Hey guys do you have a problem with figuring out what kind of therapy to do for your ocd? I’m suffering from ROCD and I have divided opinion on how should I approach it because my therapist says that I should rationalize my thoughts and on the other hand everything I see elsewhere is that you shouldn’t pay attention to your ocd thoughts but my therapist says that by ignoring them that’s why they come back because you’re just oppressing them. Does anyone have similar issue?

Hello, so I’m in therapy for ROCD but my therapist says she doesn’t think/feels that I have ROCD. Her reasoning is because “compulsions don’t provide any sense of relief for someone with OCD, they are constant even after compulsions” but i’ve read online that they do provide relief until a new intrusive thought restarts the cycle. She also said I can’t have ROCD if I don’t show signs of regular OCD, because ROCD is only a subtype and I must have OCD to have ROCD. I’ve read otherwise online though so all therapist on here is she correct? (She also mention she only has 2 years experience and has a supervisor she reports to)

I wanted to talk about my experiences with rOCD since I currently do still suffer from it but I know if I talked about them. My thoughts are just gonna get stronger, but I’ll do it for the sake of talking about my experiences to others who feel like they’re alone. I have a very loving relationship actually my first healthy relationship we are currently still dating one year and six months. I would say these intrusive thoughts started to happen once I hit the one year mark with him. Nothing in the relationship has made me think these thoughts, but it just came. Like when my mind tried to make me think I liked another guy other than my boyfriend and that I was losing feelings for him. I started to panic because I knew that my heart belonged to my boyfriend and having thoughts that were against that belief it made me really anxious cause I never had those thoughts before. I was in and out of the care center at my school constantly having anxiety attacks, and it was affecting me day by day. I talk to my boyfriend about it because my mind can never keep secrets from him because then I would feel like that I’m lying to him… my mind just kinda works that way and I believe it’s due to the situation I have with rOCD. Luckily, he was really supportive.. in thoughts I’ve had was what if I don’t like him anymore or if he doesn’t do this does that mean he likes me or if he’s even the one just a lot of doubts about me and him in the relationship. And for anyone who’s experiencing stuff familiar to this you are not alone invalid only what you believe is what is true. And I know it’s gonna be hard to know what’s true or not because these thoughts that you have versus what’s in your heart you get confused but if you know that you love that person then that’s what true. Also, the only reason why it affected me a lot was because I kept trying to solve it and the only solution is to let those thoughts in and accept that you have those thoughts. I don’t mean as an accept that these thoughts are true, but accepts that those are the thoughts that you’re thinking because if you keep on trying to find a solution to remove them, it only just get worse.

I still do not have an OFFICIAL diagnosis (I dont have the means to do so) but given my symptoms, past and present in my life hugely suggest OCD is what I am dealing with. I cannot be 100 percent certain but after searching for answers and researching for a long time now, I am fairly certain and confident this is what I am struggling with. Given this step forward, I am making more effort into giving up compulsions. at the current moment I believe to be dealing with ROCD, as I have been having several intrusive thoughts that conflict with my relationship. For starters, recently over the past month or 2, I have been struggling with intrusive thoughts like not being over my ex, being attracted to someone else, losing feelings for my partner and not being in love, etc. I can consciously identify that I dont believe these thoughts to be true but it causes me so much distress and anxiety. It gets extremely unbearable some days, and I have leaned into 2 main compulsions. I have relied on thought checking and googling as my source of relief. At first the googling was genuinely to start finding answers; hence why I have made some of the discoveries I have about OCD including this site. But it developed into every time I was anxious, I would whip my phone out and start googling strictly to find an answer that would reassure me or calm me down. As for thought checking, it acted as a way to reaffirm my love for my girlfriend in my head when I have had the thoughts that collide with my relationship and how I feel about my girlfriend. It worked at first but developed into a compulsion where every time a bad thought got me worked up id either do my normal googling or Id think about that in my head to calm myself down. Over time these compulsions have gotten less and less affective and now when I do them it only gets me more anxious and desperate for reassurance (strengthening the cycle or whatever it is lol). I did some more research and finally have accepted the very real fact that I am going to have to sit in heavy anxiety and not give into compulsions for a while in order to treat this. I have to sit in the thoughts that make me feel all this hightened anxiety and distress without giving into compulsion. to be honest I am scared, the thoughts are more rampant than ever, but I am ready to commit to this. I dont think I am gonna be able to go cold turkey on my compulsions so I am ready for the reality I might relapse on the compulsions sometimes, But am gonna keep going until I can break these shackles OCD has on my life right now. I wanna ask, what is everyones methods they use to avoid giving into compulsion when the thoughts get loud? any advice is welcome :)