I think I have ROCD and I hate it.

[Tori x]

Hello, I'm new here and this is my first post, so please bear with me if I don't explain things well, I will try my best.

I'm in my early 30s and have been dating an amazing fella for 5months. At first it was all good and I was nothin but happy, but then up popped my fear of losing him. Primarily it relates to me having thoughts of him leaving me for someone else, primarily cheating on me, hiding texts, going to places and lying etc. These are of course just my irrational thoughts, which most of the time I try to fight and control. It's like my head has two parts that argue..the rational and the irrational.

I have been treated badly in the past and had people I very much cared about let me down and lie to me.....both friends, family and partners and I view love in a very strong way..... Loyalty is a big thing to me, and it seems that all I see around me, on TV, with friends and people I know are stories of people cheating and deceiving and it's like I'm always on guard trying to protect myself and look for ways to catch him out so I am not taken advantage of.
I'm suspicious of when he uses his phone, down to the point I even check the times on his what's app log in to see if his last seen time correlates with a message to me.

I trust him (as much as my mind lets me) and love him sooooo much. But I always relate things back to how he is going out to cheat on me and leave me.

I'll text him and call him to get a reassuring response which mostly I get, but the other days called and his phone was off, I instantly wondered why as it never is, then the rational part of me told me it was due to his battery dying, and 30 mins later he called me back.

I feel bad that I have these negetive thoughts about him, but if I can't get the reassurance I crave I makes me feel sick and anxious, I cry, breathe heavy and let it consume me and I can only be made better by him and being with him.

I have spoken to him about my thoughts which was very hard as I was expecting him to flip....I mean who wouldn't if your partner thought of u in such a bad way and questioned your behaviour. He was very good and reassured me, hugging me, looking me in my eyes and swearing to me that I'm his one and he loves me.
They days after he will text me amazingly lovely messages tellin me I'm his world and how lucky he is.

He has also said that as much as he can listen and try to understand he doesn't know what it feels like to be me so he can't really do any more than he does and suggested that I get some help.

Does this sound like ROCD to you?

Short of going to the docs and getting a diagnosis I have scoured the net and I have come here in the hope that I can deal with this myself.

Any suggestions of resources, methods of dealing with this will be appreciated.

[Tori x]

Anyone?!

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi and welcome to NMP

This might help you understand whether its ROCD:

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

Relationship Intrusive Thoughts - Obsessive doubts over the suitability of a relationship, one’s partner or one's own sexuality are the main focus for the obsessional thoughts. Obsessional thoughts include:

Constantly analysing the depth of feelings for one's partner, placing the partner and the relationship under a microscope and finding fault.
Constantly needing to seek reassurance and approval from one's partner.
Doubts that one's partner is being faithful.
Doubts that one may cheat on their partner.
Questioning one’s own sexuality, and having feelings, thoughts and impulses about being attracted to members of the same sex.
The constant analysing and questioning of the relationship and partner often places immense strain on the relationship and the result is a person with OCD will often end the relationship to rid themselves of the doubt and anxiety, which is usually often repeated with any subsequent relationship.

Reassurance, when used with ROCD, is a compulsion/ritual and whilst it seems to help at that time in the long run it is making it worse. This is because acting out a compulsion means it reinforces your anxiety in your subconscious.

Its going to be about being more comfortable with yourself and practicing acceptance that you don't need to be on alert for a possible danger. I know it sounds easy like that and the reality is that its far harder because you need to retrain your mind.

Ways you can try to tackle this are through therapy such as CBT (there are free online versions) or through online resources such as this one http://psychology.tools/obsessive-co...-disorder.html and I would recommend Mindfulness as this will teach you to be non judgemental and gain more control over your thoughts.

Try to understand your triggers. List them. Then when they occur look to tools such as Thought Records (see the link above) and rationalise them.

Also look at Cognitive Distortions (see Wiki, its accurate for this) as this will explain the negative thinking styles that anxiety disorder sufferers have. Once you learn these, you will be able to spot when your mind is turning negative and ignoring n, catastrophizing, emotionally reasoning, etc and you can plan tackling this in your Thought Records.

[Tori x]

Thank you for the reply and the suggestions I wonder if anyone else has similar feelings/thoughts to me?

[worrygirl12]

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Hi. This is probably such an old thread that no one will respond, but 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.