- Date posted
- 2y
ROCD
My thoughts are spiralling someone please help. Feel like I’m going to end my relationship when I don’t want to lose the love of my life. Please help.
My thoughts are spiralling someone please help. Feel like I’m going to end my relationship when I don’t want to lose the love of my life. Please help.
The thoughts don’t have any meaning, unless we give them meaning. I’ve been in your shoes. Try to engage differently with the thoughts, say: “I don’t need to figure this out today”. I know how terrifying it feels, but if you care is because it is important to you and it’s probably just your OCD trying to take over. It gets better if you try your best not to respond to the thought. Hang in there, you’re not alone!
My best advice would be to get into counseling with an ERP therapist who specializes in OCD if you haven’t already. This issue is very unlikely to improve on its own without treatment, but it is treatable. Regular talk therapy can actually make OCD worse, so be sure to find someone who does Exposure and Response Prevention. If this is tough to find, you can use NOCD, as all their therapists use ERP. I use NOCD and am happy with my treatment. If therapy isn’t available due to money/ insurance, an ERP self-help book should work. I’ve just never used one. As for the present moment, just try to notice and acknowledge the thoughts and feelings and try not to do any of your compulsions. Just let them be present and sit with them. You don’t have to like them or think they’re comfortable, but sit with them and just let them be present in your mind without entertaining or answering them. Over 15 to 30 minutes, you should see your anxiety decrease. If you’re doing this for the first time or for the first time in a while, your anxiety may actually increase, which is fine because your mind is used to the compulsions being performed for that short-term comfort. Just sit with the thoughts, not engaging and not answering or dwelling on the questions; doing that will only reinforce and feed the ROCD. Just respond “maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t.” Keep in mind, as well, that rumination and breaking up are also both compulsions. Other compulsions that are common can be reassurance seeking (including from yourself) checking and questioning your feelings, examining your partner for flaws, mental reviewing of feelings or things like it in the past, rating your partner or your interactions, comparing them to other people, etc. This is a good read: https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/relationship-ocd Most importantly, try and give yourself some extra self love and patience. It’s extremely crucial that you be a friend to yourself and be as gentle and compassionate as you can to you. You wouldn’t be cruel or hard on someone who is really struggling, and you deserve that same kindness. Nobody beats this overnight. But you are seeking help and trying to do what’s best and that is respectable and admirable. You are giving yourself the best shot you have and trying to get better. A lot of us on here have the same worries and fears, myself included, and if we all help each other out, it may become a little easier. =]
Thank you for your kind words ❤️
Really appreciate you taking the time to offer advice and comfort. The beauty of the NOCD app!
Hi. I wanted to stop posting here, but I can’t hold it in anymore. I’m feeling so lost. I’m in a relationship that, from the outside, looks wonderful. We’ve been together for 2 years. He loves me deeply. He’s kind and caring. And still… I can’t feel anything. I can’t imagine a future with him — living together, starting a family, growing old. When I try, it feels like something in me shuts down, like it’s wrong. I don’t feel happiness in the relationship. I don’t feel love, warmth, or comfort. I feel anxiety, numbness, guilt, and fear. We fight over the smallest things. My thoughts scream that I don’t love him, that I’m forcing this, that I’m just used to him. The scariest part is: sometimes I feel okay, even calm. And that’s when it hits me — “What if this calm means I’ve accepted the truth? What if I don’t love him?” It feels like I’m in shock. Like I’m finally seeing clearly… but I’m terrified that it’s a clarity I never wanted. I don’t know what’s real anymore. I just know that I’m exhausted. And I want peace. If anyone else has felt this — the numbness, the fear, the doubt that feels like the truth — please tell me how you’ve gotten through it. I don’t want to lose him. But I also don’t want to keep living like this. i know that people reading this will tell me to leave. but i dont have any reasons. All the problems started because of my never ending thoughts. i feel like i ruin everything. i feel like i have changed. im so lost and scared. i dont understand what is happening. It feels so real. im in agony, im crying so much. I wasnt always like this. i am trying to remember times i felt better and i cant. i cant feel anything. its so hard. i can’t explain how i feel and in scared what are you going to respond if someone will. i usually see “if you feel so bad then leave” but its not like that. he loves me so much and if the thoughts werent there it would gave been so different. everything was perfect. but i keep thinking that when the thoughts started, one and a half years ago, i realised that “i just dont like him” and gbat i couldn’t accept the truth and i am denying it. i feel fake. do i even have rocd? or is this cope?? why do i feel like this. why does it feel so real? please somebody help me
for a few days now I’ve been super anxious about my relationship. I’ve been anxious about it before but lately it’s been worse than normal. I’m in a very healthy and loving relationship, I love my boyfriend so much and he treats me so so well. The only thing is that I’ve been having scary thoughts that what if I’m lying to him and don’t actually love him? What if I don’t find him attractive? And like what if the only way to stop being anxious is to break up with him? I don’t want to leave him and I am so scared. I feel like I’m lying to him by not telling him what’s going on because he might think I’m actually going to leave him, which I’m really not going to. I have had anxiety since before we started dating and incestual and sexual ocd, then I got into a point where I started having religious ocd, and now I have ROCD on top of that I think. I’ve never been diagnosed but I’m going to therapy and figuring things out but I’m so scared. Idk what to do and I feel like if I talk to anyone they’re going to say I have to leave him.
