- 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 :)
Does anyone have any advice for sharing their obsessions with their significant other? I struggle with relationship and sexuality OCD. My boyfriend knows I have OCD, but we have never discussed it in detail. I think he is trying to respect my boundaries and I am terrified he won’t understand my obsessions and/or will take them personally. As a result I feel like I am hiding this horrible secret, and it is causing me so much anxiety. I want to talk to him about it, but I don’t know how to bring it up in a way that won’t hurt him.
Has anyone successfully explained OCD to their partner and got support from them or asked for support from them without being too much of a burden to them? Any tips? Thanks!
Does anyone have any advice for someone with contamination OCD that is living with a partner without OCD? (Especially given that that partner intentionally or unintentionally sometimes /often says things that make me feel worse/down). I could really use any advice anyone has right now. Things are starting to feel hopeless and I don’t know whether it makes sense to continue with the relationship or if that’s just a temporary feeling in light of what I’m going through. I just feel so alone and misunderstood.
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