How do I know if I love my partner? I ROCD I Relationship Anxiety

Hi, my name is Danielle Thornton, and I am a certified life coach and course creator, helping you heal from relationship anxiety or relationship OCD so that you can have a happier life and healthier relationships. So today I want to talk about the thought of do I love my partner? Now, if you're having a thought like this that comes up and creates a lot of confusion and a lot of anxiety and a lot of really emotional feelings for you, then this could very likely be an intrusive thought. And intrusive thoughts are really common with anybody who suffers from anxiety, but definitely someone who suffers from. From OCD and more specifically around relationships, relationship ocd. The thing to remember is that we all get crazy, random thoughts, right? But when someone doesn't really have a lot of anxiety or does not have ocd, they're able to just notice the thought and let it go. If you are prone to anxiety or you have ocd, then these thoughts can cause a lot of discomfort and a lot of confusion in your life. Okay? It seems like sometimes it's hard to let go. You really might get hooked into this thought, and then it'll create a lot of discomfort because it may not be in line with what you really want or how you really feel, and it causes a lot of confusion. And so for some people, this may seem to come totally out of the blue, maybe somewhere in the middle of your relationship. For others, it may have kind of already been there background, and it may have started, you know, towards the beginning of the relationship. It's really different for everybody. But the thing to remember is that we are not our thoughts. Okay? So people who suffer from anxiety in relationship OCD tend to think that all of our thoughts are true. They tend to really struggle with certain thoughts that they get that pop in their heads and they really get hooked into them. The reality is, is we all have thoughts all the time. Sometimes we put some thought and effort into those, and then sometimes we don't. But when you're prone to relationship anxiety or relationship ocd, these thoughts can cause a lot of discomfort. Okay? Now, if you didn't have anxiety or you didn't suffer from relationship OCD and you started to actually question your feelings for your partner, what would happen is it may cause a tiny bit of discomfort, but it's not going to cause the amount of discomfort that someone with anxiety or relationship OCD experiences. So that's something that to really, really remember. If it's causing you a lot of discomfort and confusion in your life, and it's probably due to fear and anxiety, because if someone isn't experiencing those things, then, and they had, you know, the realization that they didn't love their partner anymore, they might feel a little bit, but they're not going to have the confusion and the discomfort with the fact that they, you know, are going to end their relationship. If you're experiencing a lot of discomfort and fear and confusion around that and a lot of painful feelings, then most likely the feeling itself and the thought itself is coming from a place of fear, okay? And that just means that it's probably not in line with what you really want in your life. But the problem is you're getting really hooked into this thought and giving it a lot of energy, which is causing a lot of emotions after that. Okay? So the next thing that you're probably wondering is, how do I alleviate these intrusive thoughts? There are some really important steps that you would need to take in order to work with these intrusive thoughts that are coming to you. The first one is acceptance and exposure. And acceptance really means just sitting with the thought, letting it be, and then noticing it's there and not getting hooked into it and then probably letting it go. And exposure is actually exposing yourself to the possibility that it might be true. And if you suffer from anxiety or ocd, this can be really scary at first, because the last thing that you want is for that thing to actually be true, because it's probably not in line with what you really want. But the important thing is that you habituate yourself to these possibilities. That's the psychological term of getting used to that thought, which lessens the fear, and it lessens the emotion that's attached to that. So those are really, really crucial. If you know that you're suffering from relationship ocd, then it's really important that you learn what your compulsions are and stop doing those, okay? Because those compulsions are temporarily leaving your anxiety, relieving your anxiety, but they're actually making it worse in the long run. Because these temporary compulsions that you have alleviate the symptoms in the moment, but they're not really getting to the root of the problem. The next thing that you want to do is learn your unhealthy, limiting beliefs and really start working with those and rewriting those, because those are really going on in the subconscious level that's driving a lot of your behavior. Because it's our beliefs that really drive our perceptions and our behavior. The next thing that you want to do is really work on building a strong sense of self. And a strong sense of self comes from us knowing Our desires, knowing our needs, creating boundaries around relationships and the different people in our lives, and then going after those things that we want, as well as feeling our feelings and learning to get comfortable with those. And self soothing really well. So building a strong sense of self is something that a lot of people with anxiety and relationship OCD do not have. And it's really important to start to do that. The next thing is learning better skills for working with our emotions. A lot of times when you are suffering from anxiety or rocd, you're really uncomfortable with those strong emotions that come up. And what you tend to do is try to push those emotions away. And the problem is anything we try to push away is going to usually become stronger, right? So if someone tells you not to think about the pink elephant over there, you're gonna think about the pink elephant. The other thing is our emotions are really a part of us. They're there to teach us something, they're there to tell us something about ourselves. And it doesn't mean that the emotion that's coming up is the truth necessarily, but what it means is there's something there to be looked at and to be dealt with. Either self soothing that we need or, or a need that's not being met or just acceptance of ourselves and what's going on. So it's really important that you get used to really building healthier coping mechanisms around your emotions and that will alleviate a lot of the pain and anxiety you're going through just doing that alone. The next thing is learning self trust skills. You probably don't have a lot of trust in yourself right now because of the ups and downs that you're experiencing with the emotions and with the thoughts. So learning really how to trust yourself and tune into what's going on is going to be really crucial. And it seems really difficult at first when you're experiencing a lot of these symptoms of high anxiety or ocd. But you really can learn to figure out what's fear and what's really you. As you start to build that relationship with yourself, you're going to start to learn that. And then you'll really start to develop that relationship and learn to trust yourself more. And then lastly is reprogramming your negative thinking patterns. There's a lot of these going on under the surface, whether it's your thinking patterns in regards to life, into regards to relationships, or just how you deal with things in general. And this is going to be a really important step that's really going to change things for you in your whole life. So I hope this video was helpful for you today. If it was, please let me know by clicking like below. And if you want more information about relationship anxiety or relationship ocd, make sure you subscribe to my channel and click on that bell so you'll get notified of new videos coming up. Additionally, if you want more support, I do right now run a group coaching membership for anybody suffering from a relationship ocd. We meet three times a week and I actually go through each and every single one of these steps that we talked about today along with some additional information that's really going to help you learn to strengthen your sense of self, find that self trust and really start to improve that relationship that you're in right now that might be struggling because of your anxiety or relationship ocd. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you all have a great day and just remember I am here with you every step of the way.

Sam.