Danielle Thornton explains how Relationship OCD creates intrusive thoughts that trigger an urge to break up, even when you don't want to. The cycle works like this: anxiety spikes, you seek reassurance or avoid the relationship, feel temporary relief, then the pattern strengthens. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the evidence-based treatment to break it.
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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach specializing in relationship OCD as well as any other OCD subset. And today I want to talk about a common relationship OCD issue, which is the urge to break up or leave your relationship. Now, not everybody gets this, but this is pretty common with relationship ocd, especially at the beginning stages where you may not even understand what you're going through. So this urge to break up is essentially the compulsion. A compulsion is anything that we do to alleviate the anxiety and discomfort or gain some sort of certainty, because essentially OCD wants certain uncertainty and perfection and is uncomfortable with uncertainty and imperfection. What we want to do is learn to get comfortable with uncertainty and imperfection to recover from ocd. And the reason why a lot of people get the thought that they need to break up or leave the relationship is because they're experiencing really high levels of anxiety and discomfort and a lot of negative intrusive thoughts. The reason why you're experiencing so many intrusive thoughts is because of the compulsions. So let me talk a little bit about the OCD cycle again and what this looks like. When you have ocd, you get intrusive thoughts or your brain will attach to something that's really happened and really increase the anxiety or the discomfort around what's going on. So some examples are. And there's hundreds of these, by the way. So this may or may not relate to you. But just some common examples are waking up one day and maybe not feeling that high, or in love feeling, being worried that maybe you've fallen out of love with your partner, or maybe your partner is a little bit more distant and you start to worry that maybe they don't love you anymore. Or in the relationship, you might start to notice things or flaws, and your OCD will really attach to these things and make them bigger than what they really are. So intrusive thoughts come in all kinds of forms. They're different for everybody, and every relationship is different. So it's important to understand that, because another common compulsion is comparing. But today we're talking about the compulsion of avoidance. As you're getting these intrusive thoughts from ocd, it's essentially from the amygdala, the fear center of your brain. You're getting these intrusive thoughts, and you don't know what to do with them. They're causing you a lot of anxiety and discomfort because usually your relationship is very important to you. And so you're seeking coping mechanisms. And these compulsions become our Coping mechanisms. Now, compulsions aren't overall horrible things. Everybody does these things sometimes. But when you have ocd, you do them a lot more than what's normal. So let me give you some examples. Avoidance, which would be avoiding anything that causes anxiety or that triggers discomfort in you. Reassurance seeking. So that might be asking people, you know, reassurance seeking questions to get reassurance about whatever that particular thought is for you in that moment. And it will change. Googling is essentially another form of reassurance seeking. You're looking for certainty or answers, typically on the Internet. Comparing checking. So you might physically check things. So someone with OCD might check the oven multiple times, check the locks. Or someone with relationship OC might mentally check their feelings, check their partner's feelings. They might mentally check how things are in their relationship. They might check how they're feeling during sex. All kinds of things, right? It's different for everybody. So these compulsions or coping mechanisms are things that bring the anxiety down in the short term. But the problem is when OCD gives you an intrusive thought and you react with compulsions, you're actually giving that thought attention. You're giving the OCD attention. And it says, awesome. You know, he or she heard me, they believe me, and I'm going to do this again. Because OCD is getting what it wants. And then what's happened is with each compulsion, you reinforce the OCD and you get more intrusive thoughts. So one of the most common compulsions is ruminating, thinking about the past, the future, analyzing, trying to figure something out. Okay? And with ocd, this is the most common compulsion. And you can do this for hours and days. And of course, the more you think about something negative, the more negative thoughts you're going to get, the worse you're going to feel. And so that's why it's not a positive thing. It might help in the short term. In the long term, it's going to make things worse. Every time you do a compulsion, it makes things worse. And so this is why ERP, or Exposure and Response Prevention, is so important. The response prevention is not doing the compulsions. The exposure is exposing ourselves to the things we're afraid of or uncertain of, which sounds really scary, but it's never any worse than what you're going through beforehand. In fact, it makes things better. So when you're experiencing a lot of anxiety in your relationship or you're getting a lot of negative thoughts about your relationship, the compulsion is, I need to leave. This isn't right, right? And that's actually not the case. If you were to leave the relationship, you may feel short term relief. A lot of people then feel, you know, guilt or discomfort or more anxiety because that's not really what they wanted. Every once in a while they do feel a lot of relief. But in almost, well, I shouldn't say almost every time. Every time in the next relationship they experience the same thing again. So it becomes a cycle. So the answer isn't to leave or run away from the anxiety or the discomfort that you're feeling. The answer is to learn how to deal with it and face it. And when you do that with erp, which is the gold standard treatment for ocd, it's the only evidence based treatment for ocd. You will learn how to deal with the discomfort. And just like anything uncomfortable, let's say a new job, it's uncertain, you don't know anybody, you don't know what you're doing yet you're learning. It's uncomfortable at first, but a month in you're like, oh, okay, I got this. You know, you've met people, there's positive things that happen. Things are going well, you're comfortable. That's what ERP does for ocd. It takes what was uncomfortable and it makes it comfortable. A lot of those intrusive thoughts will no longer bother you after a period of time. Or if there is a certain trigger that might come up every once in a while that bothers you, you learn how to deal with it. Common with relationship OCD is, you know, arguments and ups and downs in the relationship and OCD will attach to that stuff. So you have to learn how to work through that. You know, what's OCD attaching to it and what's something in my relationship that I really need to address. So definitely important to do this. So if you're wanting more help with this, please reach out to me. Click the link below in the description of this file. I have excellent programs that help people with every subset of ocd, including relationship ocd.
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