Relationship Anxiety or Relationship OCD?

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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 the difference between anxiety and ocd. More specifically, the difference between relationship anxiety and relationship ocd. Anxiety is a feeling of nervousness or uneasiness, typically about something imminent or unknown. So things that are uncertain. We all have anxiety in our lives. Some people experience anxiety quite a bit. Some people experience anxiety. Less anxiety is a good thing because it helps us act when we're in danger. But unfortunately, the fear centers of our brain can be overactive. So when we have an anxiety disorder or ocd, our alarm bells can go off unnecessarily, causing a lot of discomfort and anxiety and physical pain as well. When we fear that something bad might happen.

Someone with relationship anxiety might have a lot of fears and worries about just thinking about dating during the dating phase or even in a relationship. Everybody is a little bit different. Some people don't experience any fears until they're in a relationship and it gets close to commitment. Other people get anxiety just thinking about relationships. So it depends on your unique type of anxiety and your life experiences. A lot of times, those with relationship anxiety will get very uncomfortable when they're disconnected from their partner in some way, if their partners don't call back or text back quickly enough. They might also get anxious when they think about being with their partner or developing stronger feelings for their partner, or they might have a focus on that person's flaws or the incompatibilities. It does look very different for everybody. But now let's talk about relationship ocd, because OCD is an anxiety disorder, so there's going to be a lot of overlap. Right? But OCD obsessive compulsive disorder comes with a lot of obsession and typically a lot of compulsions, and that is the difference. There can be a little bit of overlap, but typically someone with OC has the obsessive tendencies. Right? So if you tend to be in your head, overthink, or when you're in this anxious or OCD cycle, you tend to think about that particular subject for an hour or more per day. That's when you're leaning towards the OCD spectrum. Okay? So the obsessing is constant thinking. It's also called ruminating, not being able to stop thinking about a particular subject, person. It could be any of those things. But the obsessing consistently is definitely part of ocd. Now, the next part of OCD is the compulsions. And compulsions are just coping mechanisms that we learn to do in order to cope with the anxiety that we're feeling. Some of the common compulsions with relationship ocd are reassurance seeking, checking. You might check your phone, you might check your partner, you might check their computer, you might check their social media, you might check your feelings. Okay? You might compare your relationship to other relationships pretty consistently. Ruminating or obsessing in itself is a compulsion. So again, doing these types of things, spending more than an hour a day on a lot of these compulsions, avoiding things that make you anxious, or distracting yourself when you are feeling anxious or uncomfortable, or also compulsions. But the majority of these compulsions are actually mental as well. So the obsessing. So thinking about past memories with your partner or your ex, looking at future situations and trying to kind of figure out and look and see what things may look like in the future, you might get a repeating of certain words or phrases in your head, or just a certain feeling that's just kind of stuck there. So even though there's more compulsions than this, because there's quite a few, and anything can turn into a compulsion, really, these are just some examples of relationship ocd compulsions. So if you are experiencing a high number of compulsions along with the obsessing, you're probably gonna fall into the relationship ocd category. But also remember, there's no real black and white line drawn between relationship anxiety and relationship ocd, ok? So you could have very bad anxiety with the tendencies towards obsessing and doing compulsions, or you might have relationship ocd with not a lot of compulsions involved and just a little bit of obsessing. Okay, so there's some gray area, which, when it comes to those with OCD and even sometimes anxiety, we don't like the gray area. Right. We want that certainty, we want that black and white so that we can really kind of figure things out. But part of healing from relationship OCD and anxiety is learning to accept the uncertainty. So if you feel like you have to have a specific diagnosis to know whether it's relationship anxiety or relationship ocd, that's typically just OCD talking. But the good news is that the best treatment for OCD is also one of the best treatments for anxiety. So it doesn't really matter which end of the spectrum you fall. I work with clients every day who have relationship ocd, along with other themes of OCD as well, and also that fall more on the relationship anxiety spectrum. So it doesn't really matter where you fall. But the key is getting the right treatment, which is exposure and response prevention. And what this entails is starting to kind of face our fears and face that uncertainty. And for a lot of you, that might sound really, really scary. And it is at first. But the wonderful thing is, is when you do ERP and you work with somebody who can guide you through this process properly, not only do you see relief from the anxiety pretty quickly, but you're also rewiring your brain, okay? And so there's a lot of other techniques that people will try with anxiety and even OCD that just aren't that effective. Some of those might be changing the thought to a more positive thought or questioning the thought to see if it's true. And while those can be helpful, the best thing that you can do for anxiety and OCD is face your fears and go into that uncertainty. Because your brain isn't going to let up until you prove to it that this thing that it's afraid of, that you feel like you're afraid of, you actually have to go into that and prove to your brain that it's either overreacting or it's not true. And if there is any truth to it, which is usually the tiniest piece, that you can handle it and you can do something about it, right? You can have a conversation with your partner to say, hey, this is something that I need in our relationship. And so ERP is really, really crucial. I work with people all the time who are trying other forms of treatment, sometimes with a little bit of help in that area, but most of the time it just fuels and continues the anxious and OCD cycle. If you want my help with this. I have recovered from relationship OCD myself by getting ERP treatment and decided a couple years ago to help others do the same thing. Because the right proper way of doing ERP is so important. And I just saw so many people struggling and not getting the right help. So it is possible to recover. It is possible to feel better, regardless of which one you identify with. You can get better from OCD if you have other forms of fears and ocd, it's also really important to tackle those as well, along with your relationship ocd, because if you're not, the fear is just going to shift to a different subject. And I see that quite a bit too. So it's really important that when I'm working with people that we are tackling all of the forms of OCD or anxiety that are showing up for you so that we can rewire your brain and get you to the recovery stage of ocd. If you want more information, please see the description section below. If you have more questions, I'm happy to schedule a free call with you to help you understand how I can help how ERP Works, or point you in the right direction to get help close to you.