Rigid, perfectionist and inflexible men are more likely to suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), specialist María Luisa Hinojosa said today.
Hinojosa, coordinator of the Emotional Skills Development and Prevention Program at the Universidad Iberoamericana, explained that people who suffer from OCD spend a lot of time repeating tasks until they reach perfection, find it difficult to adapt to changes and different points of view.
“They suffer a lot, they are meticulous, they like order, they can not bear to see something out of place, they get very anxious and they usually show emotional instability because it depends on the control they can exercise over their context and other people,” he said in a statement. .
Although this disorder occurs mainly in men, women are not exempt from it, he said.
The specialist said that sometimes OCD can lead to those who suffer from it to lose their job or physically hurt, for example, lacerate their hands for fear of germs.
“The OCD begins to hinder everyday life, the problem escalates until the person ‘stops working’ in their daily lives,” he explained.
He explained that the big problem of a person with OCD is that he usually combines obsessive thoughts, which leads him to have behaviors that become a ritual to lower the anxiety of the thought that came to him.
“It is one of the disorders in which the person is absolutely aware that their thinking is irrational, but feel the need to do so or if the level of anxiety is not great and can lead to a panic attack,” said Hinojosa.
The academic, who gave the workshop “Strategies to combat anxiety,” explained that the way of experiencing anxiety varies with respect to gender.
Women, for example, experience generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), while men experience OCD more often.
Unlike OCD, in the TAG the person feels anxiety and worry most of the time, irrational thoughts arrive that they know are absurd, but they can not be avoided.
Hinojosa explained that this symptom is known as twilight, because these thoughts occur when it starts to get dark.
“Generally, people with this disorder stop having activities in the evening, they start shaking when they see the clock, it’s about very intense worries,” he said.
He explained that when men suffer from GAD, they have major anxiety crises that even make them think they suffer a cardiac arrest, because they are in a state of permanent alert that prevents them from relaxing.
The expert recalled that this type of disorders are difficult to cope without help, so he recommended seeking specialized support, so that the patient receives the appropriate treatment.
