12:33 p.m. | 2012-12-01 It's Not Me, It's You. One of the best days of my life was discovering that my mother really is certifiable. Mind you, she's not been officially diagnosed but she definitely has Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. No doubt about it. Just for the record, OCPD is NOT the same as OCD. Oh no, not even close. OCPD is a personality disorder with more in common with Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders. It's a disorder in your personality. Ponder that for many a moment. Since your personality is you, that pretty much means the "you" in you is disordered. That's not a cute little quirk or a funny little characteristic, that's crazy to the core. People with personality disorders (PD) have "cognitive distortions" which means their thinking is messed up and not "normal." Sadly, it's not messed up in a good way. PDs result in toxic and crazy-making behavior. All my life, I've known that there was something wrong with MommaCrayCray but she always told me there was something wrong with me. When your parent and primary caretaker tells you something, you have to believe it's true because otherwise life would be terrifying because you couldn't trust the one person your life depends on. But my instincts always told me that there was something wrong with her. For her to be right though, I had to be wrong (and OCPDers are ALWAYS right) so I was constantly overriding my instincts which resulted in continuous confusion. It became less befuddling to accept that she was right and I was wrong. The problem was, I just couldn't quite believe that so I was constantly puzzling over our interactions. In fact, interactions with her to this day befuddle me but now I know that I can simply dismiss the crazy and go with my gut. I mostly hung out with my sane father when I was young and have always made it a habit to avoid MommaCrayCray as much as possible. In fact, I've slowly been limiting my contact with her more and more. I deeply desire going no contact (NC) but don't want to foist all responsibility for her care on my other sisters. MommaCrayCray is now 70 and while she's still living independently, we have to step in occasionally. The more I limit contact though the better my life becomes. Sad but true. MommaCrayCray is incapable of having a reciprocal relationship with anybody - either she's dominant or she's subordinate; a taker not a giver. There is no possibility of a peer-to-peer relationship. I realize now that the main difficulty we have is that I've always refused to be either always dominant or always subordinate (even as a child I had a strong streak of insubordination) so she doesn't know how to deal with me. OCPDers are all about RULES so they're either rule-makers (dominant) or rule-followers (subordinate) and peer-to-peer relationships constantly blur those lines and leave an OCPDer in a constant state of confusion. Peer-to-peer relationships also offend an OCPDer's black and white thinking. Anyway, the best thing about finding out that MommaCrayCray is crazy is realizing that I'm not. There is so much peace in that discovery. And freedom. Freedom from second-guessing myself all the time. Freedom from fear of losing my mind. Freedom from self-blame and castigation. Freedom to be me. your thoughts? seed flower