ROCD advice

[Frenchie910]

I have thought I was going crazy until I have just heard of relationship OCD a few days ago and i think describes everything going on in my head. I just thought that I have had anxiety about my relationship for over 18 months and I mean daily crippling anxiety. I worried about the future every day and small things would happen like a problem with the house and I'd automatically go into fight or flight mode. I finally left without knowing if it was right thing to do but still seeing my partner and wants me to move back.

Since I left I spent everyday having crippling anxious thoughts in reverse about finances and thinking I have to go back but then worrying about what people think. So it's all the same feelings but on the other side of it and I can't make a decision either way. I feel I have 2 sides of my brain weighing up options obsessively based on any miniscule thing that happens, I feel genuinely unwell.

I start to get obsessive thoughts and then I will speak to people or post on here about whatever thought I'm having looking for reassurance which is never enough then the cycle repeats. I have an appointment with a new therapist on Wednesday but just looking for advice and if anyone has experience of ROCD?

With OCD and ROCD the content of the thoughts is not the truth, the sufferer just can’t shake the ‘yeah, but what if…” constant doubting, which causes extreme distress. The ‘compulsion’ accompanying the obsessing is usually to seek constant reassurance, which is and never will be enough, because this is OCD and it doesn’t respond to reason. Even though rationally you know that if you really didn’t care or had real doubts, you would leave the relationship and feel relieved that it was over, not be in such distress and suffering extreme anxiety about it all, it is never enough to reassure you or bring you peace of mind.
The way out is to get proper treatment, and you are doing that with a new therapist. You seem to have a really good understanding of what you are going through and that honestly is halfway to getting well again. Your therapist needs to give you strategies to help you disengage from the thoughts, including a ‘float to survive’ strategy. Do not try not to think the thoughts, or your avoid them, it increases the frequency and urgency because being unable to stop creates more panic which leads to more worrying and reassurance seeking and in it goes. It sounds counter-intuitive, but instead of fighting and struggling to stop or avoid it, let the thoughts come, notice them, disengage from the content and label it as ‘thinking’. These are just thoughts, not reality, you can’t make what you dread come true just by thinking it, it’s just thoughts. Gradually your brain learns that it’s ok to just have thoughts, you don’t have to try to ‘solve’ them or make them go away, you can just think them, not engage and ruminate (the really hard bit, but it breaks the cycle), you can just notice that you are thinking and let it happen, then move your mind to something else that is happening in the present moment. Re-grounding yourself in the present is really helpful, allow the thoughts to float by and instead of engaging with them, notice your surroundings. Listen hard to see what you can hear, use your hands to feel your chair or table or sofa, or the water in your shower, whatever you are doing in the present moment is your friend, pull your senses to the present moment to give your brain something to do which isn’t ruminating. Ask about mindfulness cognitive behaviour therapy, that’s essentially what focusing on your present surroundings is and if you work hard at it, it’s really good, but you have to practise it and you really can retrain your brain. There are loads of good books on it, ask your therapist. Mindfulness meditation really helps any form of OCD.
A good book on OCD for me was Jeffrey Schwartz “Brain Lock” plus Google his “Four Steps for OCD.” Don’t worry too much about the difference between having ROCD or OCD, it’s basically the same thing and only the content of the thoughts is the difference. The way out is the same.
Good luck and feel free to message me any time you like, the four steps by Jeffrey Schwartz are an excellent strategy to help you.

I forgot to add that once your OCD is under control you won’t feel unwell and the doubt-panic-seek reassurance- unpick it all-doubt-panic rinse and repeat etc etc will stop. Every minuscule detail triggers it because you so dread the worrying, that you are on constant alert for things that “prove” or “disprove” your doubts to settle it once and for all. It sets up the vicious cycling of thoughts and adds fuel to the fire.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if your doubts disappeared at the same time as the OCD, because your doubts are the OCD, they are not the reality of what is really going on for you. A good mantra to help disengage rather than take the thoughts as reality is “It’s not me, it’s my OCD” because your real problem isn’t the unsolvable dilemma of the doubts you are having, as urgent as that feels, your real problem is OCD and reminding yourself of that helps remove some of the power from
the obsessions.

Amazing replies @Thewookiemustgo I have bookmarked them. My DD has OCD as do I. It's a miserable thing to live with.

I have suffered bouts of spiralling thoughts and anxiety and whilst not ocd, there is a similar worry->reassure cycle. I have a method that stops it now, basically I don't allow myself to reassure. I can't literally stop a worry from occurring in my head, but I can stop the other part where I go about trying to fix it or reassure myself. This is enough that it stops the cycle from repeating over and over. I still have anxious thoughts but I haven't ended up in a deep pit of them for many years as a result.

