Guys, do your partners trigger your rOCD?? I don’t know if I’m too sensitive or he’s saying something wrong, I get triggered by his jokes and by him teasing me. I know that it’s his personality, he makes maaaany jokes but now they’re triggering me more than ever. My period is coming and I think it has a huge influence on my mood and OCD...

pureolife

Date posted: 4y

You have relationship obsessions: of course your partner triggers your ocd! What else would? Do your best to resist compulsions (checking how you feel about his jokes, mentally reviewing the jokes again and again, asking for reassurance from others that the jokes were acceptable, avoiding him and his jokes altogether, etc.) allow the jokes and your reactions without judgment. Let them be and pass. Stop trying to figure out why they make you feel the way you do and searching for explanations like your period that could render your reactions somehow meaningless. Maybe you do have some mild annoyance or upset. And maybe that is okay or means nothing important. Or not. You don’t need a 100% certain answer.

Dany

Date posted: 4y

You need to talk with him about this, every feeling it's valid. You're not dramatic or over reacting, and it's important. So please tell him how feel.

pureolife

Date posted: 4y

Talking out every single feeling you have is going to be terrible for your relationship. Some feelings do indeed need to be able to pop up and pass. If you have to have a discussion about each and every one, it’s absolutely a compulsion.

aegyominnie

Date posted: 4y

@pureolife It is a compulsion of mine, I feel the urge to tell him about everything, I want to change the way he is so that he won’t trigger me. I always feel the need to talk about everything to fix things that don’t even need to be fixed. And whenever I try to talk about this, he says that I keep circling the topic over and over again (which I don’t really realize) which makes him annoyed because he already said what he wanted to say. That leads to me being upset because he is upset and I make the meaning out of it, that he doesn’t care about me or he ignores me.

pureolife

Date posted: 4y

To clarify: it sounds like the poster is more so struggling to deal with mild imperfections (perfectionism being a common struggle with ocd) rather than obviously harmful behaviors that need to be addressed, so working on accepting uncertainty and mild discomfort would probably be better in this case than searching for certainty with unnecessary conflic resolution. If anything written seemed seriously harmful, I’d absolutely advocate to speak up.

pureolife

Date posted: 4y

@aegyominnie Yup, that’s exactly what I assumed from your initial post and that’s very very common for ocd sufferers. The thing is: it’s not up to him not to trigger you. It’s your job to deal with being triggered. If you can only be around people who never say or do anything triggering you won’t have anyone. It’s okay for not everything to be 100% fixed all the time (which, by the way, is an impossible goal and an illusion if you ever feel like you’ve ever achieved it.) I would recommend this book: https://g.co/kgs/9WYtnP — Needing to Know for Sure: A CBT-Based Guide to Overcoming Compulsive Checking and Reassurance Seeking Book by Martin N. Seif and Sally M. Winston. It’s great for the compulsion you’re dealing with here.

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