How do I know if I have Relationship OCD? I ROCD

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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am an anxiety and OCD recovery coach. And today I want to talk about how to figure out if you are struggling with relationship anxiety or not. So, as you probably already know, OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder. And so OCD consists of obsess and compulsions. Obsession is when you regularly think about a particular subject. And for a lot of people, this actually feels kind of normal because they've always been this way, but it's really not so much. It's kind of constantly being in your head or thinking about a particular subject in general, and it usually causes a lot of stress and uncertainty. Now, the compulsions, on the other hand, are the coping mechanisms. And you might be aware of some of these, and there's probably others that you're not even aware of that are compulsions. But these are the actions that you take to gain certainty, to get rid of the anxiety. It feels like you have to do them. If someone was to ask you not to take a certain action or not do a certain compulsion, then you would likely have a really difficult time not doing it feels like you have to do it, and there's a lot of urgency around that. Now, for a lot of people with ocd, there might be periods of time where this isn't really bothering them all that much, but when it is, you might be obsessing and doing compulsions quite a bit. Usually, the rule of thumb is if you're thinking about a particular subject or participating in compulsions, which we'll cover a little bit more here in a minute, for more than an hour per day in certain periods of time, then most likely you are experiencing OCD symptoms. Another rule of thumb is that if this particular subject, whether it's thinking about it or trying to control it, causes a large amount of stress for you, a large amount of uncertainty, and interferes with your relationships, with your work, or even with your hobbies. If you're not. If it's keeping you from participating in your hobbies, your exercise, your health. And this is a clear sign that there might be some OCD going on here. So if you spend a lot of time thinking about your partner's flaws, you might be thinking about the compatibility of the relationship, the future of the relationship. You might spend a lot of time obsessing about your feelings for your partner, or maybe you're obsessing about what your partner feels about you. You might spend a lot of time focusing on whether your partner is being faithful to you or not without really much Evidence of the contrary. And a lot of times people with relationship OCD are focused on whether or not the relationship is going to last. Really what a lot of this boils down to. So these are all common obsessions. They're not the complete list. It really can take all kinds of forms. So if there are things on this list that you struggle with, that's okay too. It's really all about the quantity and how much stress this actually causes you as to whether or not it's an obsession, not the actual subject. On the side of the compulsions, if you tend to seek a lot of reassurance, and often, again, when we have ocd, we tend to think our behaviors are quite normal because it's all we know. But for someone without ocd, if something happens and they have some uncertainty, they might talk to one person one time to get some guidance, and then they make a decision and they move on. Right. Someone with relationship OCD will seek reassurance about the same subject from the same person multiple times or multiple people many times. So reassurance seeking is a very common compulsion with relationship ocd. Another common compulsion is checking. And this can be checking anything. But a lot of times it consists of checking your feelings, checking your attraction to your partner. You might notice the lack thereof, you notice the lack of feelings, and then you start to check for them or create situations to create those feelings, or noticing that they're not there at all. Avoidance is another common compulsion. So this might look like avoiding spending time with your partner because you're afraid you're going to be anxious or it makes you anxious to do so. You might avoid listening to love songs, watching romantic movies, anything, any sort of avoidance, going on vacation with your partner. These are really common avoidance compulsions with relationship ocd. A lot of people actually give them self reassurance, which this is a common compulsion that people don't realize is a compulsion. And again, giving yourself reassurance is okay outside of ocd, but when it comes to ocd, it's actually a compulsion. So this might look like you have to consistently tell yourself that the relationship's gonna be okay, that you really do love your partner, that things are gonna be fine. Yet not long after that, you find yourself anxious again and having to reassure yourself again. And it doesn't ever seem to really work to give yourself that reassurance. You still get anxiety around the subject. So these are really common obsessions and compulsions. And again, this isn't a complete list. Everybody's different. So there's all kinds of Other obsessions and compulsions that I have not talked about. But as you can see, there's some similarities and commonalities with all of this, which is the obsession about the relationship, the partner, their flaws, compatibility, feelings, all of that. Now, when you're trying to figure out whether or not you have relationship ocd, which it's perfectly normal to want to know this, right? Because if you do have ocd, there's a very specific treatment that you need to get for it. But oftentimes OCD being called the doubting disease, you'll get a lot of intrusive thoughts of, well, you don't really have ocd, you just need to leave your partner, or you really don't love your partner, you're just faking it, or you're just forcing yourself to love your partner because they're a good person, or you really aren't compatible and this isn't going to last. OCD will often tell you you're just lying to yourself, you're just faking it, you're just trying to make this work. Those are just OCD intrusive thoughts, that's it. OCD is very tricky. It wants you to leave the relationship. And the reason is OCD comes from the fear center of our brain. This fear center of your brain thinks that relationships are unsafe. The propensity towards anxiety plus life experiences have usually led to this, and it was triggered at some point. But OCD just wants you to survive, which, as we know, you're not in a life or death situation, but it thinks you are, and it wants you to leave the relationship.

Part of recovery from relationship OCD is learning to accept uncertainty. Because when you're struggling with ocd, uncertainty is very difficult. Until we can learn to accept uncertainty. We can't learn to be comfortable in the relationship if we're always in a state of anxiety and uncertainty. But even though it is important to accept some of the uncertainty around this, getting educated on relationship OCD and OCD is very crucial. A good specialist will help educate you on ocd, will help educate you on your relationship OCD so that you can recognize what's OCD and what isn't. It doesn't mean that we're looking for the truth or not the truth. That's just a compulsion. But learning what's OCD and what isn't is very important because you need to be able to recognize what's OCD and then recognize how to handle it, which is ERP or Exposure and Response Prevention. This is how I was able to recover from relationship ocd and it is how I help all of my clients recover from OCD as well. It is very effective. When it's done properly and systematically, you will experience great progress. And you can see a lot of the testimonial videos on my channel here on YouTube of people who have had amazing success with me with ERP helping with their relationship ocd. So if you want more information on how I can help you, whether that's a course or coaching, I do offer a free call. I can answer all of your questions, explain all about how I can help you, and which option is best for for you. Please click the link below to find out more about me and my options to help you get to recovery. It is very possible. I have been there and I'm looking forward to helping you get there too.