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How do I not shut down and go quiet and cry when my partner is trying to have an uncomfortable conversation with me is anyone else dealing or dealt with this ?

so, i wake up every morning feeling anxious and like i need to start ruminating. it’s like that feeling when your thoughts are jumbled and immediately start to race the second you get up. for me lately my focus has been on my rocd per my latest post. i feel like ill settle into the fact and idea that i love my girlfriend, that i like her and that i want to be in the relationship blah blah but the second i wake up the loop of doubt continues. it obviously makes me feel like im lying to myself. that im convincing myself that i have basic feelings of attraction and connection to my partner, at this point the thoughts are so loud that im beginning to believe them. it feels so hard to access my true feelings and beliefs and when i do it just feels like i have to try so so hard and that i dont even believe it! i feel like im struggling to let her in. we had a really good conversation about my rocd last night, but i still worry about being a liar, secretly just staying in the relationship and not being attracted! ugh!! you can imagine this makes me feel like i dont even have rocd or ocd. the thought/compulsion of even breaking up with her comes to mind, but i know i would just feel unhappy and think about her then too. i dont want to do that obviously but those with rocd know sometimes it feels like the only way out. (we’ve broken up before because of this) which def adds a level. though i know doing that would alleviate this anxiety/ocd source, it would just come back and form itself in different ocd themes until i got back into a relationship and then the whole loop would start over. Does anyone have any advice for how you cope with this? I do my exposures and try to accept my uncertainty and thoughts but i’m wondering if any other methods that help anyone get through these struggles.

I realized recently my intrusive thoughts have been adapting to be “more realistic”. I’ve now become more obsessed with my life safety, work social environment, and first true love? (Apparently I’m demiromantic and he really feels like my soulmate. I’m the one not letting us be a couple for, I think a good reason, and he respects that decision.) Point is they’re getting harder to ID as OCD, which although never stopped the intrusive thoughts, it helped me apply personal tactics I’ve learned that have alleviated some distress and prevent thought spiraling in the past. Is it possible for the thoughts to adapt like this, I can’t ID them as quick this way and get in thought spirals way too far before I realize what’s happening. I even had a spout of my classical religious OCD thoughts, began repetitively praying “Jesus” to block them out which I’m sure is a compulsion. I ended up effectively distracting myself from it, so thank God. I don’t want to go down that road again. Avoidance has been the main compulsion for the ones listed before that side tangent above, I literally was not going to my apartment for months because a neighbor had creeped me out so bad. I sorta overcame avoidance with the relationship to truthfully talk to my love, but I worry my reason for staying apart has a secret reason in this… idk. It seemed reasonable to us both? The thoughts started targeting the guy I love even more yesterday, and I knew trying to fight them would make them worse, but I really didn’t want them anywhere near that. Somehow I got to a point where instead of the worries, I could literally feel nothing. Nothing bad but also nothing good and I thought I broke my brain and almost called a mental health hotline because I was concerned I lost my emotions forever and I wanted them all back. Even the negative ones. Luckily I had the awareness to at least try the emergency anxiety medicine my doctor gave me (even though I couldn’t feel anxiety), and I think this is what broke me out of that. But now I’m worried I’ll trigger that again. I hesitate to self diagnose, but given my experience and past, I definitely have primarily obsessional OCD (pure O). I couldn’t tell any of the mental health professionals I saw before because I thought I was the only one like this and that if I said anything about the worse thoughts they’d take me away from family or… well that they would do something, disgusted by my very existence. For a while my mom was the only one I let hear some of the worse thoughts and I swore her to secrecy about them. Luckily she had experienced some intrusive thoughts (not to my level but) with her GAD and she understood enough these were distressing things I didn’t want. But yea, I’ve been through a slew of the themes in my life. My biggest being religious OCD and OCD with sexual themes (I am aroace so the lack of sexual desire was very confusing, especially at first, and I didn’t know I was or that people could be that, so I guess my core worry became that my other forms of love ie familial, friend, etc had been secretly perverted and corrupted the whole time) Ugh.

I’m having a hard time figuring out if my feelings about my romantic relationship are ROCD or true feelings. For context, me and my bf have been together for 4 years, broken up once before (about a year ago) and almost again a few weeks ago. I’ve been feeling so disconnected from him, despite his efforts to change and make things better in our relationship. I’ve also been feeling like I want to date other people, but at the same time feel like he’s it for me… is there a way to tell ROCD from regular feelings?

