Ugh my rocd is making me so sensitive to everything my bf says like I’ll ask for his advise and when he gives me his opinion My mind goes straight to “he’s being mean to you” “he didn’t say that nicely/ loving therefore he doesn’t love you” or especially when I talk to him when I’m anxious and he knows not to reassure me (my therapist told him not to) I get all these thoughts about him not caring like he used to in the beginning and that he’s mean now and ur going to have to leave. Does anyone have any tips on how to not take everything to heart and deal with this type of intrusive thinking I know it’s my ocd doing this and making me feel like he doesn’t care as one of its tricks, but it’s just this one is so much harder bc I always have seen my bf as such a sweet and caring person and now that’s clouded:/

That’s great advise, thank you! What I’ve noticed is that I tend to go over the conversation in my mind many of times to see if he was actually being mean or if it’s a misunderstanding, I also tend to try really hard to get him to break and reassure me a lot which usually never works which triggers anxiety and mainly just checking my feelings and analyzing what he says or does

@Lex027 That sounds like it's hard on both you and your boyfriend :( I wonder if there are other potential options for when something triggers you? You're certainly allowed to mention that you feel triggered so that he knows and you can take a quiet moment, but you don't have to talk about what it was that triggered you. I'm thinking specifically that the "worry later" technique might help you out, have you heard of it? Parts of it sound paradoxical but it does work. It's essentially where when you feel triggered, you stop and PROMISE your brain that you'll worry later: you won't neglect the problem, you agree that you need to know, and you reassure your brain that you'll worry later. And then you refocus back onto whatever you were doing, or you do something pleasant, instead of the compulsions. If you get any more compulsions or scary thoughts and urges to figure it out and emotions which seem urgent and upsetting, you do the same thing, you promise that you'll deal with it and make it right, and redirect your attention back to what you were doing. If you like, you set yourself an actual time period for worrying/compulsions of 10 minutes to 30 minutes every evening. You're ONLY allowed to worry during that time, but you are allowed to worry and do mental compulsions as much as you like during that time. It works quite quickly, it reduces the link and sense of urgency between the trigger and compulsions by making a big gap of time between them, which means you get fewer urges to do those compulsions which makes it even easier to say "later" to them. Very soon after starting the method you might find you don't feel anxious at your worrying-slot time, so you decide to wait til the next one. There's a "worry time" technique written about on anxiety.com which suggests deliberately making yourself worry when you don't feel like it so that you start associating worrying with boredom rather than with anxiety. But with OCD this can just cause you to trigger your own obsession and sit there doing mental compulsions the whole time, which as we all know can last for hours and days without becoming "boring" to us. So just keep it within the time period you've set and if you don't feel like doing it, skip one. Whenever you feel able to, end the worry period early. I know it sounds quite intense, the idea of going from worrying all day long to stopping cold turkey, but whenever you get the triggers and urges come up, you actually do get to reassure your brain with the actually very harmless compulsion of reassurance that you'll worry later. It's harmless because it doesn't interfere with your life or your time, in fact you start getting your life and your time back, and it's a much better replacement for stuff like reassurance seeking and memory checking which harms both you and your boyfriend. As you get less and less thoughts and urges to test them, to start to realise that your worry wasn't as urgent as it seemed. You get a much better perspective and will find you're able to trust your boyfriend to have good intentions, by showing your brain that the fact you felt hurt didn't actually mean somebody hurt you, that feelings aren't facts. When you get the opportunity, you can combine this method with ERP. So, say you get triggered, you say to yourself "I'll solve that later during a worry period", and instead of carrying on with what you were doing, you do some ERP acceptance about the possibility of some of the thoughts you're having. Whatever anxiety the idea "maybe he did say this thing as a criticism of this other thing about me", or "maybe he does think I made a stupid decision" or "maybe he found my question annoying" causes, you can say "I'll work on finding out the real answers later, but for now I'm doing to do ERP", and then do your ERP by letting the anxiety be there without compulsions, until it comes down and turns to boredom. If you find it difficult to keep your mind from habitually trying to work it out, it can help to focus on the physical sensations of the emotions in your body, including where they are and what you could compare them to and exactly how you would describe them. You can lean right into that anxiety without anything bad happening to you or coming true. If you get distracted, re-trigger yourself by thinking the "maybe" thought again, reminding yourself or what triggered you. Feeling it in your body and staying out of your head is known as 'somatic processing' and it works great for the "what ifs" of OCD. The combination of "worry later" and somatic ERP have cured a couple of my OCDs totally :) and if I were more consistent, it would fix the stuff I've got left too. The amazing thing is that when I say "I'm gonna do ERP for the feelings and figure out the answer later", after I actually do the ERP the answer always seems really obvious. Good luck!

@Scoggy Wow thank you so much! This was so helpful and such good advise I will definitely try the “worry about it later” it seems very effective and worth a shot! Thank you!!:)

@Lex027 Great to hear! You can bookmark my replies or your thread by pressing the ... buttons to come back to it later :)