driven personality, Trosclair offers understanding, inspiring stories of change, and hope to compulsives and their partners about how to move to the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum.
Table of Contents:
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Part I: The Driven Personality: What It’s Like and How It Got That Way
Chapter 1: Identifying the Driven Personality
Chapter 2: How Did I Get This Way? The Tree Grows Where It Can
Part II: Realizing Your Driven Potential
Chapter 3: Four Steps to Becoming a Healthier Compulsive
Chapter 4: Step 1: Identify Your Story to Develop Insight
Chapter 5: Step 2 Engage Emotionally with Deeper Layers of Feeling and Parts of Yourself
Chapter 6: Step 3: Cultivate Meaning: Clarify Your Aspirations and Set Your Priorities
Chapter 7: Step 4: Take Action: Commit to Behavior That Honors Your Aspirations
Part III Dangers and Opportunities on the Road Ahead: Applying the Tools of Change to Fulcrum Issues
Chapter 8: Body
Chapter 9: Time & Money
Chapter 10: Work and Career
Chapter 11: People, Partners, and Parenting
Chapter 12: Rest and Play
Chapter 13: Psychological Growth: Vicissitudes of The Inner Game
Part IV Support for The Road Ahead
Chapter 14 Support for the Compulsive’s Journey
Chapter 15 Support and Suggestions for Partners of Compulsives
Afterword
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bibliography
About the Author :
Gary Trosclair, DMA, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City and Westchester County, New York. He is President of the New York Association for Analytical Psychology and serves on the faculty of the Jung Institute of New York, the Jung Foundation of New York, and the New York Center for Jungian Studies. He is the author of I’m Working On It In Therapy: How To Get The Most Out Of Psychotherapy, and of the blog The Healthy Compulsive Project. He lives in Tuckahoe, New York with his wife and two daughters.
Review :
A wonderfully written, deeply researched and yet common sense guide which shows us how the same compulsive attitudes and behaviors that cause us and others much suffering, can be a source of creativity, happiness, and success. Richly illustrated with case studies and backed by psychological research “The Healthy Compulsive” provides a step-by-step guide to transform the darkness of self-defeating compulsive behavior into creative and fulfilling light!
The reader does not have to qualify for the diagnosis to benefit from this rich and rewarding book by Dr. Gary Trosclair. The Author leads us more deeply into our feelings to discover values that give new meaning to our lives; re-framing compulsive tendencies into the freedom to make creative choices.
The Healthy Compulsive is the perfect bibliotherapy for people who are overextended, overscheduled, and overwrought. It guides the reader in a thoughtful exploration of their personal underpinnings of unhealthy compulsion and provides systematic guidance on ways to better channel one’s energy. It can be used in conjunction with therapy, or as a stand-alone exploration of how to reengage and enjoy life. Mental health trainees would also benefit from reading this book as it provides insight into the challenging patients who present as high functioning, but suffer debilitating emptiness.
What sets this book apart from other “self-help” books is its sophistication in understanding the nature of human growth. It helps the reader explore deep and often unacknowledged feelings underlying unhealthy compulsion such as fear, anger, and shame. It even recommends self-analysis of dreams which is a refreshing acknowledgement that meaningful behavior change often entails exploring the subconscious. This book is grounded in a dynamic understanding of human nature, but not rigidly so, as it recommends activities consistent with current mindfulness-based therapies and acceptance and commitment therapy models.
The Healthy Compulsive conveys sophisticated psychological truths in a way that is immediately accessible to readers. It provides a broad overview of the concepts underlying compulsive behavior, but then provides specific examples – compulsive behavior around money, work productivity, parenting – to help the reader fully understand how these truths are expressed in everyday struggles that we can all relate to.