So I’m married, but I’ve always had these thoughts about other people. Everything feels like a romantic connection to me and I’ve tried to place it to the back of my mind. However, every time I meet someone new through my husband, I think “maybe I’m with my husband to meet my soulmate.” I’m struggling with this even more because I found out one of his work friends is interested in me and now I can’t stop thinking about said friend. I found him attractive at first, but now he consumes almost every one of my thoughts. This has happened multiple times through my relationship. I love my husband and want to spend the rest of my life with him. We have children together. I don’t know how to get these thoughts to stop. It has happened every relationship I’ve ever been in and I feel miserable. Even someone smiling at me in public makes me think maybe they’re the one and I made a wrong choice. It’s miserable. Please help.

I have been with my partner for over a year. I have a long history of abuse and pain, and he is my first healthy relationship. It truly feels this is the person I want to marry. Recently though, I made a new friend (male) and we’ve been talking almost daily over text. This friend is older than me and has two kids, but is single. I love our conversations, and I find myself looking forward to talking with him. I made it clear multiple times I have a boyfriend, I’ve also actively talked about my boyfriend to make sure he is super aware that I’m not being flirty, that I’m just a friendly person. He has never made a move on me or anything. Recently however, I’ve been plagued with these thoughts that I am emotionally cheating on my boyfriend, and I’ll also get intrusive thoughts about me cheating on him with this person. I don’t have any romantic or sexual feelings on this person, but then my brain is like “you sure? You do like talking to them a lot!” And then it spirals. At some points the image of us having sex has come to mind and it’s been seriously scary. I hate it so much because now I’m feeling disconnected from my own relationship because I’m too scared that I’m cheating. I of course talked about this with my partner and he was very supportive, even reassured me, but now the thoughts have gotten stronger and I am honestly scared. I’ve thought of just not texting this person anymore, or moving away (they are my neighbor), and I’ve actively avoided talking to them in person much. I’m so afraid. I’ve never cheated on anyone, and I don’t want to ever lose or hurt my partner. Sometimes I worry maybe I don’t have ocd, maybe I’m just a bad person. I don’t know. I’m just scared. Any advice?

Hi all, I’m just coming off of a bad cold and I think my husband is sick too and I feel so much guilt around making him sick. He keeps trying to assure me it happens but, I can’t help but spiral a bit about it.

i suffer from limerence so badly that i legit want to merge souls and become one with the people i fall into limerence with. i understand that ocd plays a part in this as well but if anyone has experience on how to NOT DO THIS please …it needs to end i fear its creepy and just weird. i just want to like people to the normal extent

I’ve been overthinking this for the last few days, me and the guy I’ve been seeing ended things a week and a bit ago, since then we’ve been talking like normal and I’m worried it’s not giving us the space we need to heal. Over and over again in my mind I’ve been calling myself pathetic, ridiculous, annoying. I see images of him laughing at me with his friends calling me a psycho (this has happened before and was a big rumour spread about me), the thing is neither of us are ending the talking, I’ve tried, I’ve said to him that I might need to stop talking to him as it’s not doing us any good and he said “you’ve gotta do what’s best for you” I then said if we could say goodbye in person so that when we see one another around town it’s not awkward and we don’t feel like we have to avoid one another or thing the other hates the other one. He agreed but since hasn’t said when he’s free. I wanna have the conversation so bad because my obsessive brain keeps saying I’m not giving him the space he asked for. Even though he’s messaging me back! He asked for space a couple months ago while I was off traveling and we both just keeps messaging the same way, nobody stopped or anything which I guess we should’ve done. Even when I went on an island with no service for 3 days he double messages me and told me about his day! So I guess I’m trying to figure out if I’m the issue, if I’ve not listened, if I’m a psycho. I’m really worried that I’ve done something wrong here. Even though the way we handle it is our own. I’m just so confused and it’s making me feel that I’m a problem

I’m not feeling too well today because these intrusive thoughts in my head keep cycling and cycling even though I don’t want to have these thoughts and I want them to go away. My girlfriend is getting so tired of having to hear what girl I thought abt and what situation i’m reflecting on even though I don’t even mean to be thinking those things. I feel so guilty and horrible these things come into my brain. I don’t want to think things about other women, my girlfriend is amazing and is very patient and has been so patient ever since i’ve been having obscure or other thoughts about women wether it be just a thought or even sexually. It’s not on purpose. It just keeps happening and I can’t explain how my brain keeps doing it. I just came across so much research about Pure O Ocd and I think I have that. I’m very new to this but my twin brother also has OCD and Bipolar and I feel as though i’m the same way. I’m so tired of having unwanted thoughts come into my head. I feel so upset and hurt knowing I have to tell my girlfriend exactly what it is that came into my head. I feel like a failure.

