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Compulsive Personality Disorder

Finding a Safe Harbor for Your Son with Compulsive Personality Disorder

We can work with your boy if he has Compulsive Personality Disorder, sometimes called Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, or OCPD. This is shown as a fixation with control and perfectionism, revealing itself in highly determined (often, first born) children. He may show repetitive behaviors (as in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder*) that are beyond his control to stop, be preoccupied with details of rules and lists, and even be a workaholic. Your son may have a very hard time being decisive, and be overly sensitive to critique, have difficulty being accommodating or willing to try new situations, as he is compulsively striving for perfection in virtually everything he does. He is likely to struggle with his own expectations as well as perceived ones of those around him.

Causes are believed to be an interlinking of hereditary and environmental factors and unbalanced brain chemistry.

*Note: while sometimes used interchangeably, OCPD should not be equated with OCD. An OCD sufferer has undesired thoughts, but an OCPD sufferer believes his thinking to be natural and appropriate.

Safe Harbor…Throwing a Lifeline to Your Son with Compulsive Personality Disorder

A blood test cannot confirm your boy’s diagnosis; a physician must determine if his life history and symptoms meet the criteria. His thinking may be so automatic that he doesn’t see his problem, possibly not even realizing it until his world implodes around him.

Persistent group/individual and long-term psychotherapy can be quite effective in improving his situation. Remember that he has not chosen to have these compulsive thoughts and is therefore likely to be unwilling to change; any judgment from you, real or perceived, only increases the pressure he already faces. It is important to encourage him, to help him feel comfortable in new ways of thinking, and accept, rather than criticize him for compulsive behaviors.

Support groups are an excellent adjunct, as a means to gain emotional and social support from the community, assuring your teenager’s stability and autonomy.

Safe Harbor… Helping Troubled Boys Become Men of Character and Integrity

This distinctive, aquatic, Christ-centered residential boarding school is a lifeline for misbehaving boys. Our program is similar to a therapeutic boarding school, but uses maritime training as the therapeutic model for helping turn around at-risk teenagers. Safe Harbor provides a safe, stable alternative to a harsher juvenile program for boys in minor trouble with the law or exhibiting bad behavior. Safe Harbor enables them to learn responsibility and experience behavior modification thru seamanship, mentoring, counseling and spiritual focus, while also attending our in-house school.

Most boys entering the program have had outpatient counseling but without positive results; at Safe Harbor, counseling is offered individually and in groups (led by licensed mental health professionals), and pastoral counseling.

As a water-based program, each boy lives aboard his very own boat and is fully responsible for all the upkeep, with many vocational education opportunities (including carpentry, welding, boat maintenance and repair) that lead to seamanship skills, as well as lifestyle competence (such as skills for job seeking, banking, basic nutrition, grocery shopping and housekeeping). Our structure shows the boys that their negative behavior is leading them into less and less freedom, and teaches a work ethic and positive character traits, such as dependability, good character, self-confidence and maturity.

We believe that education is a life long process and occurs in every facet of life; our curriculum is combined with a unique and creative learning approach that supports students who previously have not experienced success in the academic setting.

Essential principles are taught: problem solving, teamwork, knowledge (of the ocean, and, when they become less self-centered, applicable to the world at large), self-reliance (on their skills, equipment, and the fact the no one will be there to bail you out, either at sea, or in your life decisions), and perseverance, to overcome the challenges that they – as we all – will face in life.