Successful Dating with Relationship Anxiety or ROCD

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Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am an anxiety and OCD recovery coach. And today we're going to talk about the dating stages of relationships. When you struggle with relationship anxiety or relationship ocd. So this can look really different for different people. So some people can meet somebody and have a great time and start dating and not really experience any anxiety or intrusive thoughts around that until the later stages of the process where things start to get a little bit more serious or people start to talk about more of a commitment. And so it can show up that way. Other people, and usually this is people who have had OCD for a long time who are aware of their relationship OCD or anxiety. This can show up before they even start dating. Especially if you are online dating and trying to make decisions about who to talk to and going through a lot of profiles, that can be pretty triggering for somebody with relationship anxiety or relationship ocd. So it looks very different. There's no right or wrong. It could be right away, or it could be later in the dating process. But either way, what I want to talk about today is five different OCD compulsions that if you just experience relationship anxiety, you're going to still be able to relate to. But if you have ocd, these are five compulsions that you really want to be aware of. And we'll talk about how to navigate these if they are showing up for you. The first one is avoidance, and this is an interesting one because this one can show up a lot for people and they don't even know it. I was one of those people who had no clue I had relationship ocd. I had no clue that anxiety or fear was really something in my life for most of my 20s and 30s. But I did avoid getting into relationships for about 18 years, if you want to really look at the big picture. So avoidance is a big compulsion, and it's something that we do when we are experiencing fear. When something is uncertain or scary, we tend to just avoid it. It's a really easy thing to do. But avoidance can show up in other ways. If you're dating and you find yourself avoiding, you know, getting dressed up because you don't want that person to like you too much, you might find yourself avoiding going to places that you know you really enjoy because there's a fear of the relationship. Compare this person to maybe your ex, or you're comparing them to maybe another relationship with that your friend has. Okay, your. You might find your brain going to, you know, is this person as romantic as my friend's partner? Or this person isn't quite as spontaneous and fun as my ex. When you find yourself comparing, you just want to notice it as a compulsion, as something that isn't really healthy or effective in the moment, and choose to move forward anyway. Because every partner is going to be very different. Every partner is going to have their pros and cons, and it's more about the big picture, right? Not these one little things that you really wanted that they might not have, but the big picture. How do you feel around them? Do you see a future with them? Looking at the values that you both have and do those line up instead of really nitpicking one thing here and there and next is hyper vigilance. And essentially with ocd, you're hyper vigilant of everything. But a lot of people can be very hyper vigilant of red flags or even cheating, right? Especially if you've had those experiences in your past, if you've been cheated on, if you've had experiences where you've been mistreated before, you might be more hyper vigilant of these types of things and really be hyper focused on looking for those. And so when you catch yourself doing this, I want you to remember that there is a difference between a red flag and a yellow flag. This is something I learned early on, right? You know, a red flag would be someone has been abusive in their past, or they've been unfaithful in all of their relationships, or they're unable to commit to relationships, or they have a temper. Those things are red flags. A lot of other things might be yellow flags, if anything. And it doesn't mean that even when you see a red flag, there are some red flags that are worth walking away right away, right? But if you struggle with relationship ocd, I think it's important to notice when you see a red flag to give it time and get to know that person and make sure that what you're seeing is really a red flag and not just a yellow flag or something that you completely misinterpreted in that person, okay? Because it does take time. Anxiety and OCD will give you things that feel like red flags when they're really not. The other thing you can do here is use trusted friends to talk to about this, especially the ones that understand your pattern of maybe running away from relationships too soon or finding things wrong in relationships when they're really not there, okay? If you have friends that are aware of that pattern within you, they can help you figure out when you do have a concern about a relationship. Whether it is a true concern or not. Now, if you're younger, you know, you're 18, 20, this can be a little bit more difficult because a lot of your friends kind of lack the relationship experience. Whereas for myself, this has been really helpful. I'm in my 40s and my friends know my history of struggling with fear in relationships and that in the past I have tended to see something as a red flag and run away too quickly, when in reality I needed to give it a little bit more time to see if it was truly a red flag or not.

So if you don't have friends, if you're not in that situation where somebody kind of understands your fears and your patterns, you can also go to a specialist like myself or a therapist that understands relationship ocd, because they're really going to be able to understand your pattern and help you understand where to push through some of that hyper vigilance and where maybe that is a good decision for you to move on to the next person. Lastly is ruminating. This is so common, any form of OCD and anxiety, rumination is really tough one to combat. And this means just that you're in your head, you're overanalyzing, and you're thinking about that particular worry pretty consistently. I'm going to put a card up top where you can check out my video on how to stop ruminating. There are a lot of tips that I have for you there, but generally this is a choice. Okay, you do get to choose whether you are going to spend time ruminating over something that there's no solution for. You're going to go down the rabbit hole and you essentially just need to move forward with or you're going to spend the time doing that because again, your compulsions make your OCD worse. So ruminating is a really important one that you want to really get to as close to zero as possible with. Ruminating is a really important one that you want to decrease as much as possible. We all think, we all analyze things, so this isn't one that you're going to be able to get to zero. Okay? Ruminating is always going to be one that you're going to want to try to bring down as much as possible.

But we think we're human beings, right? It's the way the brain works. But we want you to try to stay in the present moment, continue on forward with the relationship, continue to get to know the person, enjoy the time with them, laugh, and as you do this, you're going to start to get to know that person. And whether they're a good fit for you naturally. You do not have to be hyper vigilant. You do not have to be over focused on the negatives. You essentially do not have to protect yourself as much as what you're doing because you can trust yourself. You can trust yourself to get to know this person. You can trust yourself to make the right decisions. But essentially what we want you to do is stop doing these compulsions that are actually making the relationship, making a potential relationship possibly not work or not be as healthy. We want to reduce these so that you can be in a healthy relationship, get to know that person without the anxiety, not making decisions based on your anxiety. Because when you make decisions based on your anxiety, you're actually feeding ocd. So I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, I want you to please check out the description box below. I specialize in OCD recovery. I specialize in relationship OCD as well. I have struggled with it myself, so I completely get it. And I haven't worked with anybody yet who's gone through my nine week program that did not get better from the relationship ocd. Okay, so the process works. ERP works. All of the things that I do with my coaching clients, they work. You just have to go through the process. It is very possible to get better. Please don't lose hope. And it does just take sometimes the right person working with you step by step to teach you how to navigate all of these roadblocks that come up as you're dating with relationship anxiety or with relationship ocd.

Sam.