Maybe ocd is slightly different but in my research around anxiety I found that the brain is a logical system. If you start reassuring yourself around something, it reinforces the idea that there is something to solve and worry about.

Thanks so much this is really helpful. I have only realised that I think it is ROCD because I feel just as bad and all consumed when I have left and my partner doesn't even have to do a thing for me to feel triggered. So helpful to have all this explained. I'm hoping the counselling will take me seriously tomorrow but also conscious that I shouldn't self diagnose - it all just sounds exactly how I'm feeling and thinking.

@SirRaymondClench you’re welcome and yes, it is a miserable thing to live with, I know from personal experience and I was very fortunate to come across the help I did, I was very ill. I had counselling initially from a well meaning person who unfortunately didn’t recognise it and basically told me to stop worrying because my worries were a normal part of life. Constant intense anxiety producing thoughts which need reassurance or a ritual to ease the anxiety are not a normal part of life. Her ‘advice’ made me think I was just rubbish at life and weak compared to other people and made me ten times worse. I am highly educated and had an excellent professional career at the time, but no amount of intelligence or brain power can stop this. I exhausted myself and kicked myself black and blue for not being able to ‘stop worrying’. I ended up on the verge of being hospitalised but that got me in front of a brilliant psychiatrist who saw it immediately and told me what it was. My GP and counsellors didn’t recognise it and I had spent months without treatment or help.
If you can separate the OCD thoughts from your ‘normal’ day to day thinking, it’s a good start. You feel so compelled to engage with it, it’s a bloody nightmare, but I knew what was OCD and what wasn’t, so I practised noticing and re-labelling rather than going round the spiral. “I’m worrying, I feel anxious, is it something I need to deal with (ie is it normal me) or is it my OCD thoughts? Recognise the thinking as OCD and label it as such. It’s not me, it’s my OCD.” End of conversation in my brain and try to refocus on the present moment. It’s very hard work and you fail and fail and fail again until it starts to get better, but the allowing the thoughts in rather than dreading them removes the importance of them to your brain and lessens the anxiety response. Our brains keep bringing the thoughts to our attention because the anxiety response kicks in our survival mode, therefore the brain has attached importance to these thoughts. We make ourselves worse by fighting it, trying to stop it and by doing that adding more importance to it for our brain.
If we see a cute little bird outside we think “Oh look, a bird.” No anxiety response, no need to do anything about the bird so our brains let the thought go and we go on with our day, probably don’t think about the bird ever again.
If we see a burglar outside we think “A burglar!!!” and our anxiety response kicks in, we do something about it and our brains file it under ‘dangerous’ in its library of things we need to solve or avoid for our survival. Because of the anxiety response to that thought, unlike the thought about the bird, our brains might pop the burglar thought back into our heads if it perceives we are in the same situation again or crucially even if it thinks we might be, even though we are not. People with a phobia of spiders not only have a danger response attached to harmless spiders, but they can panic if they mistake a bit of black fluff on the floor for a spider. It’s not a spider but your brain prepares you as if it actually was. OCD works in a similar way. Anxiety producing thoughts are harder to ditch because they are a glitch in our brain’s fight or flight protection mode. Sadly in OCD we don’t need a burglar or obvious risk on front of us, anything, a passing thought about something we fear happening, but hasn’t, even something extreme that we’d never ever do, (illness, divorce, causing an accident to somebody or even harming somebody) for an OCD sufferer can produce intense anxiety and start a cycle.
Allow the thoughts in, label them as harmless rather than engaging and over time you lessen the anxiety response, the thoughts lose their importance to your brain and your brain feeds them to you less and less often.
Learn all you can about OCD, knowledge is your friend and helps when it gets bad. I still have OCD tendencies but I recognise when I am at risk of doing it and kick my brain training back in. Good luck to you both, it’s exhausting and life-sapping but treatment is out there and the Schwartz book helped me understand it no end.

@supercali77 you’ve nailed it. It’s the level of importance attached to the thinking which determines how long the brain holds on to it for you, thinking it’s useful for your survival. It’s not so much the looking for reassurance that makes your brain think it’s important, that’s kind of after the main event. It’s the level of anxiety produced by the thought itself, which leads to the reassurance, which determines how much importance your brain attaches to the thinking. The brain is constantly scanning to check we are safe and uses a library bank of past thoughts/ images and experiences which produced anxiety to protect us. I’ve never come across an angry bear in my life but if I did, my brain would recognise it from my library bank of knowledge/ thoughts/ experiences and make me do something to protect myself.
We can worry repeatedly about something normally, then go about our day and forget about it for a while, but OCD sufferers literally can’t stop, their brain is on a thought-anxiety-reassurance feedback loop that normal worrying doesn’t produce. The anxiety is huge.
The content of OCD thinking is usually about something which hasn’t happened, or which the sufferer feels might happen, or it might be unsolvable dilemma thinking. It doesn’t really follow ‘normal’ thought patterns.
You’re absolutely right though, understanding the way the brain works is a huge help with anxiety and OCD related illnesses.

