Thank you Anita for your input and advice.

Your intention was very clear in speaking about your therapist, rest assured:) I was just thinking out loud, on the off chance that I could see him. Because as you obviously know, it is very hard to find a good, committed therapist. I thought mine was, but now I am not so sure anymore.

I agree with you, I always wanted to have a diagnosis because I believe it does help, especially with an issue such as ROCD which is by nature very misleading and tricky – you’re not always sure if you actually have a problem or not. But it seems that Freudian therapists are not too keen on diagnoses, or at least not too keen on sharing them with their patients. They seem to think it is bad and limiting to “label”. And it probably is for some people, but not for me.

You sharing your experience with me is very valuable to me and I really appreciate it, thanks again. I will try to manage the new “spike” as well as I can for now, and give a serious thought to how I want to proceed with my therapist. I will probably start by confronting him about the present state of the therapy, and try to look into other options in parallel.
Will update here if there’s anything new.

Midnight

Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time and the effort to writing back to me in such detail.

I am very glad to hear that you have managed to heal from your ROCD and have had such a good experience with your therapist. It is very encouraging for me to hear that. From what you told, it seems it might have been this specific person, rather than a specific method, which helped you so much. I believe it is quite rare for a therapist to put in extra time or allow communication in between sessions in this way, he must have been very committed to your process and maybe a bit more flexible about the “rules”. All in all, he sounds like a rare find.

My goal is obviously to heal completely from this, not just vent, because it is making my life miserable. And the venting itself does not bring much relief at all. But thinking back, I guess I have always had some level of anxiety at times in my life, maybe not as a very young child but I believe it started around age 9-10. So this makes me wonder – maybe I’m just “like that”. Maybe this is my character, my physiology even, and there’s nothing to be done. Although I would have much preferred having anxiety about any other issue, or just general anxiety, instead of having it evolve around the one person I am closest to. I saw you wrote on another thread that you are still dealing with anxiety. From what you told here, you have managed to break the link between your anxiety and your partner, and this is a goal I would give anything to achieve. So to answer what you were saying – my goal IS to heal from this completely, I’m just not sure that this is possible anymore.

I do wonder as well about leaving my therapist – will that not be similar to finding him inadequate and “breaking up”, like I oftendid with my relationships? I had intended to remain with him and try to trust him, also as a way to break this pattern of leaving relationships.

I have two questions for you about your therapist if you don’t mind – did he diagnose you with ROCD? Or did he prefer not to label you or your feelings? And also – I suppose you live in the US? Because reading about him made me wonder if I could not see him myself:) I hope these questions were not too impertinent…

I really don’t know how to thank you for being here, it’s such a big help, you have no idea.

Dear Anita,

Thank you so much for your detailed reply. A lot to think about there.

I guess for some reason it’s still hard for me to believe that these issues stem from my childhood experiences. Maybe because I am under the influence of these thoughts at the moment and so I tend to think that these are all “excuses”, and the issue is much simpler – that the relationship is not right.

I understand what you are saying about the child’s perspective and the adult perspective though. This rings very true. But I wonder how do you go back to things that you experienced as a child and use them to feel better in the present, do you just try to remember more about these experiences somehow? I really don’t know how to approach this, how to go from here and explore this further. Do you try to get in touch with more memories, that you have forgotten about? And if so, how?

Please don’t feel obliged to answer my questions about this, I realize this is probably stuff that cannot really be addressed so much in this format. I was just wondering if you had some general idea of how these things are accessed or processed in a therapy such as the one you underwent.

I do take into consideration your thoughts about my current therapist. You might very well be right. I think I will gave him a few more chances, in the hope that my sharing my experiences with my brother did open up some new path. Also, I will try to speak to him about my need of clarity and direction from him, I have not really spoken to him about this but accepted this as being his style, as this was also the way it was with other therapists I have been to. Maybe he will adapt his style a bit if I bring it up in a more outspoken way.

I do believe that the therapist you have been to used a different method to Freudian ones though, so maybe it’s more a question of trying something else if this doesn’t work out. I have been wary of CBT because from reading about it it felt to me a bit simplistic, like training your mind to ignore or control specific thoughts. Not an in-depth approach, but more like a training of sorts. I was afraid that if I try that it will only help for a while, and then my issues might evolve into a new form because they would not have been addressed under the surface.

I admit that lately I have started viewing therapy as a place for me to share thoughts and ideas that I can’t share with my partner for obvious reasons (because it’s mostly regarding my feelings for him), and to vent off my feelings without hurting him. I have pretty much accepted the idea that I would just need to see a therapist forever (not necessarily this one, but someone). Because I’m just an anxious person and I need this support.

Thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to respond. It really is a big help.

Dear Anita,

Thank you so much for your reassuring response. It does help to know that you believe that my core issues are not related to my husband.

Because sometimes it feels as though if only I hadn’t been in this relationship things would be better, more peaceful. But when I do get some perspective back on it, I don’t really believe it’s true. Because I have always had this feeling of dread, stress and distance from my partner in any long relationship (by long I mean, more than 2-3 dates). Sometimes even very early on.

I will consider sharing more about my family but I am not sure how comfortable I would feel about that, even if I omit some details as you suggested. It just feels too public for me, when I have no idea who might be reading and how many people will see this.

I understand what you are saying about the therapy. Maybe it is because I have been too defensive with my therapist, or because I do not know how to access these more ancient layers of my psyche. Or maybe because there are no deep, dark secrets there to be revealed? I really don’t know. He responds to what I bring to the sessions but does not suggest methods, or asks questions, usually.

So I’ve been feeling better since I last wrote here and now I’m pretty much back to square one again.
Feeling worried that I might have settled and compromised, and my partner is not a good enough match for me on an intellectual level. A week ago I was very happy to be with him but now the doubts again. All because I read something silly online about people who feel that they have an intellectual gap with their partner. And because we had a somewhat philosophical discussion lately and I felt that he wasn’t very advanced/deep in his thinking. I’m so scared now that maybe all of this is true and I’m in the wrong relationship for me and could’ve been happier and more fulfilled with someone else.

Please help:/