Hey guys, I am dating someone right now and experiencing regularly panic attacks. I start to overthink everything and I create scenarios in my mind, based on tiny things that happen. My fear is, that he is secretly meeting other woman and just playing with me. I had a couple of toxic relationships in the past, which my anxiety is based on. How can I gain trust again? I know I can't control anyways which decision he makes
My best suggestion is something I’ve learned from a past therapist about relationships- that feelings and events are data points. If it were true that he’s cheating on you, let’s say, that’s great information for you to know, so you can peace outta there!! Of course, that’s not the desired outcome, but fearing it happening won’t change if it does or doesn’t happen. I think that helps me stay less personally involved, less “he’s cheating because I’m not good enough” and more of “he cheated because he chose to and that’s not someone I want to be with.” It gives you the power to have autonomy and choose how you proceed, too! As for trust…. It’s built over time. I have ROCD and the hardest thing for me is uncertainty. Is this right, is it not? The answer is that you have to try to find out. You have to put in time and energy and take some “emotional risk” to find out. So it’s possible you’ll get hurt. And that’s okay. It’s the risk we take to love, I suppose. Trust won’t develop overnight, it’ll be from consistency and getting to know the person and then showing up again and again
Thank you so much for sharing this 💚 I feel like if I find out soon enough it will provide me from getting hurt too much. So there are e.g. some things I found out - he is sometimes traveling with another woman, which he never told me. I could just trust in him, that she is just a friend. But my brain sometimes just freaks out and wants to confront him. But I think you are absolutely right, I should try to just let things happen
I wish I knew everything so there is no uncertainty 🤣
@Myannoyingmind Yes, I agree. If he is traveling with a woman and not telling you, that COULD be suspicious. Or innocent. Depends on the person. I think it’s a situation where you keep your bearings, keep your own self worth at the front of your mind, and say “if he’s doing that, it isn’t a reflection of me”. But I would probably want to find a way to ask him why he was hiding it from me.
@dianasaurusrex Thank you so so much really, that helped me a lot 💚 I will try to transform my way of thinking into that
@Myannoyingmind You are so welcome!! The struggle I’ve been having lately is telling OCD problems/ intrusive thoughts/ panic from real life concerns. For example, am I truly uninterested in this person, or is it intrusive thoughts? My ROCD lately has been saying “you don’t love your boyfriend, what if there’s someone better, what if you don’t think he’s good enough and HE deserves better…” and so on. What you described about the woman sounds like a reasonable real-world/ non-ocd problem to me. Maybe with some ocd mixed in of course. But I just wanna validate that I think anyone would be a bit concerned about that and you have every right to question it a bit
@dianasaurusrex Yes I know that thought, it's always switched in between " do I even love him" or "is he cheating on me and I am not worth it." If you translate it, it could mean "I am scared I am not capable to love and I feel worthless. " it always helps me to seek for the source of my way of thinking
@dianasaurusrex And yes I think the right amount of concern is alright, but I can't stop thinking about possible scenarios. It's not a healthy way of thinking 😅
My daughter has been taking therapy for NOCD since July and it’s not helping infact it’s getting worst. The Prozac meds doesn’t help either
A little over a year ago I ended a 10-year relationship. I found out that he had been lying the whole time and was an alcoholic and avid drug user. Since then, I unexpectedly met and started dating a great guy, but my relationship OCD and trust issues are going to ruin it. He’s given me no reason not to trust him and has reassured me plenty of times that I didn’t deserve what I went through and that it had nothing to do with me. So why do I continue to make snide remarks about his “other girlfriends” and what not… He’s also divorced and has his own problems to work through, so I feel bad adding more to his plate. I know that I’m imagining the worst case scenarios in my head to try and “prepare” myself for things that could happen, but I’m going to lose him because I can’t get out of my head. I’m so afraid of missing something like I did with my ex that I pick everything apart. Every story detail, every inconsistency, heck I even convinced myself he was cheating because he deep cleaned his house on his day off… Advice on starting a new relationship without carrying over the trauma of your old one?
does anyone have any tips to help with hyper vigilance in a relationship? In my past relationship I got cheated on and it hurt me mentally, and now with my current partner I always have a constant fear that something bad is going to happen even though I trust him a bunch. Like if he brings up another girl and says oh she said this. And I get so triggered by it, how do I stop. Like I trust him 100% but my mind isn’t letting me, and I feel like I always start this and do this to myself. Or if it’s a girl from his past relationship and something gets brought up about it because of me, and he’s tells me it still makes me mad.
Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭
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