What Is The Anancastic Personality?

Giulio is a successful man. He claims that, since his youth, he likes things well done and that he always spent hours and hours on his homework and school work until it became “presentable”. He defines himself as a neat, clean and perfectionist person.

His motto is “things must be done well, otherwise it is better not to do them”. He loves details and wants things to enjoy a certain harmony, routine and consistency. He believes that his way of dealing with life is the element that led him to the success he experiences at this moment in the workplace; however, he believes this is not enough.

Where is Giulio’s problem?

From this presentation, one could think that Giulio, a successful man, positively evaluated in the workplace, industrious and orderly, has no problem. In reality, Giulio’s personality is penalizing him in other spheres of life: he suffers from what is called an “anancastic personality”.

An individual with such a personality is characterized by a very high perfectionism and a willingness to control situations. Being a perfectionist does not mean wanting and collaborating so that everything will succeed in the best possible way; this would be normal and desirable behavior.

Being a perfectionist means that the person imposes himself and demands on himself that all the tasks he has done must be perfect. However, since perfection does not exist, the individual in question can spend hours and even days doing something someone else would do in half the time. In some cases, he may even go so far as to give up and no longer do what he had proposed, for fear of not being able to do it perfectly.

His obsession with perfectionism leads him to be perpetually dissatisfied with his results, as he is always convinced that “he could have done better”. This causes him a strong state of anxiety that makes him suffer and prevents him from enjoying his victories.

The thinking of such people is polarized thinking, that is, things are either black or white, beautiful or ugly. The individual is so rigid and inflexible that he does not accept that there is a middle ground. We are perfect or we are total failures and, given that they never find perfection, despite the results obtained, they end up considering themselves a failure.

These are people who are dedicated exclusively to work. They do not take vacation, despite their boss obliging them to do so. Work is their priority and they take it home every day, never disconnecting or doing other activities. Obviously, because of this behavior, their social and couple relationships suffer a lot, as leisure is not part of their plans and, if they do something relaxing, they feel uncomfortable and think they are wasting time.

Relations with work colleagues are also difficult, because they do not accept collaboration and external help; they feel that no one is able to accomplish tasks as perfectly as they do.

As can be seen from all these characteristics, these people’s fixed thinking is to do things perfectly and they live with the fear or anxiety of failing and making mistakes.

How can we help Giulio?

Personality disorders are difficult to annihilate, but good psychotherapy combined with psychiatric drugs can help these patients.

• It is necessary to work on the wrong beliefs about perfectionism and control. The goal is to make these people understand that perfection is an unreal concept, that it does not exist, and that striving to achieve something that does not exist causes anxiety, frustration, suffering, aggression, hostility and physical and emotional isolation.

• The person has to force himself to make mistakes. To err is human and, as humans, we must be wrong. Making mistakes leads us to learn and evolve in every aspect of our life, it doesn’t mean anything other than this. Seeing a mistake as an absolute failure is unreal, so we need to help the individual in question get rid of that absurd belief and be more rational.

• Learning to enjoy free time and interpersonal relationships is essential. These people believe that spending a relaxing day and doing non-work related activities is useless; in reality, everyone needs to rest, to disconnect and to regain energy to then perform more.

Because of their behavior, these individuals are exhausted both physically and mentally, so they should review their ideas on relaxation with them, so that they understand that there is time to do everything and that rest and fun are necessary for well-being. physical and psychological.

We must play down: “what is the worst thing that can happen to you if you do not succeed in this task?”. Ask the anancastic person this question and you will help them understand that they often formulate catastrophic thoughts and images in their head, which are actually not that dramatic.

The anxious mind is used to thinking that something worse will happen than reality is, which causes unnecessary suffering that makes problem solving difficult.

Image source: http://amaltiempobuenapsique.com/2012/10/01/combate-el-perfeccionismo/