Do I Have OCD or Am I Just a Perfectionist?
OCD is a highly misunderstood condition, even in the mental health community. All you need to do is to log onto TikTok or Instagram to see the misconceptions being thrown around.
One common misunderstanding is that OCD is about liking things to be neat and orderly. You might hear someone saying they’re “so OCD” about wanting their pens in an even row or about their hygiene. Many equate OCD to perfectionism or an eye for detail.
But in reality, OCD and perfectionism are two very different things. Although research shows they’re related, being a perfectionist does not mean you have OCD, nor vice versa.
Today, I’ll be talking about the differences between OCD and perfectionism, how to tell if you’re a perfectionist or if you might be experiencing symptoms of OCD (or both!), and how therapy can help.
What is OCD?
OCD is a serious mental health condition that causes two key symptoms: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted and intrusive thoughts, sensations, images, or urges that come to you suddenly. Anyone can get intrusive thoughts sometimes, but for people with OCD, they cause an intense, almost unbearable level of fear, disgust, or shame.
To try to reduce these intense feelings, people with OCD do compulsions — repetitive or ritualistic behaviors. Compulsions are performed to feel less anxious or to prevent feared events from coming true. But they never work 100%, and the person feels locked into performing the compulsion over and over again.
OCD is a chronic health condition and requires treatment. Symptoms don’t go away on their own, and when it’s left unaddressed, OCD can start to take over your life. People with OCD often lose hours of their days to performing compulsions. Obsessions become so overwhelming that they’re unable to focus on anything else.
What is perfectionism?
Perfectionism, on the other hand, is not a mental health condition — it’s a personality trait that comes on a spectrum. People with perfectionism tend to strive for perfection to the detriment of their own (and sometimes others’) well-being. Anything less than perfection is unacceptable to them, and these unrealistic standards become impossible to meet. Some people are perfectionistic about everything, while others set perfectionistic standards only in certain areas of their lives (like work).
Perfectionism is linked with a range of different mental health conditions, including OCD, depression, and anxiety — although it’s not a recognized symptom of any of them.
The differences between OCD and perfectionism
The most important difference between OCD and perfectionism is that OCD is a mental health condition, while perfectionism is a personality trait. OCD always requires professional treatment to be managed. Perfectionists can benefit from mental health therapy, but it isn’t a condition that needs to be treated.
Because OCD is a mental health disorder, it (by definition) causes significant distress. If you live with OCD, it probably causes serious problems in your life. You might be so overcome with anxiety that you can’t work or study. OCD can also severely disrupt relationships.
Perfectionism can be very disruptive to life, too — many perfectionists develop mental health problems like depression because of their too-high standards — but often not to the same extent. Perfectionism also comes on a spectrum, so some people may be able to function well as perfectionists even without treatment.
Despite what jokes on social media might tell you, OCD obsessions and compulsions don’t always have to do with cleanliness or order. People can have obsessions about anything — some lesser-known obsessions include fears about secretly being a pedophile, fears about hurting yourself without wanting to, and fears about running someone over.
For example, someone could have the obsession: “What if I hit someone with my car today and didn’t notice?” They might be so tormented by this worry that they check the roads, over and over again, for bodies. They might scan the news obsessively for news of hit-and-run accidents.
Clearly, this has nothing to do with perfectionism. It’s not a need for perfection that drives OCD — it’s a need to be 100% certain that your worst fears aren’t (or won’t come) true.
Even for the types of OCD that are related to cleanliness and order, it’s still not the same thing as perfectionism. Take contamination OCD — this is a type of OCD you’ve probably heard of, where people become obsessed with the idea that they are dirty or contaminated. As compulsions, they might wash their hands until their skin cracks or compulsively disinfect every surface in the home.
Another type of OCD is “just right” OCD, which drives people to feel a nagging sense of “wrongness” and the urge to place or order things until they feel “just right.”
Even in these cases, OCD is very different from perfectionism. People with OCD aren’t driven by a desire for perfection. Their goal isn’t to get things to be perfect, but to calm the deep fear or disgust within them.
Similarities between OCD and perfectionism
Although perfectionism and OCD are different things, they are linked in many ways.
First of all, researchers have found that having a perfectionistic personality is actually a risk factor for developing OCD. This doesn’t mean that perfectionism causes OCD — the causes of OCD are complex and multifold — but there does appear to be a link there.
Perfectionism and OCD can also both cause serious problems in your life, despite perfectionism not being a mental health condition. I’ve already discussed the ways that OCD can make you feel overwhelmed and distract you from other important things in your life. But perfectionism can be incredibly damaging, too.
My perfectionist clients struggle with allowing themselves to rest. They feel like the only way to prove to the world, and often to themselves, that they’re “good enough” is to reach perfection. The problem is that perfection is so rarely attainable. This leaves them, much like my clients with OCD, striving for a goal that’s impossible to reach.
People with OCD need to be 100% certain — even a minuscule amount of doubt is intolerable. In a similar way, people who are perfectionists need to be 100% perfect — even a tiny flaw is unacceptable to them.
OCD treatment in California & Online
The good news is that both OCD and perfectionism can be managed with the right support. The most effective treatment for OCD is called exposure and response prevention, which is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that helps you slowly start being able to tolerate the thoughts that scare you, without engaging in compulsions.
For perfectionism (whether or not it’s related to OCD), we can work on getting to the root of the unreasonable expectations you’ve set for yourself and how you can honor your inherent worth even when you’re not perfect.
Getting started is easy. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation with me here!
I can provide exposure and response prevention (ERP) for OCD online in California. I provide video therapy to individuals who live in California, including Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and more. I work with OCD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and Asian American & Pacific Islanders.
Disclaimer: This information is being provided to you for educational and informational purposes only. The topics being discussed are meant as a self-help tool for your own use. It is not psychotherapy or counseling. This information is to be used based on your own judgment. If you need to speak with a professional, you should find one local to you and contact them directly.
My office is located in Irvine, which is near Newport Beach, Orange, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Hills, Tustin, Seal Beach, and beyond.