Most Personality Disorders involve degrees of tunnel vision, as priorities associated with such concerns as fear of abandonment, fear of social gatherings, fear of disease, fear of worthlessness, fear of the supernatural etc. People with these conditions may obsess over one concern - such as cleanliness or neatness - while neglecting other important concerns - such as social skills, personal care or the needs of others. This is most easily recognized in people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCP) or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD).
The reason tunnel vision is a common occurrence among people with Personality Disorders is they sometimes go into “crisis mode” when there is actually no crisis present. In the case of people with Personality Disorders, tunnel vision becomes dysfunctional whenever a pervasive pattern of obsession with a single concern or group of concerns begins to affect or threaten the safety, health, maintenance, education and support of the individual or those close to the individual such as family members or colleagues. We all tend to neglect the important in favor of the urgent. Trivia, Busy work, Mail, Email, Internet, Time wasters, Pleasant activitiesĪs Stephen Covey illustrates, all of us experience tunnel vision in different ways and at different times. Interruptions, Phone, Mail & E-mail Reports, Meetings, Popular activities Prevention, Relationship Building, Recognizing Opportunities, Planning, Recreation He argues that people tend to spend too much time in Quadrant 3 (urgent but unimportant priorities) when they really should spend more effort on Quadrant 2 (not urgent but important priorities).Ĭrises, Pressing Problems, Firefighting, Deadlines In his best-selling book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People”, author Stephen Covey describes four quadrants of priorities.
It can become dysfunctional however if it becomes a habit or mode of processing information in everyday life, as the result of habitual mental tunnel vision can be the neglect of important priorities. The benefits of being able to focus our attention so narrowly during a crisis are obvious – it aids survival. People who experience or witness catastrophic events sometimes can remember certain details with extreme clarity years later, for example the expression on a gunman’s face, while being unable to recall more benign details, such as the color of the gunman’s shirt. We experience an immediate adrenaline surge, our heart rate and breathing quicken and our hair may stand on end as we go into “fight or flight” mode.
However, given a crisis situation, we have a remarkable ability to instinctively dispense with trivial or superfluous data and focus on the immediate threat. In addition to all that, we may be processing information on tone of voice, facial expressions, a background aroma and also watching a passer-by “out of the corner of our eye” or scrolling through text messages. For example, in a typical conversation most of us can breathe, speak, think, reason, move and listen simultaneously without much effort. The ability to efficiently and effectively multi-task is one of the great wonders of the human mind.
In psychological terms, the terms refers to a narrowed or exclusive focus on a particular emotion. It is as though the object being looked at is seen through a dark tunnel or tube. In medical terms, tunnel vision causes loss of peripheral vision. Tunnel Vision - The habit or tendency to only see or focus on a single priority while neglecting or ignoring other important priorities.