Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time to explain this further, and for being so comprehensive about all of this . I do understand what you are saying.

I have been seeing my therapist for over two years now. I did tell him about this I believe. I believe he thinks my anxiety has another source which we still didn’t find. He seems to think there is a part of me that “kills things off” when things become close or alive with other people or even with myself. I believe he thinks the reason is more related to my parents, but he usually doesn’t answer direct or general questions so much such as “why is this happening”, because I think he doesn’t want to label me or my experiences or impose one interpretation on me.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Midnight.

Dear Anita,

I continued to think about what you said regarding my experiences with my brother possibly being somehow related to my current issues.

I was wondering if maybe you could elaborate a bit more on how you think this kind of connection would be created – how and why would it create this kind of pattern?
The people I always dated were always very different from my brother and I never felt unsafe with them – meaning they never yelled or hit or did anything like that, so I don’t think I am somehow re-creating my relationship with him and reliving the same emotions. I’m not saying you suggested that I was, just trying to explore different ideas.

I know you don’t have the answers as no one can really know, I was just wondering if you maybe had some guesses or insights which could help me make some more sense of that idea.

Thank you.

Dear Anita,

Thank you, I understand what you are saying. I believe you are right.

I will bring this up with my therapist and see if we can explore this further.

I really appreciate your insight and support, it means a lot. Thank you.

Dear Anita,

Your last post really resonates with me, but I am wondering why it is that I sometimes get this “trapped” feeling, mostly around people.

I sometimes had that reaction with friends too when I was younger, I would feel that the friendship or the person was somehow weighing on me and getting me anxious and I would find some way, or excuse, to distance myself from that friend.

But going further back, I really cannot understand why this should be. I had a good childhood and was loved by my parents. I don’t remember feeling trapped around them, I liked being with them and was not scared of them or anything like that. I was feeling trapped and scared sometimes around my brother, he was a few years older than me and would terrorize me quite a lot when my parents were away. I did feel trapped in that situation with him when we were alone in the house, I kept waiting for my parents to get back from work so that I would feel safe again. But could that really be the source of all of this? Could it really have been THAT bad…? I have a good relationship with him now, although we’ve had our differences in the past, he’s not an easy person.

“if you did not get so alarmed by having those thoughts, if you took their power away, that could help very much. When you have those doubts, does it make you think you have to do something as a result of the thoughts? And the doing something scares you?”

You really hit the nail on the head.
I’ll describe how it used to be with my ex and how it is now in my current relationship.

With my ex the thoughts were usually centered around the worry that I didn’t really love him, that the relationship wasn’t meant to be because he was somehow wrong for me. Because I never felt in love with him in the beginning, and he was the one who insisted more on us dating whereas I wasn’t so sure, I later felt that this meant the relationship was somehow not “valid” or “real”. That I wasn’t really attracted to him and was only with him because he pushed me into it and so on. There might have been some truth in that, but I have stayed with him for a few years and endured these thoughts all the time and was constantly anxious. Whenever I would think about that (which was most of the time), I would tell myself that these thoughts meant I had to break up with him. So the worry and rumination were about – should I break up with him or not. That made me very anxious.
At some point it became too much and I ended it and felt mostly relief.

Now with my husband, the thoughts are more centered around a specific “flaw” that he has, or at least it’s a flaw in my eyes. I keep thinking about it and getting very anxious about it, comparing him to other people, even to people in the street I don’t even know, and keep convincing myself that he’s somehow less valid as a partner for me than almost anyone else. I know how crazy this sounds, especially since I’m not even talking about a physical flaw that can be seen right away on strangers.

