I’m so sorry you’re going through that. 💔 if it’s helpful, I’d like to share an experience I had and some things I learned. Sometimes for me, OCD latches onto a very real-life stressor like this. It’s really tough when it involves a life event that is truly upsetting or difficult, as compared to a completely hypothetical situation. I’m drawing from my experience with OCD during grief—my grandmother was dying of cancer and she raised me (basically my mother) and my OCD completely crippled me. I was completely lost in the cloud of compulsions and desperate attempts to gain clarity over when she might pass, if she will suffer, if I loved her enough, if I loved her too much, on and on and on. I called grief hotlines several times per day. I had this horrific, burning feeling in my chest and knot in my stomach and pure panic in my heart almost all of the time for months on end. Of course, I felt sad and scared in the background, but OCD was at the center. Now that I’m diagnosed and now that it’s a situation that happened in the past, I can easily see that my brain was sort of trying to protect me from feeling the actual pain of losing my grandmother, and some difficult feelings of grief and anger from my childhood. I found that over time, if I actually let myself get in touch with those very scary feelings, the OCD was less overwhelming. Sure, I would still get intrusive urgent thoughts and the uncertainty of her looming death was terrifying. But there was a part of me that did not want to face these feelings.
Now, this is not to say that you’re avoiding some horrible truth about your relationship or your husband at all. However, maybe it would be helpful to ask yourself if there are some real feelings of anger, sadness, grief, etc. that you might be able to get in touch with and feel. Even if it’s all by yourself. Even if you never tell another soul that you felt that way. It sounds like a difficult situation and I don’t think it’s a black and white solution like “you should leave him” or “you should get over it and try to ignore it”. But being vulnerable with your feelings might make your brain calm down a little bit and stop sending you super urgent scary thoughts as a way to try to get your attention.
There’s absolutely nothing that will keep me trapped in an OCD loop than judging a feeling I have.
Example: “Ah, I’m sad about the idea of my grandmother dying, but I shouldn’t be sad. I’ve already cried about today it and I just need to get over it.”
This creates compulsions: “what does it mean about me that I can’t get over it? Am I selfish? What if this sadness means she might die soon? In the next week? The next month? Maybe I should go on Reddit again to see if it’s normal to cry twice a day during anticipatory grief. Ah crap, this person on Reddit says that being sad twice might mean that I have a grief disorder.”
When, instead, I find it helpful to meet my sadness with acceptance and a little response prevention: “Yeah, I’m really sad right now. This is really hard. I don’t know what’s going to happen and that is so scary.”
You might find that validating your own feelings without judging them or assigning meaning to them softens them a bit. Maybe your brain is telling you it’s too scary to face those feelings because of what it might “mean” about you or your relationship, or what the feelings might uncover. But, often, our brains over-inflate the risk of something bad happening. You might even find it helps you. Either way, it sounds like you could use some grace and compassion for what you’re going through. OCD is so hard. Sending love and strength ❤️
