My Hospital Stay

awww @utopia - count me in

Hi @utopia .... I have come back around to answering your question from earlier in the day ..... what is OCPD ?

Its actually quite complex, and WH's is obviously linked to his eating disorder .... interestingly I was trying to work out whether it was Asperger's for a while there, and Aspergers can be linked to this condition too.

Easier to give you this link - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive–compulsive_personality_disorder

At this stage I don't think he recognises any need for treatment for it .... and as the diagnosis came through S2's pdoc, I don't think he has been referred to anyone. That information might yet go back to our gp, and WH be referred on from there, but at the moment I haven't heard anything.

I can so relate to this description, and I am very impressed that the pdoc picked it at their first meeting.

WH was written into S2's referral to the pdoc @utopia when he asked if he could accompany S2 ... the pdoc made it very clear to us both that he is there for S2, not us .... saying that we have a Pandora's Box here, and he can't be responsible for all of it ... indicating that the issues here are huge ..... (no kidding !!) .... and that ocpd and ocd extend into many of WH's family members. Yep, that's huge alright ..... !! It explains so much of what I encountered progressively with so many of them ... reckon I could say who has ocpd challenges, and who has ocd ..... and it's all the "key players" along with some who married in, and keep a power-play in perpetual motion ..... like a clash of the Titans.

We married young, and workaholism quickly claimed WH with the establishment of a new family business - clash of the Titans for us was between WH and FIL a few years later. FIL left the family business, and MIL for one of her friends ..... 😔.... everything about them has always been so intense and fierce ..... but the regions of Greece they are from are historically intense and fierce ..... they have a Titanic ancestry.

WH had seemed different, but now I believe he developed ocpd in the work arena, especially working with a dynamic team of high-performing perfectionists and other ocpd family members. While I am not a perfectionist, I do seek excellence .... had to look up the difference to understand it. Perfectionism is driven by fear, excellence by joy ..... but my life management over WH's private world was sufficient to make me a great co-pilot for him, and our home was obviously his sanctuary from "the pack" he worked with .... although he did create continual chaos, now that I look back .... and I seem to have a gift for undoing chaos and returning things to calm. Guess we were well complimented in that sense, butI was unwittingly creating "symbiotic resonance" (don't know what else to call it - equal and opposite reaction ? Like a cause and effect ?).over his insular world of punishing drive and excessive reward ..... which was the parental influence he was raised under in both of his parents.

Scroll forward 25 years to the sale of the business, and suddenly his two world collide. As you said, his work persona spills over into our home, needing a new outlet because it can't just disappear .... it has to channel somewhere .... and the work environment relationships with his family come with it like a package deal ....

Oh the value of education and hindsight .... !!!

I kept saying to him that it was like he had brought his work identity home, and it was too powerful (read: inappropriate) for our home environment. My psychologist says the e.d. probably triggered the ocpd .... just writing it out here for you, I'm not so sure. I think with more time on his hands, and the e.d. taking up the vacuum left by his previous business involvement - in an intense and savage industry I might add - he turned his now indistracted control issues into us and our home as his new project. A new punishing drive / excessive reward dynamic was established .... instead of his sanctuary, our home was his new arena.

Listening to how you and others manage your hospital stays, and some of the beautifully supportive staff and other patients you encounter, is helping me to understand what WH's future treatment might entail. The road looks long ahead of us, I think the e.d. diagnosis, when it comes, is not going to be any sort of magic wand ..... just the start of new challenges, but hopefully ones that we can take on together that help to rescue him long term. It will be interesting to see how many of the perfectionist traits have rolled forward into out kids as well ..... my baby dragons ..... when you understand who their daddy is .... well .....

And I have had to be a Phoenix ....

@utopia ......

Let's see how I do this time .....

That's how it feels @utopia .....

Thank you, your comments help to validate how I am feeling, and it is feeding my courage.

💜