If they wanted to they would right ?

For me, I don’t love the phrase if they wanted to they would, because it doesn’t really leave any room for nuance. I also don’t know the specifics of your situation, so please take this with a sizable grain of salt!! I think it’s natural for us to expect people to want to change their behavior if it is triggering to us, but I think it’s also worth examining our own expectations and assumptions. I see this most applied to romantic relationships, but I think this can apply to friends and family too. Personally I relate to this with my family. No matter how many times I try to express that what they say or do is hurtful/triggering, some things just don’t get through. It’s not that they don’t love me. It has to do with our family dynamic, with their experiences and their ways of thinking. At a certain point, I realized that focusing on “if they actually cared about how I feel they would change” was only harming me, and causing me to spiral/be angry. Not to say that I shouldn’t feel those feelings but at a certain point I had to make a decision to challenge my expectations and assumptions, and adjust them to what I am actually dealing with (esp since I live at home). With friends or romantic partners, it’s a little different in my experience. I went through this with my most recent relationship, which I ended up breaking off. First thing is have you clearly voiced your needs? If you want it, you need to communicate. And it likely won’t be one and done either. Second thing is to see if there is a conflict of values or boundaries, and can it be addressed? These can be tough questions, and I think OCD can definitely throw a wrench in the process of figuring this out too. Ultimately I think it’s hard to give blanket advice about this topic, but in my experience examining my expectations and assumptions about someone has really helped me. It’s a tricky thing though!

Hi…I agree with what VelvetAura wrote. I have similar situation with my siblings and my mother. For the past 3 years ..I tried so hard to get them to understand how OCD has wreaked havoc and debilitations in all aspects of my life. It’s so hard to explain OCD to anyone who doesn’t have the actual Disorder!! I realized a couple things and I’m learning to do what you just said about by examining my expectations and assumption’s about my siblings and my mom. For example …my OCD contamination rituals take up so much of my time and energy that most days I cannot get out to a store to get food and the many cleaning supplies I desperately need.!! My son went to the store for me 2x this week and delivered my supplies.. and my daughter went to store in Christmas Day for me! This past week a couple of my siblings and my mom called me and asked me if I could go help my parents. They all have been told by me several times over the past few years…that I am not doing good and that I told them that I cannot help anyone else until I can help myself 1st. I told the 3 of them as they called ti ask me to help my parents that I would if course without a doubt want to help my parents but I explained once again that I am UNABLE to help them. I told them that I cannot even get to the store on my own so therefore I will not be able to help them. I explained to all 3 of them how sad and depressed it Makes me feel to not be able to help🙁 the one sister called me again a couple days later and asked me if I could help my parents again!!! I ask myself….didnt she hear me the 1st time she called 2days prior? I told them all that it Makes me feel like a loser and that I am letting them all down. The other sister text me to ask me if I could help pick up my dad’s medication …so I sent a long detailed message back to her explsinjng

I really believe that if someone cares for your wellbeing IN GENERAL especially somebody who is a daily person in your life that they would have no issue at least giving effort to adjust a little bit to help your mental health and your OCD not be triggered as often I know that I give that type of respect and consideration, I don’t believe that it is an expectation I believe that is something you do out of care consideration for somebody’s well-being that you claim you genuinely care about, but I understand and see both views because then the part of me is like well why would I expect nothing from anybody but then if I’m example actively in a relationship with somebody you know when I take them and consideration in that way then of course I would expect them as my spouse to take me into consideration that one the only time I do not expect somebody to make that sort of adjustment is if you’re asking example like your child. Because obviously where their parents so they shouldn’t have to make any changes in that way if that makes sense because they are children But somebody who is my spouse or a friend or a family member if they genuinely cared about my mental health, my well-being and I genuinely wouldn’t see no problem with it because the last resort is me cutting off access Like you’re not gonna respect this small easy thing I’m asking you to consider especially if I repeated myself multiple times than you no longer have access to me, family friend or spouse. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care how long we’ve been together. I don’t care how long we were friends I don’t care for blood or not.

Thank for your response .. I’ll read your response when I get a chance …makes was editing my last post and got phone call so I got distracted and never got to finish my story

I had a situation last night where I asked my daughter who is 25 …not to walk down a certain staircase that my kids know is contaminated in my eyes…but she went down the staircase anyway even tho I asked her 3 x as she walked towards the stairs not to use those stairs. She was so patient all day working around my OCD…waiting for me to do all my rituals before we could open Christmas gifts or eat our dinner. So she probably was way too tired at that point to have me control what stairs she walked down. I was initially upset because I thought it would have taken her 5 seconds to turn around and use my “safe staircase” and those 5 seconds would have saved me a lot of anxiety and self talk …thankfully I had no cleaning rituals to do because she was leaving my apt so she didn’t contaminate my home …I was worried about her contaminating the Christmas presents I gave her that were in the bag she carried down the staircase. Is that a good example of a similar scenario to explain how you feel when people don’t change a triggering behavior for you?