To see my life now compared to two years ago is unbelievable. There has been such a dramatic shift between who I was then and who I am now. I had my first intrusive thought at age 11. I wasn’t officially diagnosed with OCD until I was 36. I never knew what it was but was glad to put a name to it. A lifetime of suffering. I have struggled with at least four subtypes of OCD. POCD, SO-OCD, Self-Harm/ Suicide OCD, and ROCD. I can now look back on moments throughout my life and say, “wow, that was OCD and I didn’t even know it.” Regardless of the subtype, it’s all OCD. And when you learn how to adjust your behavior and response accordingly, you can heal. I started with my NOCD therapist in January of 2023. I avoided everything-people, places, church, things I loved…all because of OCD. I used sleeping as an avoidance behavior. I couldn’t even drive down the road and go grocery shopping without feeling anxious and triggered. I was ready to do something different. The meds were not working for me. Sure they helped the anxiety and depression to a degree, but they didn’t stop the intrusive thoughts which is what I wanted them to do. I now know and fully understand that you cannot stop your thoughts. You cant stop your obsessions BUT you can control how you react to them. Recovery is not linear by any means and I’ve had MANY ups and downs the past year and a half. But I’m here. I have made it to the other side. And it’s a beautiful place. If you made it this far in reading this, thank you. I want you to know there is hope. You can reach recovery and you can begin to heal. ERP saved my life. I can now step out into situations and settings without totally falling apart. I have learned to handle discomfort. I can spend time with my family, do the things I love and enjoy my life again. Most importantly, I have learned to be self-compassionate. If you’ve been hesitating to start ERP with an OCD specialist, I hope I can encourage you to make that step. It changed me in a wonderful way and I’m so thankful to be equipped with the tools to manage OCD for life!

My ex and I broke up about 8 months ago. At first I was terrified to go anywhere, I’d avoid places. When I would try to go to the places we would go together it would trigger me to thinking I was a stalker or that I was trying ti see him, when I was trying g to reclaim places just for me. I would get so anxious that it would make me through up and shake from anxiety. Reassurance stopped working. Fast forward to yesterday I caught up with an old friend and I told them about all the bad things that happened in our relationship. I ended up looking up his instagram and found his work instagram. The page had a shared public google drive link to a file with photos from an event they had last week. I clicked on it and began to think I was being crazy. I admit I should not have been looking , but i already did it. I began to think they’re gonna be able to track me and have been looking for reassurance on chat gpt all morning. Ultimately what I found is that they can’t figure out I specifically saw the pictures since it’s a public link unless they have a third party monitoring system. I feel like this is a huge exposure. I am not deleting the account even though I tried to this morning. It la a huge uncertainty if they saw me and I will never know. The internet is saying no, but I am trying to sit in the uncertainty of now being certain that they can’t specifically see that I viewed their profile. What do y’all think about this being an exposure? Just for reference, I am actively working with an erp therapist outside of NOCD

Idk if this is the right place to post this. But i feel like such a burden to the people around me because of my anxiety. I woke up this morning super stressed over a dream that reminded me of some messed up moments from my past. My girlfriends kinda listened but i mostly felt ignored. Then we all got in the car to drive my sister to the airport. And on the way, i started to get anxious cus of al the traffic. But it wasnt rlly that, it was the fact that no one seemed to care or wanna help me when i said i was anxious. So i asked if i could just hop out of the car and walk. I felt like such an attention seeker, and my girlfriend got annoyed and took the next exit and dropped me off. But i feel like such a little bitch cus my girlfriend was able to handle everything n i left her to come back alone from the airport. I dont feel like a man or like im capable of anything right now. I wish i could redo it all so that it never happened. I feel like i gave up so easily when tryna handle my anxiety n im ashamed of myself

hey all, this past week has definitely been a struggle for me with rocd. i’m constantly in my head and looping. i have a fear that i don’t actually like my partner and that ive been trying to convince myself that i do and that i am connected to her. this isn’t the first time this has come up, but i feel so disconnected and numb sometimes when we hang out and i know that’s a symptom, but it just feels so real. i feel like this is preventing me from being really present in the relationship and that im just convincing myself that i want to be with her. i feel sad that this halle s for me and guilty for my partner. i don’t know how i can decipher this and how to go from here. i feel like i need to figure it out and deal with it but i don’t know how to! any advice?

