How do I deal with this?

Hi Juliet, I’m sorry that you’re suffering right now. I want to first let you know that you’re not alone in these experiences and remind you that what you are experiencing is OCD. What the OCD mind loves to do is take a situation, attach an intrusive thought or feeling to it which we then become distressed about, causing us to therefore end up in this cyclical state of rumination and or compulsions. This mental loop persists until we are able to take a second and stop, acknowledge our irrational or distressing thoughts, accept the uncertainty or discomforting feelings associated with them, and interrupt the cycle by grounding ourselves in the present moment in sitting with the discomfort. What I don’t want to do is offer reassurance because we all know that only reinforces the OCD. I do want to remind you to take the skills and practices. You’ve learned in therapy and apply them to this situation. Create an exposure for yourself. That target is current rumination and then practice some acceptance therapy and realize the reality of the situation. The Objective facts are that you and your friend care for each other very much and hold a special place in your heart for each other. You are there for each other, have memories, feelings, and emotions which are unique to your relationship. All your friend said was that they don’t call anyone their best friend. They made no mention of having any ill feelings whatsoever towards you, your OCD is manifesting this extravagant emotional lie about what they said, which is causing you to spiral. That’s OK, it’s OK to have these thoughts. I myself am dealing with a situation about something that I said to a friend jokingly which bothered them. My OCD manifested this insane spiral they did not fully pertain to the reality. I implemented the above techniques that I told you and I’ve seen great results. It’s still work in progress, but just know that these thoughts and feelings aren’t permanent, don’t pertain to reality in that things will be better. I wish you nothing but the best of luck, be kind to yourself and show yourself some self love. I hope therapy goes great for you and you’re able to work through this.

Hiii!!! I know what it feels like to not be your best friend’s best friend. I understand that it sucks and stresses you out. That being said, I also understand that your best friend doesn’t really “rank” his relationship with his friends. I personally have been in situations that made it weird for me to point out a single person as my one and only “best friend” as well, not because I liked or disliked some of their attributes more than others, but simply because they were either connected to me through very different circumstances (school, hobbies such as archery or piano school lessons, neighborhood ect.) or because I have known them for and since very different time periods (some since elementary school, some only since I transferred from one high school to another). I did usually still always had a special person who I overall connected with more, but because all of my friends (except for my first real friendgroup that formed in middle school and has lasted throughout my entire high-school experience and still does) are present in such different situations in my life, it still felt really weird to me to consider someone the “bestest” friend when there’s literally people that have known me for 3x longer. As of right know I consider myself to have one “best” friend and my og friendgroup from middle/highschool that are all my “bestfriends” if that makes sense. Overall I keep in contact with my best friend every single day even if we can’t see each other, whereas me and my bestfriends have known each other for so long know that everytime we do meet (which sadly isn’t as often) we can pick up quite quickly and it usually feels like we see each other everyday. Soo honestly the titles we use for relationships of any kind don’t really hold any meaning in itself. If your bestfriend just feels like putting that label on it makes his other friendships feel “lesser than”, then this has nothing to do with you or your friendship with him. That being said, maybe you’re able to calm your nervous system down (meditation, a walk, book, whatever) tell yourself over and over that this does NOT determine your friendship AND once you’ve successfully (or at least tried to) calm yourself down, you can start to think of how to communicate to him why this label may still be important to you. I’m assuming he probably knows that you have OCD, and he definitely should not start to take on a reassuring role in general. But what he could do is to simply hear you out on this issue and decide for himself. I don’t know if you already have a history of friendships that you felt more invested in than the other person, or anything similar. If so, you could also bring this up. I feel like a lot of the conversations I had with my best friend had better results once I actually talked about the root cause of my issues that needed extra explanation. I also need to admit that it’s not like everything is perfect between me and her (absolutely not) and we had a ton of issues and still are resolving some. But I just noticed during our arguments that if I don’t properly communicate what MY issues actually are, then I’ll never be fully understood.