Dear Allison,
I recently discovered (thanks to your work!) that what I thought was garden-variety GAD is actually OCD, and just knowing that has already led to reframing and more progress on my mental health journey. Where I'm stuck is that when my relationship-centered ROCD triggers (I see an attractive person - oh no am I not attracted to my partner enough? someone tells me something cute about their relationship - oh no why doesn't stuff like that happen in my relationship? Etc., and down we spiral) it's hard for me to distinguish between what is "just" mental illness/codependency and what are legitimate doubts/incompatibilities. Obviously no relationship is perfect, so take a hypothetical example like he doesn't text much when you're apart because he hates the phone - would my dislike of this be something I can/should work around because a healthy person can tolerate compromise on communication and the dislike is because I feel insecure, or is it valid to want someone who texts more often? Like, how do you decide which category your complaints fit into? This example is something I've struggled with in the past, and in pretty much every case where a partner was willing to text all the time, we had poor boundaries and they enabled my codependency, so I purposely worked on my need to be in constant contact with a partner. Before I would have said well my need to have more regular communication means we should break up, but I can tell now it was really the steady reassurance that I wanted, not the actual constant contact. The spiral of "is this a real incompatibility or just my mental illness?" becomes obsessive for me more than the content of the spiral itself. I guess that's the million dollar question for ROCD. Any insight would be appreciated! Thanks!
Best,
My Brain Never Shuts Off
Dear My Brain Never Shuts Off,
The question of incompatible versus relationship anxiety can be a constant dilemma that wreaks havoc over brains and relationships. There is so much societal messaging out there that “when you know you know,” but OCD has been referred to as the “doubting disease,” making such certainty feel impossible to those of us who suffer from it. Instead of feeling sure, our brains like to get stuck in rumination in an attempt to protect us from “danger,” when in reality few things are more emotionally draining than constantly feeling like you might be making a huge mistake. So, what do we do? How do we distinguish between valid concern and misguided worry?