ROCD new thoughts (slight spike warning)

[CPH1988]

Hello,

I have had ROCD for quite a while now, and today I had the new thought: "even if you care about and like the girl you are dating, you are probably just liking a projection that you have created, but in fact is not the actual woman you are with." This made me anxious; at the same time, it helped me to catch OCD in a move that was pretty easily detected. I even found myself saying, "Wrong move, ya dirty *******." Because I KNOW i enjoy this girl; her personality, her beauty, her presence.

Question: does anyone know how to define "checking"? And what does mental checking look like when it comes to ROCD?

Another question: does anyone ever have the thoughts, "You'd rather be with...." either a friend, a person you see, etc.? And do you ever have days where thoughts of this other person intrusively enter your brain? Just knowing there are others out there would really comfort me.

Thanks.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi and welcome to NMP

I think many people without anxiety disorders have thoughts about people they are attracted to and I think this is very normal. I know I would have thoughts about other women long before my anxiety disorders whether in a relationship or not, we are all allowed our fantasies but its whether we act them out of not that that matters because many of us hold beliefs that don't allow for that.

There is a useful resource here for OCD:

http://www.ocduk.org/types-ocd

That explains checking but mostly physical as there are only a couple of mental checks on there.

There is a good article on mental checking here:

http://www.steveseay.com/mental-checking-ocd/

[Starrynight97]

CPH1988,

Thank you for bringing some humour to the thread, it's great when ROCD makes itself so obvious that you can't help but realise it. Unfortunately this doesn't happen often though, and I do identify with your intrusive thoughts about others and the constant debilitating fears that someone else would make you happier. I think I suffer from HOCD to some extent too, which makes it tougher.

[worrygirl12]

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Hi. Mine's sort of similar, I just need to know how people cope with worrying if they love their boyfriend, but knowing they're the best thing for them. Is the worrying sustainable? A brief background of my anxiety (diagnosed this time last year). At 15 I seemed to out of nowhere develop depersonalization (I only learnt what this was recently). At the time I thought I'd gone "mad" so told no one so just suffered for 4 years, til one day it just stopped. Fastforward a couple of years and intrusive thoughts became my "thing". I saw a counsellor and this stopped. Pretty quickly after I started going out with my wonderful boyfriend. Everything was amazing, to sound clichéd he understood me, supported my anxious period etc. On our year anniversary I couldn't wait to celebrate my love for this man. We went away foe the weekend and while at dinner I had this overwhelming thought that I didn't love him which made me panicky as it came from nowhere. Since then I'd say 90% of the time I think about it. Sometimes in a panicky way and others in a numb way. We're moving in together soon and I want to, I couldn't live with anyone but him. But I feel guilty and I don't want to spend my whole life living with this man but constantly questioning do I love him enough /fancy him enough etc. I just want to be with him the way it used to be. But I don't know how. I am also quite a jealous/insecure person. Basically a nightmare! Just some advice would be great as this should be the best time and I don't want these silly doubts constantly. Thank you.