- Username
- xMariax
- Date posted
- 5y ago
What you’re doing is called a checking compulsion. And the fact that it causes you to worry (ie thought spiral) means you’re still suffering from OCD. The thing is, if you really wanted to leave your partner, you wouldn’t imagine it happening and then check to see how it makes you feel and then get a lack of anxiety that confirms you want to leave. If you wanted to leave you’d think: “this person is terrible, I’m unhappy, and I don’t want to put up with this anymore. Leaving will be hard but it’s the right thing.” You wouldn’t need to imagine and test yourself to make sure. You’d have an active feeling, not a lack of response to an imagined scenario.
It is a compulsion
It’s a compulsion and definitely the backdoor spike. Not feeling anxiety anymore always sounds like it’s such a great goal and that it will fix everything but really it just creates more questions and worries once you’re there. Keep up the work, your journeys not over. Sit with the anxiety you feel about feeling nothing rather than googling. Your instincts here are right, keep it up.
What if I dont always feel anxious about not being anxious but rather I just feel worried about it? because I get worried about not being anxious about not feeling anxious when I get the thoughts if that makes sense
What’s the difference between worried and anxious to you? Maybe by anxiety you mean the more physical side like shaking, sweating, difficulty breathing. And worrying is just more thoughts. If you’re in a thought spiral and can’t get out, even if it’s not provoking physical anxiety, it still seems like you’re engaging in a compulsion then. If you can’t just acknowledge the thought let it pass by without meaning, you’re not done.
Well I perceive anxiety as the physical symptoms, but worrying just as not being comfortable with something or fearful of something without the anxiety. So for instance, I think about leaving my partner but I dont feel anxious, so Im like ok but why am I not anxious? so that thought comes to my head without anxiety. So Im like alright but why dont I feel anxious when thinking about not being anxious?so I basically just get worried about that
A week ago I was fine. Or at least better than other moments, so the anxiety started to reduce. At the beginning I was like "Great!" but then on Sunday I started to notice it more and more and I started to worry that maybe the lack of anxiety meant I just dont love him anymore. These past 3 days have been all about thinking and analyzing if I truly stopped loving him or if its rOCD. What has been worrying me is that I havent gone to a professional yet, so I havent been diagnosed with OCD. I never have; I have never gone to a psychologist. However, all of this started like 3 almost 4 months ago and I had such a bad time. I didnt even want to get out of bed to face how I was feeling because I wanted to feel happy with my boyfriend, but 3 weeks ago I found out about rOCD and I read about the obsessions and compulsions and it was like describing me. I instantly felt a relief to know that there was not necessarily something bad with my relationship or my boyfriend, it could be just rOCD. So I have been trying to work on ot but sometimes I just give in. And these 3 days I havent really felt anxiety so I have just been thinking and analyzing to see if it is because I dont want to be with him anymore. Right now I feel nothing, I have been creating scenarios of me just being with my partner to see how I feel and sometimes I only imagine me feeling like I have been feeling these months. I even imagined myself breaking up with him just to see how I would feel and in one moment I even felt sick to think about it, but then I imagined that again and I felt nothing and that scared me because I dont want to stop loving him. I dont want that, I want to be with him and I want to feel all the love that he deserves and Im scared because I dont even know if this is actually rOCD because I practically self-diagnosed. Sorry for this guys, I guess Im just venting because I feel terrible right now! Once again Im at the point in which I feel a little uncomfortable when he tells me he loves me because I start to question "Do i feel it too? How do I feel when i read that he loves me? What if I tell him I love him but I dont and hurt him?" Im just tired of feeling this way.
I feel numb towards my partner? I know I dont want to leave him but I havr no anxiety anymore, and I just feel numb and a little weird towards him. I want this to stop
My relationship OCD has been severe lately and with seemingly no trigger to cause this flare up. I am constantly anxious, doubtful and panicked that I don't love my partner, overanalyzing whether or not I'm attracted to him, and ruminating on the numbness I feel when we are together. Every idea I can come up with to test and check to see if there's that love feeling, that attraction or interest/excitement in doing things together feels invalid, like it won't work. I get triggered further when my partner asks me if I'm okay, and that wave of panic comes back. I can't tell if this is OCD, or if it's my gut telling me it's not a relationship I should stay in. We've been together for five years, I'm not in OCD therapy, and I've been off meds for four months now.
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