Ep. 1: The Healthy Compulsive Project | Trailer

Control freaks and perfectionists unite! Anyone who’s ever been known to overwork, overplan, overcontrol or overanalyze is welcome here, where the obsessive-compulsive personality is explored and harnessed to deliver what it was originally meant to deliver. Join psychotherapist, Jungian psychoanalyst and author Gary Trosclair as he delves into the pitfalls and potential of the driven personality with an informative, positive, and often playful approach to this sometimes-vexing character style.

What is The Healthy Compulsive Project?

For five years The Healthy Compulsive Project has been offering information, insight and inspiration for OCPD, obsessive-compulsive personality, perfectionism, micro-managers and Type A personality. Anyone who’s ever been known to overwork, overplan, overcontrol or overanalyze is welcome here, where the obsessive-compulsive personality is explored and harnessed to deliver what it was originally meant to deliver. Join psychotherapist, Jungian psychoanalyst and author Gary Trosclair as he delves into the pitfalls and potential of the driven personality with an informative, positive, and often playful approach to this sometimes-vexing character style.

The Obsessive-compulsive personality can devolve into a psychiatric disorder. It’s also the cure for that disorder and a wellspring for a meaningful life.
Some of us struggle with a drive to perfect, plan, and produce. We feel compelled to use control to bring order to what we experience as chaos—whether it’s really chaotic or not. Sometimes this drive goes into over-drive and we become work-addicts or uncompromising purists, producing compulsively or telling others how they should live. When we get to this point, we’re being driven, rather than driving ourselves. We’re cut off from our better angels, and cut off from our better relationships.
Informal terms for this personality type are Type A, control freak, micromanager and, the ever-popular anal personality that Sigmund Freud warned us about. The clinical term is obsessive-compulsive. But here labels are less important than living well.
If any of this resonates with you, you may find my podcast, The Healthy Compulsive, challenging, engaging, encouraging and an effective aid in achieving change. In this podcast I explore how to use the compelling determination inherent in this personality style to harness its potential.
For years I’ve been on a campaign to really understand the compulsive personality, to help people use their perfectionistic drive to enhance their lives rather than to eviscerate their self-esteem. And to optimize the traits they have, rather than trying to force them into being something they are not. This is the Healthy Compulsive Project--a realistically hopeful approach to using your obsessive traits in a more fulfilling way.
I’m Gary Trosclair, a psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. I’m the creator of The Healthy Compulsive Project, a book, a blog, and now a podcast dedicated to helping those whose inclinations to complete, fix, and correct sometimes gets them in trouble.
I’m committed to helping control freaks become healthy compulsives. A healthy compulsive is one whose skills and passions are used in the service of love and meaning. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose skills and passions have been hijacked by fear, and its henchman anger, to compensate for insecurities. It’s the same raw material, but in a very different form. Like water and ice, one flows, the other is frozen stiff.
This podcast will help you take back the wheel of your drive from rigidity, overcontrol, obsessing, and overworking. No ads. No chit-chat. Just a therapist and fellow compulsive exploring a different approach to living, with humility, hope and humor..
Join me in this personal quest as I draw from research, popular culture, and thirty years of clinical experience to identify the pitfalls and potential of the compulsive personality. It won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding.