- Username
- Anonymous
- Date posted
- 4y ago
If they find them hurtful then it's probably best that you don't share them. They're going to naturally find it hurtful if those thoughts you share make them feel judged or unsafe, and get frustrated if you continue to share them when they have told you that they find it hurtful and upsetting. In fact for me it would be a deal-breaker if my partner continued to say things which made me feel bad when I've asked them to stop, and that includes if it was OCD- and I have all the understanding of the condition which you could hope for your partner to have. Understanding that it's a mental illness isn't going to make those things much less hurtful or annoying. Your partner isn't your therapist, and acting on your confession and reassurance-seeking urges by telling them about your thoughts is not only going to reinforce and worsen your OCD, but drive them away. OCD is about dysfunctional patterns of cognition, emotional processing and behaviour, not about the content of your thoughts or obsessions. If you must share with her and want to feel supported, try sharing your struggles with patterns of thinking, stuck emotions and behaviour without detailing the content to her against her will.
Would you say it would be good to let them know I'm having intrusive thoughts rather than say what they are?
Exactly
Alright, thank you very much. I'm quite new to dealing with my ocd and I didn't realise this.
That's alright. I have been in a relationship and had severe OCD at the time but I didn't know it, and I didn't get the same urges to get reassurance etc other than always asking my partner if he was ok and what he was doing when I wasn't with him, and I'm sure that was annoying enough. It's important to make the distinction that it's all OCD and that the content of the fear or worry doesn't matter and can't be alleviated by other people, despite it feeling so important.
Okay. Thank you that really helped. Not to say you've been mean, but reading that made some tears prick so that's definitely the triggers.
You can do it!
@Louw Just wanted to say my partner is actually a boy, didnt want me correcting you to get in the way of your advice:)
@smolbean Oh yes sorry I was trying to keep gender neutral as you didn't specify but I must have slipped into heteronormativity based on your profile pic, gah
@Louw I mean I'm a gender neutral female, I just liked the dog hehe oop
@smolbean I just realised the dog does look masculine wow
@smolbean Hah I didn't even realise it was a dog I thought that one was a bearded man with a funny hat ?
@Louw Oh that's brilliant hehe. I think it's a shibe
@smolbean I'm agender myself, maybe I should start using the dog ?
Saying "I am having a bad day with rumination/guilt/fear/checking" is going to be much better received AND much less hurtful and damaging in all ways than saying "I keep getting thoughts that you're ugly and annoying and I don't want to be with you and I want to be back with my ex" or something. She CAN support your emotions and struggles with kindness and compassion, but it is not possible or even healthy for anybody to support you with the content of your obsessions. Even a therapist won't do that.
Thank you so much, it never clicked in my head that the content doesn't matter. I realised my anxiety was partly ocd in October when it was really bad, but it flared up this week. Do you have any other advice for starting out dealing with ocd? I'm trying the erp on this app but I find it hard to focus on thoughts when they're not there for the exercise and I'm not always in a position to use the sos.
Well, the app ERP just asks you to imagine that the idea is true and sit with all the feelings that the idea causes for 5 minutes or as long as possible, without trying to figure it out even once more thoughts come which are disagreeing with the intrusive thought or offering other evidence. And it offers suggestions like focusing on your physical feelings and taking deep breaths. It should be possible to do it without the SOS as a guide, your memory is perfectly functional even if you have a worry about doing it on the go. The idea is to notice the thoughts but not spiral down intro trying to untangle them. Over time you'll find that sitting with the feelings doesn't kill you or make it true, and eventually it will reduce the emotional response you get to the thoughts. If you feel up to it, you can trigger the thoughts deliberately when you don't have them to do the ERP. This can usually be done by remembering occasions which have triggered the thoughts before, or looking at exposures about the topic on the internet in order to get that spike of anxiety. It's going to feel counterproductive to deliberately name yourself anxious but so long as your response to the anxiety and fear is to sit with it rather than avoiding using compulsions like problem-solving/ruminating or asking for reassurance or confessing, then it's a good thing to do.
Try to remember- don't push the thoughts away or berate yourself for having them. Just don't try to weigh them up or figure out if they're true, because that is the compulsion and that is the thing which is hurting our lives, not the initial thought. Just feel the anxiety they cause. It can't hurt you.
@Louw That's really helpful
Okay. I'm not too sure how to find things to trigger my anxiety. I feel like my intrusive thoughts are always based around me not being good enough and other people not wanting me and me being a bad person, I'm not sure how to get a visual on that.
So you know which things and situations tend to bring up those thoughts? Perhaps you can think of a time when your partner wasn't as responsive as you'd like and it triggered these feelings. It seems by your post that her not wanting to comfort you about the feelings can be a trigger, assuming that you were feeling quite bad about yourself when you wrote this post.
:)
Some of these articles might helphttps://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/family-issues/
Thank you :)
Is anyone here dealing with Harm OCD? What helps you the most when the intrusive thoughts are there?
I don’t have ocd but love someone who does. I need advice. My SO had leg pain once and a coworker said it sounded like thrombosis. So now his leg constantly hurts and he thinks it’s that. He’s seen the doctor several times (doctor can’t find anything) and went to see a nerve specialist (who also didn’t find anything). Can this be part of his ocd? If so, how do I tell him that? (Also I added the trigger warning because since I don’t have ocd, I don’t know what could trigger someone)
Hello everyone! I am not the one having OCD, but my boyfriend does, and it is combined with depression. He hides it pretty well (he doesn't want to make me or any other person sad) and acts like everything is normal most of the time (makes everyone laugh etc. - like many other depressed people) even though I know he suffers a lot. We know each other on a very deep level and I am the only person who he has told about having OCD and depression, and I just want to help him as much as I can. The thing is that he has a lot of negative thoughts most of the time and if he doesn't do something, for example, claps his hands 8 times, he believes 100% something bad is going to happen to me, like I'm gonna get hurt or something. At the moment it is not possible for him to talk to specialized OCD therapist as there is not one in the area where we live in, but I am confident that I can help him or, even better, guide him, so he helps himself, so that he, at least, suffers less from this. What advice would you give me? I know that I shouldn't be too pushy or telling him what I think he should do. I just want him to know that I'm there for him and that, even though I cannot understand what he's going through, I can at least educate myself about OCD (I've seen some self-help books you posted here) and talk to him about what I've read, because I think it is better to talk about it rather than him hiding it and suffering in silence.. This is how I thought I could help him: When I see or when he tells me that compulsions are happening or going to happen, I'm gonna let him know that he is not going through this alone and that he can trust me. Then I will ask him to tell me what kind of thoughts are going through his mind at the moment, and if he, for example, tells me that he thinks something bad is gonna happen to me I'm gonna tell him to try not to do any compulsive behaviour and try to, no matter how hard it is at the moment, accept that thought and repeat after me: You are safe. I am safe. We are always going to be safe. Only good things happen to us and always will. I believe that if this is done constantly that it will make his OCD more managenable (and depression as well). I would really appreciate any comment, expert or from a person having a similar experience that my boyfriend has. I really want to help him. Thank you! ❤
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