It’s a Saturday night and I’m in bed pretty much hiding under the covers. I’m in a 12 step program and I was supposed to go to a meeting tonight because I have a commitment there and because I was supposed to celebrate two years of sobriety. My anxiety made me unable to do this. Or at least made me feel like I was on able to do this. I recently reconnected with an ax and while we haven’t explicitly talked about the relationship yet, it seems as if that’s the direction it’s heading in. I asked her to come to a barbecue at my family‘s house tomorrow. She said she wants to bring her own car. I immediately thought that this means she was trying to bail on me. And that she was just trying to find an excuse to not have to say no right away to trick me. Then I convinced myself that I’m not going to hear from her tomorrow and I’m going to be stuck in Obsession all day. She also said that she needs her own car because she might leave early to go meet her mom. I have convinced myself she doesn’t want to go in the car with me because she’s afraid she won’t be able to get rid of me and she secretly has a date tomorrow night. I’ve been rolled up in bed and panic and not able to leave the house. I am absolutely terrified that she’s going to bail on me and I am really not looking forward to spending the day tomorrow wondering whether or not she’s going to get back to me. I am diagnosed OCD, and medicated, I’m sober, and I am in therapy. But some shit is just going to be there no matter what. My question is, does this sound like ROCD?

I’m sorry you’re going through this right now, Alex:( You sound like an extremely proactive person! Us with ocd utilize this- all the way to a flaw. For us, it’s very important to recognize when we’re responding to the wrong things. We create what-ifs and then make it impossible for our brains to differentiate them from actuality-with the way we respond to them. Because we respond to them at all. This action is the SOLE thing that convinces our brains that these ideas are the truth. It’s not because they inherently had any truth to them to begin with. I think that you know they’re illogical, but aren’t putting work into responding to them like they are. I know- hard as hell!!❤️ We listen to our ‘intuition’ in other situations, why not this one? This is something I work on every single day. I think we know when we are responding to obsessive thoughts, but are so used to giving them our undivided attention and fierce concern, that we can’t imagine doing anything else. They’ve been labeled- #EXTREMELY IMPORTANT~TIME SENSITIVE~ASSESS AND DEAL WITH~ RIGHT FUCKING NOW# And our amygdala’s have a really hard time determining what’s the truth and what isn’t. It can’t. WE need to put the effort into deciding that we are gonna help our amygdala’s out and filter through what we’re gonna respond to, and what we know is obsessive and fabricated. What aligns with our values and dreams, and what seems like false protective behaviors that distress us. Since you’ve been diagnosed with ocd, you shouldn’t spend your time trying to figure out what you’re intuition is and how to lead your life by it. Intuition is such an abstract and unsubstantiated idea that people with ocd really have no business chasing. It’s just too muddy up there. Not to be reassuring here, but asking if something that you’re doing in a relationship is the right decision, totally aligns with rocd! Sorry that was really a lot and probably wasn’t clear but writing things out like this helps me too haha. Hope you’ve been able to decompress a little bit tonite, thinking of you!❤️

That was extremely clear and extremely helpful. Thank you so, so much.

Oh, great!! Of course!!

*also, I realize the thoughts are probably illogical and am not looking for any reassurance abt whether or not my assumptions about her motive are true

Sorry .. keep thinking of more details but I also lose my shit anytime she hasn’t answered me in a few hours, and am hyper aware of everything she says - I think everything she does is a sign of some sort. I spend so much time looking up things online abt how to healthily take things slow with an ex, how to know if someone is manipulating you, how to date someone with ptsd (she does) ... I feel like I’m going nuts. And I have no clue whether or not this is all real and i am doing the right thing moving forward with her and my thoughts are just getting the best of me, or if it’s my intuition. I’m not looking for any particular answer. I just needed to get all this out.