Hi everyone, I really need help and guidance because I feel like I’m falling apart and I don’t know how to handle this anymore. Please read carefully what I’m about to say. I’m dealing with ROCD (at least people tell me it sounds like ROCD), but everything feels too real, too intense, and I feel like I’m losing myself completely. I feel like I’m stuck in my mind all day long. I keep thinking that I don’t love my boyfriend anymore, that I never loved him, that I only wanted the idea of a relationship and that I forced myself to feel something because he is such a good person. My intrusive thoughts say: • “You don’t love him.” • “You never loved him.” • “You’re forcing yourself.” • “You only liked the idea of love.” • “You’re ruining him and yourself by staying.” • “The relationship is wrong.” • “You’re a bad person for pretending.” And my FEELINGS are worse than the thoughts — I feel NOTHING when I’m with him. When I hug him, kiss him, or hear his voice, I feel disconnected. I feel numb, empty, fake. Sometimes I even feel disgusted when we are intimate or when he says something sexual, and then I feel huge guilt and anxiety about that. When we’re talking or when I’m with him in bed, I constantly think: “I don’t like him anymore,” “Why am I here?” “Why can’t I feel anything?” “Maybe I just want to escape this relationship and I’m not brave enough.” And now, I’m starting to feel that I’m not even upset about the thoughts anymore — which makes me think “See? It’s true, you’re finally accepting it.” This scares me so much. When I look at our old pictures, I feel no warmth, no happiness, just anxiety or nothing at all. When people ask me about him or mention him, I feel flat or uncomfortable, and my mind screams again: “You don’t love him anymore.” Even worse: my family sometimes says things that make me spiral more. My mom told me that I’m lying to myself and that I’m hurting him by staying, and that I need to stop if I don’t love him anymore. I know she didn’t mean it badly — she sees me suffering every day and it’s too hard for her to watch — but those words stuck in my head and now I can’t get them out. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t know what my values are, or what I want. I know I care about him — but then I think maybe I only care because I’m a good person and don’t want to hurt him, not because I love him. When I’m out with him, I often feel irritated, anxious, uncomfortable — and this fuels the thoughts even more: “See? You can’t even enjoy time with him anymore.” I know that logically I should sit with these feelings and thoughts and not give them power. But it feels unbearable. I’ve read so much about ERP, I’ve tried to understand this logically — but it’s like no matter how much I read or try, it doesn’t help. It feels like my mind is now saying: “No, this is different — this is the truth.” I feel alone because I have no one to talk to. Whenever I try to talk to my mom or someone close, it only makes things worse because I feel more confused and guilty. Even when I try to write here, it feels compulsive sometimes — but I’m desperate. I just want to stop suffering. I am exhausted. I am afraid that I will go to the beach with him and our friends in one month and I will feel horrible there too, ruining everything. I am afraid that I can’t be happy anymore and that the only solution is to leave — but that also terrifies me, because I don’t know if it’s the truth or OCD. Please, if anyone can give me some advice on how to sit with this and start healing, I would be so grateful. I feel like I have no strength left. I just want to feel peace again.
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