When I get really bothered by these thoughts, I am no longer tormented so much by the fear of “having” to leave him because I have already decided I won’t and chose to marry him, so it is something I know I don’t want to do (break up).
I am however petrified by the idea that these worries are the truth – that I cannot be truly happy with someone like him. And so my thoughts this time around are less centered on an action I feel I need to take, they have taken the form of determining whether or not I could still be happy with him. Although in these moments of extreme anxiety it seems to me there is no question about it – that I obviously cannot be truly happy and fulfilled with him and would therefore be doomed to leading an empty, unsatisfying life where I only pretend to love him and actually be dead inside and lying. It is however very very disturbing as I then feel I am stuck in this situation and there is no way out. The “action” in this case presents itself more as the necessity to “look reality in its face”, so whenever I’m happy with him or laugh from something he said and so on, if I’m entering this state of mind at the time the thoughts would surface and say something like “you think you’re enjoying his company but you really are just compromising and settling, it could be so much better with someone else, stop lying to yourself” and so on. And it’s making me very anxious. It really does sound like some creepy mental illness… which is less scary to me than the idea that these thoughts are right and true.

I’ve had similar feelings and worries in every committed relationship I’ve had or every budding relationship where I knew the guy was interested in me. And the “action” thought was always about breaking up. Sometimes I didn’t even know what was bothering me in the other person or the relationship, I only felt this anxiety and strong feeling that something was wrong and I needed to get away from the person and not see them anymore. I did not get this so much, or not at all, in relationships where I didn’t feel secure in the other person’s interest in me. But these usually ended quite quickly anyway.

Sorry, I wrote quite a lot…
Thank you for listening.

Dear Nina,

Thank you for your post, I think you really got it right.

I know “Up” and I knew what this video was, I tried to watch it again just now but couldn’t go through with it because it is just so sad and touching. Thank you for linking this even though I’m crying right now:) I think it gets to me even more now because we are trying for a baby and have had some misfortunes with that so far.

I agree with the points you listed, you are so right. This thing I am dealing with is so tricky and consuming that it sometimes takes over me and I feel trapped in the relationship rather than seeing things as they truly are – which is how you described it.
My husband really is a great guy and when I let him and myself be, instead of judging and looking for the bad things, it can really feel great to be with him.
The problem is that this thing is always lurking, and when it takes over it just makes all the good things disappear. And it demands so much attention and I can only hear this voice telling me how everything is wrong.

Thank you, Anita.

My therapy was helpful so far in helping me manage my relationship with my mother which was a source of stress to me before. I cannot “prove” that the therapy changed that, I can only observe that this aspect of my life has greatly improved since I’ve been seeing this therapist. Also, I was having a hard time accepting the possibility of having children and of getting married. I have since got married without too much anxiety and have decided I did want to have children, which I believe is what I always wanted but was afraid of.

These are big steps for me, because I was always worried I will not be able to make such decisions without suffering from constant doubts and pain.

However I do feel that the ROCD issue is rooted deeper than that and is probably my main issue, and that some of my life circumstances lately have probably contributed to the increased level of anxiety. So maybe it’s not surprising that we haven’t managed to solve it just yet.
Also I think I have been resisting the therapy quite a lot. My therapist hasn’t said this to me in these words but that’s what I conclude from things he says and from the somewhat stuck feeling we are both getting, I believe.

I like him because I feel that he is truly present and listens to what I say, and he also speaks more often than some therapists, I’ve been to others before and some of them hardly speak two words during a session, I do feel it is more helpful when the therapist responds to what’s being said. Also, I once saw him in possibly my worst “spike” ever, and I felt a lot better after speaking to him. Something in what he said helped me a lot that day and it was so precious and meaningful to me, because I was such a mess before seeing him.

It does help to share all of this with you, thank you for your kind presence.
And again, please don’t feel the need to respond to everything or at all, I don’t want to exhaust you:)

Oh and one last question:

– Do you think I could have ROCD even if I have never presented any other symptoms of OCD? I have always been an anxious person and have had some panic attacks when I was a teenager. Throughout my life I have had periods of worrying and being anxious about specific topics, but never had any of the “classic” OCD symptoms or obsessions.

Thanks…