@Frenchie910 I’m taking a punt here but it’s so unlikely to be your relationship or your partner if you can rationally recognise that they are doing nothing to cause the content of your thinking and that your thinking actually doesn’t match up with how you feel about your partner or your relationship. If you didn’t want it, getting out would solve it and you’d feel relief and move forward with your life.

@Thewookiemustgo yep, I think sufferers share certain traits in common in that we have great problem solving skills, and tend to be more 'in the head'. Great in certain professions but those aspects of the brain...the default mode network and others...can become over engaged in areas that do not require problem solving and are not in fact problems.

Part of my recovery was recognising it...'that's one of those problems that isn't a problem or that I can't solve'. And steering my attention elsewhere.

@Thewookiemustgo as well, I'm really sorry it got that bad for you

Yeah totally and I think that's how I've finally realised what's happening is that I've felt no relief at all, the cycle just continues but I'm needing reassurance about going back to the relationship now rather than leaving. It is so all consuming and exhausting but am feeling relief with the thought this isn't just normal anxiety!

@supercali77 thank you.
It was a couple of decades ago and awareness wasn’t what it is now back then. The people I saw were trying to help me, they cared, I don’t blame them, but they just didn’t know what it was and probably hadn’t come across it before, didn’t recognise it and also weren’t trained to spot it.
With unrecognised ROCD you can sadly get a counsellor who hears your relational worries and just thinks you need genuine relationship advice. That validates the OCD thinking as genuine normal thinking, this is a professional we have come to for help after all, so their opinion carries weight, but it creates more panic because you’re desperate for it not to be true (but what if ….. etc etc). Then each session inadvertently becomes just enabling the sufferer to engage, concentrate on and seek reassurance for an entire hour a week and it’s the worst thing you can do, it just reinforces the loop and makes it worse.

@Frenchie910 the hell of it is the unsolvable dilemma, believe me I know. Once the OCD is treated and you have coping strategies I promise you you’ll have a better idea about it all and you might actually find it’s not even a real dilemma. When I look back at the contents of my thoughts then I can’t believe I ever thought it or thought it was real. Brains are powerful things.
The actual work has to be done by you, sadly, the talking therapy helps but can’t cure you, it’s like going for a piano lesson or physiotherapy, if you don’t practise in between lessons you won’t improve, therapy is about getting tools to help yourself with, it’s not a miracle conversation that makes all our problems disappear.
Logical thinking doesn’t work, logically you know what’s going on but it makes no difference to the OCD, it keeps on alerting you.
So don’t beat yourself up, you didn’t cause it, you’re an OCD sufferer. You don’t have to be a helpless victim though, you really can drastically improve this for yourself. Wishing you loads of luck and sending support on your journey, will answer anything you want to ask me.

@supercali77 yes also to the profession thing. My job demanded meticulous attention to detail, extensive planning and problem solving, living in my head a lot of the time and ironically helping a lot of people.
When it hit me I was working ridiculous hours with a lot of stress and my exhausted brain didn’t expect anything but stress producing thoughts. My brain obligingly gave me a few of my own to think about in my very scarce down time, I literally couldn’t relax, my brain had forgotten how. It filled in the blanks for me and frightened the life out of me.
I’d got to that point gradually, like the frog in slowly boiling water. Working those hours became normal and nobody should be doing what I was doing, it anlso became expected because Wookie always gets it done and goes the extra mile for people. For a while I felt proud of this trait and it didn’t do my career any harm but ultimately it broke me.
No job or kudos or money is worth trashing your mental health for.

@Thewookiemustgo no absolutely it isn't worth it. I have similar traits, but am now a freelancer...i thought to myself that this would give me greater flexibility. And it did, to work myself into the ground! The wheels have almost come off a couple of times but it took perimenopause to finally kick my arse. I've even started saying to friends/family 'sorry I can't help with that'. Previously unheard of. I guess if it takes almost 50 years to catch up with you it's a lesson worth learning x

@supercali77 I’m glad you’re prioritising yourself. I am inherently a people pleaser and still have difficulty saying ‘no’ to people. Now that I’m older and wiser I know when I’m overloaded or I actually just don’t want to go to an event or social gathering and it’s ok to say ‘no’ to it. Time is precious and I’m far too old to waste it now on social vampires and undeserved guilt.