I have to take my dog out and get my day of OCD work and suffering started now Hope to hear back from you if you get the chance ! Keep up the good fight and hope you find some joy and happiness today 😊

Thanks again for responding to my posts …I really appreciate your time and kindness

Gotta get back to putting a wash in…takes around 40 minutes of cleaning and have washing compulsions just to hit the start button on the washing machine It is torturous 🙁

So my other sister that text me to ask me to pick up my dads medication never even responded or commented on my detailed heartfelt vulnerable text message I wrote to her that day explaining same things I told my other sister …how sad and bad it makes me feel to WANT to help my parents and to NOT BE ABLE to help because of my OCD disability (which sadly I have been in disability for 22 years because of the severity of my OCD…but once my kids were old enough I was able to hold a part time job as waitress for 6 years but ever since 2020 when pandemic struck my contamination OCD destroyed me than moving to public apartment bldg paralyzed me…and then I really couldn’t work or afford to live without the job so the money stress is drowning me…that’s how I describe how it feels thankfully I’m not physically paralyzed or actually drowning but the outcome is similar not being able to function without help of people shopping for me and then the anxiety and stress gets so bad that I literally feel like I can’t breath (drowning) Wow that was a long parentheses lol So my sister never even cared ti text me back that day I text her the next morning and says did you read my text message told her it took alot of time to write and asked her where is the empathy for me??!? And I asked her if my dad ever got his medication …she could have at least let me know that so I didn’t worry. That’s what it took for her to have the decency and respect to respond ? She just danced around it and says no worries and she’s not sure if dad got medicine that she would check…I could do that myself …she ignored everything I wrote about me…even after I asked where is the empathy for me After I calmed down and thought about the situation…I realized that maybe they have hard stuff they are dealing with in their own lives and they don’t have time to respond …I gave them benefit of the doubt …and I need to focus on me and my health and figure out how to get my life back from the control the OCD took from my life. And only worry about me and my 2 children. There’s a whole other story I want to share in here one day about the similarity between a physical illness and OCD how the outcome can be same. So my family knows what I’m going thru for the past 3 years..I cried out for financial help so they had to be involved because my dad got dementia and my mom took over their finances and she DOES NOT UNDERSTAND or believe what I say when I try to explain how OCD derailed my entire world…I would cry out for help and say I Can’t work and my mom would say right back yes you can you just don’t Want to work …it was heartbreaking..and abusive and like kicking a horse when it’s already down …so I wasn’t helped for quite some time …she is helping me now so I am very grateful for that ! Anyway I could and should write a book even if it is just to get all the trauma out and maybe my life story could help other people in some way…I love to help people which is why I like to read all the posts on this app. And I am grateful for all of you who take the time to read my long posts lol And respond with advice or simply support and I don’t feel as alone in all of this suffering. So to sum it up …I have a very large family …I am one of 9 sisters and we have 3 brothers. I am the 10th of 12 children…so it was not easy for me growing up in a large family. But we love and care about each other but everyone has their own lives and children so there isn’t a lot of extra time even if they don’t have a disability to keep in touch. It hurts my feelings that most of my sibling don’t even call to see how I am but that’s ok …I know they are not intentionally trying to hurt me. I am just kind of person that if one of my siblings had severe OCD and I knew how it was taking over their life …I would call them …that’s my heart Which leads me to end with this… OCD took over my life …but it can never take my heart ❤️

You are very smart for saying you would cut off access to people regardless of how close if they repeatedly disregarded your respect… I should have cut two or 3 or even 4 of my sisters and a friend off years ago…after they repeatedly betrayed me causing literal unnecessary PTS. But my children were young at the time so I think one reason I kept forgiving These siblings was because I wanted my kids to know and spend time with their cousins(these 4 siblings kids)

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my posts! So can you give me an example of a behavior that triggers you that you would want your friends or family to change ? It might help me to better understand your question in your initial post. Do you think this person or people that are not willing to change their triggering behaviors are not changing them because they don’t want to reassure or feed into the rituals you might have ftom that trigger? Like are they aware of how ERP works and so they think they are trying to help you to do an exposure?

No, it was just a topic of discussion between friends and I have the same OCD and so I was just curious to what other people’s opinions were

Thank you for your perspective and being open to sharing