This is a spoken YouTube presentation by life coach Danielle Thornton offering practical guidance to heal relationship OCD (ROCD) and relationship anxiety. She outlines four "crucial steps" (take 100% accountability, practice self-compassion, be present and do the inner work, and repeat learning) and six complementary skills (focus on yourself, turn toward fear with exposure-style steps, daily relationship-building with self, get comfortable with discomfort, self-soothe with compassion, and identify/reframe unhealthy thinking). The video closes with calls-to-action linking to her group coaching, courses, and one-on-one services.
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Hey, everybody. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am a life coach and course creator and I am here to help you heal from anxiety disorders, including relationship OCD and anxiety, depression, and anything else you're struggling that has anything to do with self doubt or self sabotage. So today I'm going to talk to you about the four crucial steps to success and the six skills for faster healing that I teach my clients and in my group coaching membership for ROCD. So the first crucial step to success is taking 100% accountability for what's going on in your life and being able to turn to yourself. This is really, really crucial because when we don't take accountability and we are focused somewhere else, we're giving our power away. It's only when we take full accountability for what's going on that we are able to take our power back and make any changes. So we want to make sure that we're turning to ourselves instead of blaming or focusing outside of ourselves. The next crucial step is never judging yourself and practicing self compassion. When we judge ourselves for our feelings, our thoughts, or our behaviors, we think that we're doing something good, that we're gonna that that's gonna help us make a change. But the reality is that that is not true. By judging and shaming yourself, what you're doing is you're adding more pain and shame on top of what you're already experiencing, which might have some pain attached to it. So it's really important, and I don't care what it is that you've done or said or thought, there's never any room for judgment. So practicing self compassion here is really important in curiosity. The third step is being present, digging deeper, showing up, and doing the work. Okay? So we can't make any changes in our life unless we're really present with what's going on. So it's really important that whether you are taking one of my courses or taking someone else's courses or just.
Looking for information out there, it's really important that you're present with it, that you're showing up, and that you're doing the inner work.
And the fourth step is actually taught in my course, which is to repeat the course or the information as much as possible. So let's say you're reading a book, you're taking a course, you are, you know, looking at information on a Facebook page. It's really, really important that you repeat that information until it feels really, really solid. And it's almost easy for you to pull up in your mind, okay? Because what happens Is. Is when we're learning a new skill. Let's say you're trying to learn how to play a new sport, right? You have to practice. It's the same thing for personal development and learning a new skill for yourself. You have to practice, you have to show up, and you have to do the work. So a lot of times, some people will take my courses once. Most people will repeat it two or three times just because it really helps to solidify that information. And it's so interesting how a lot of times people will come back to me and tell me, oh, my gosh, I really heard that clearly this time, or I heard it differently this time, or it really, really clicked. So that can be really important, too. All right, let's talk about the six skills for faster learning. So the first one is taking the focus off of your relationship, okay? Investing in yourself. So again, when we're focused on a relationship, we're focused on somebody else. There's no power in that because we don't have any power to change anybody else. And the hard truth is, is that if you're experiencing fear and doubt and anxiety, that comes back to you. It's all within you. A lot of times the fear is, well, if I. If I make any changes in myself or it's really within me, then. Then maybe it's true. And it's really important to understand that.
Facing that is really, really important, the thought that maybe it's true. But a lot of times what happens is fear distorts things, right? So fear blows things up. It distorts it. It makes things seem different. So that's why it's really important that you come back to focusing on yourself, where this anxiety is coming from, where the fear is coming from, and really investing in some of these skills that we're going to talk about. Number two is turning towards the fear and then taking action. So let's say you're afraid of snakes. The more that you avoid snakes, you don't go near them, you run away from them. What that's doing is you're telling your mind that that fear is true and it's just gonna get bigger, right? And so you need to face the fear. So you're not gonna go pick up a snake and bring it in your house the first time that you do this. But what you are going to do is you might look at a picture of a snake, and then you might go somewhere where they have snakes in a cage at a distance. And then what you're going to do is you're really going to focus on what it is you're telling yourself in those moments that you are afraid so that you can connect that emotion, positive emotion, with the negative feeling, which will start to dissipate that negative feeling. This is exactly what exposure response therapy is. And it's the only thing that works for fear or one of the only few skills that really works for fear. All right, so number three is daily relationship building with yourself. And I know for me, in my experience with relationship OCD and relationship anxiety, I did not have a very good relationship with myself and I didn't realize how important that was. But everybody that I work with has really been disconnected. So when you're disconnected with your feelings, with your emotions, with your needs, with how to self soothe, that's really going to make you feel in general, it's going to make anybody feel kind of unstable and off kilter because then you're putting that expectation on other people or there's nobody giving that to you. So any little trigger, it's going to really, really going to trigger you. So it's really important that you start building that relationship with yourself. And then you're going to really feel more confident in your decisions, more confident in what you want and what you need. And that's really, really crucial for healthy relationships with your partner too. All right, next, getting comfortable with discomfort. This is a big one.
Again, when we're not in touch with our feelings and our emotions, we're pushing them away and we're running from them because they don't feel good. Again, that's going to grow. And so really getting more comfortable with those feelings that you've labeled as bad, which they really aren't. Bad feelings are just barometers for kind of what's going on within us. So. So when you start to get comfortable with those uncomfortable emotions, the wonderful thing is they're not going to feel so bad anymore. Okay? So that's why it is.
Really number four skill and it's going to help you heal quicker. Number five, self soothing and self compassion. So again, learning really how to self soothe when you are going through a difficult time, when you are experiencing anxiety and, and then providing yourself a lot of that self compassion, it's one of the first things that I really learned and it took me a good couple years to actually do it after people were suggesting it. But oh my gosh, it was really a game changer for me. So that's going to help you too. And then lastly, this is a big one, is identifying challenging and reframing your unhealthy thinking patterns. If you have anxiety, if you have depression, relationship ocd, you by far have negative thinking patterns. And actually we all do, right? Nobody's perfect at positive thinking, right? And it's not just about thinking positive thoughts either. So that's not really how it works. But really learning this skill is going to shift everything for you. Not just in your relationship. It's going to give you a lot better relationship with your partner, but it's also going to really help in every single area of your life. If this information was helpful and you want more information just like this, click subscribe below and click that bell so that you get notifications of my new videos. It's also really important. If this video was helpful, click like so that I know that this is something that's helpful for you and that you want more information just like this. And if you are interested in more support, I'm going to put a link below to my Group coaching membership for Relationship ocd. I'm also going to be creating a program for relationship anxiety because they are slightly different, but I'll put a link to that below. It's extremely cost effective compared to other programs out there. I'll put a link to my website if you're interested in one on one coaching. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you know that I am here for you through this journey. You are not alone and I know that you are on your way to a happier, healthier life. I hope to see you soon. Bye.
