Skip to main content

Ch. 28 If I Had OCS

It's possible that you  yoursel can be an OCS person or at least have those tendencies. Don't place blame or get angry. You might have been lured into this mindset by a helicoptering parent, the lack of other siblings, or some other factor. First, make sure that you are an OCS by asking yourself these five key questions:

Do I steer most conversations so they're about me?
Do I ignore other people's gripes about me?
Do I have difficulty making friends?
Do I accept responsibility for my actions?
How do I react when people criticize me?

If you're an OCS person with a depressive or anxious temperament, you may act a little differently than the usual OCS adult. For instance, a former woman friend with OCS also had ADD. The ADD often made her depressed because she never seemed to be able to settle on one career. She would start studying for one area, then find herself interested in something else, but when a friend or therapist told her she was undermining her own success, she couldn't take responsibility for that. She affixed blame on her husband or another relative, complaining that she had too many interferences and that was the cause.

Another acquaintance with OCS also suffered from bipolarity. When she was in a depressive phase of the illness, she would actually accept help from others, but as  soon as she turned a corner and entered a manic phase, she bragged about her exceptional abilities and took no responsibility for taking needed medications.

No doubt when you are an OCS person and have psychiatric or physical disabilities, you have a heavy load to carry. But it's necessary to make that extra effort to confront your OCS because curtailing it will help you preserve your relationships and take responsibility for their outcome.

Next time: What OCS is not

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Old Acquaintances Be Forgot?

In the Scottish dialect of the old New Year's Eve song Auld Lang Syne, the composer posits the question: Should old acquaintances be forgot? The short answer to this is "Sometimes." One example will suffice. A "friend" of mine emailed me the other day and although she is not a writer, her words spoke plenty. Her first rebuke was that I don't answer her calls, and this is a claim I cannot deny. But the accusation was caustic, mean-spirited--it was as if I had neglected to visit her in the hospital, that's how grievous my omission was. She insinuated so much by those few harsh words. Why did she call? Purportedly to inform me of her physical status and that of her dog Murph. Being the obedient child I still am, I did call her afterwards, and we spoke. Mostly S spoke of her new illness--osteoarthritis of the spine--and her dog's possible diagnosis of valley fever. I listened and listened and listened until I just couldn't take it any more. The

Dogs and Cats: Tales that Strike Terror in the Hearts of Owners

I just returned from the #veterinarian with Maddie, my eight-year-old #schnauzer with valley fever. She's on a half dose of her meds, and we're seeing if this has any positive or negative influence on the course of the #disease. Valley fever is a plague in the Southwest, especially Arizona, and it's one of the crazier #fungal diseases out there. For instance, Maddie never showed any #discernible symptoms but when I chanced to test her for the disease, she showed a high titre. So either the test was really wrong-----about three times in a row--or else Maddie's immune system is so good that it's #clobbering the disease but not ridding the body of it. This is a long way of stating the obvious. Although dogs like Maddie as well as cats, miniature horses and even  bunnies are regularly being used as #therapy animals at nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and all kinds of venues, they also are capable of traumatizing people or just plain breaking their heart. Wai

Are You Successful? Take this Test and Find Out

I grew up never believing I was as good or as #successful as the next guy, and it's a common problem or so my shrinks seem to think (some of these good doctors have earned six-figure salaries on just this one patient complaint alone).  But after all these years of #consigning myself to the role of second-class citizen, I've figured out that success is just one of those meaningless words--like #beautiful or wonderful--that can be tweaked any way you want it. In other words, success is what you make of it.  Take our #President for example. Here's a man who practically reeks of success by anyone's definition. He's built hotels, put together company #buyouts/mergers, fathered children, married, and earned the title of Most Important Person in the Land (perhaps the Globe). On the other hand, we could, if we wanted, tweak the word success into its opposite: failure. Trump has been divorced several times, declared #bankruptcy, been sued by countless litiga