I was tryna find photos of my spouse. I knew it was around the month of august but i stopped scrolling at november and saw other family pictures so worrying was it innappropriate. Ocd sucks

Going through a tough time. In December, I lost communication with the girl i’m in love with. I made poor decisions and I’ve been beating myself up over them for a long time. Today I saw she found someone new and my heart is hurting so bad. I don’t have a friend to talk to so i’m posting here. I’m just extremely hurting and I feel this is gonna be so heavy on me and i’m not going to be able to move on. I miss her so much and I just have such a heavy chest

I have had pretty bad ROCD these past two years, and I recently went to a couple friends for advice (which my partner was okay with). A guy friend (WHO CLAIMS TO KNOW OF AND UNDERSTANDS OCD??) immediately began asking me if my fears of my partner cheating came from real concerns or not, and he kept asking. He kept saying that it could be intuition.😭 He then also told me it’s okay for people in relationships to have crushes on other people, which both my partner and I heavily disagree with. Like, finding someone attractive is one thing, but a crush???? 😭😭😭 He then continued to tell me ALL people have crushes while in a relationship, including him and his former gf. My OCD went wild, and while some of his advice helped, these points he made were DEVASTATING. Worst part, he claims to know and understand OCD (part of why I went to him for some tips)!!!!!!! So why the hell did he say these awfully triggering things!? Tbh, part of me wonders if he doesn’t believe I have OCD and so he wasn’t handling his advice with as much caution….

I’m going to rant while trying to be as concise as possible. I stopped taking my lexapro a few months ago because I truly felt like I had the coping mechanisms I needed, and I was tired of the vertigo I’d get if I forgot to take my meds for even a day. I got thru withdrawal symptoms and was doing SO well for over a month. Then I was triggered by an event relating to my past- I had a 10 year friendship end terribly in 2022. My OCD was telling me it all all my fault and that I was projecting all of my insecurities on the friendship- I know objectively that both of us were hurt, and both played a role in the friendship. I let the OCD win and compulsively apologized to my ex best friend, taking ALL of the blame for the friendship. I also said i wanted to reconcile, which is not true. She hurt me so bad, and I’ve never had as much peace as I have without her in my life. I only said that in a moment of not seeing the situation for what is truly was. She, however, was fine with me taking all the blame and said I clearly had “more clarity.” This has sent me into a spiral for the past MONTH where all I can think about is this. I feel like I’ve been sucked right back into the past. I’m also graduating in a month and I’m super busy with work right now. Everything has completely piled up and I’m so fucking exhausted. If anyone has compulsively taken all the blame in a situation where both parties are at fault, I’d love to hear your stories to know I’m not alone in this :( I scheduled a psychiatry appointment to get back on meds (not lexapro- I want to try something else because lexapro made me feel so numb). It just feels like no matter what coping mechanisms I do, nothing helps. I’ve tried just letting the thoughts sit without engaging; they persist. I exercise every single day, but all I can think about is this situation. I have regret for A. Reaching out in the first place, B. Taking all of the blame and C. Disrupting her peace by letting a compulsion drive me to reach out. I know that I hurt her as well and I’m disappointed that I let this reopen wounds for both of us. While it would be ideal for us to end on good terms, it’s not possible, and it was impulsive of me to reach out thinking that would be achievable. In her reply she stated that reconciliation was not possible. Throughout my friendship with her I felt as though my feelings were never validated. If I was upset, it was my fault for “misunderstanding her.” If I didn’t communicate being upset, it was my fault for not communicating. Now, I’m upset with myself that I gave power to her after having finally been free from that friendship and all of the pain that it caused me.

Things have been so good lately, haven’t had a worry about anything and have been able to go through my day ignoring all the bad thoughts towards anything that would come in my head, but out of the blue. Aster being here at my boyfriends all day it wanted to do something. I have to go home tonight and to be so honest I really don’t want to. At all. But as I’m sitting here while he’s playing his game my brain is saying “you’re losing feelings for him” when in reality, our one year is in 2 weeks. I’ve been staying at his house frequently the past few weeks. If I was really losing feelings would I want to be with him all the time. No, i need this shit to stop cause it’s gonna ruin something so good.

I've tried accepting being BI. But even THATS not good enough for my ocd. Its telling me that I don't actually love my bf, the one I've been with for almost 4 years now... I feel so numb today, I don't want to ever lose him. I want our romantic spark we have, not for him to just be platonic or whatever. Somehow it convinces me that I'd be better off with a woman :(