Relationship (R)OCD — What Is It?
A Personal Account of The Signs And Treatment
Having worries, doubts or concerns over your relationship is normal. We all have them. Without worries, we’d cease to overcome challenges, or ensure we’re doing what’s best for us, or them.
But there are some instances where our relationship-directed questions become excessive. Where our self-doubt or doubt about the other person overpower us. We may overanalyse the smallest of things, experience high-levels of anxiety and ruminate endless over right or wrong. We may also feel compelled into certain behaviours in order to self-soothe, unable to stop ourselves from carrying them out — causing distruction in their wake.
In this instance, our relationship worries veer away from mere worries and into full blown obsessions. They become an OCD.
In today’s article I wanted to speak to relationship obsessive compulsive disorder, or ROCD as it can be called. What is ROCD exactly, and how does it differ from more generalised anxiety around relationships? As someone who has suffered greatly at it’s hands before, and still does from time to time, I’ll be sharing some common signs and symptoms, as well as my opinion on treatment.
I was to caveat this article by saying that I am not a medical professional, and do not have the right to diagnose. I am merely speaking from personal experience as someone who has suffered from ROCD and finds it important to share my story and understanding. I back my statements scientifically where appropriate.
ROCD: Beyond Relationship Anxiety
As I said at the beginning of this article, it’s very normal to have doubts and fears in your relationship. Relationships are not perfect; things will happen and emotions will be heightened from time to time. Within reason, this is fine.
There is however a clear difference between more generalised fears and ROCD. Let’s look at some of them.
1. Persistently Invasive and Disruptive Thoughts
Whereas individuals without OCD may worry from time to time, these worries generally come up and can eventually be subdued — by your own reasoning or the comfort or others.
ROCD sufferers will experience persistent and disruptive thoughts in the form of constant mental chatter and feelings of anxiety around their relationships. Thoughts that are difficult to calm or distract from. For example, a key worry I had in my past relationship was around not having feelings for my partner. I use to get incredibly anxious that I was leading them on, being disingenuous, and would eventually hurt them. The consistency of such thoughts are what turns mere anxieties into obsessions. It’s difficult to note prioritise or obsess when your brain is full of worried thoughts.
Even when I reasoned to myself why I had feelings, like how I didn’t need to be feeling level 100 towards someone at all times for me to “love” them — a limiting belief I held — ,my thoughts did not subdue.
Instead, the opposite happened.
They got worse.
Before you know it you’re arguing with yourself, getting frustrating, anxiously spiraling, and eventually feeling compelled into bad decisions. At my worst, I broke up with my ex several times in one afternoon — a compulsive act my anxiety kept telling me to do in order to feel better (more on why this doesn’t work, later).
OCD experts call this “feeding the monster” — whereby the more we invest in our irrational thoughts the harder is to break free from them. This inability to put a stop to anxious thoughts is believed to be down to dysfunctions in a brain area called the caudate nucleus — which partly functions to help us put a “stop” to worry signals from our emotional brain. Dysfunctions in this area, and it’s neighbouring structure would make sense, as OCD is build upon an inability to calm one’s worrying thoughts and resist compulsions.
As a result of this increased difficulty to stop ourselves from worrying, we become frustrated at best and incredibly distressed at worst. Arguing with ourselves back and forth — reason and worry waging an internal war. At my worst I lost weight, was consumed with irrational thoughts, and found it difficult to engage in the present — let alone sustain a healthy relationship that was broken off, multiple times.
2. Compulsive Behaviours
For the ROCD sufferer, in failing to calm their anxious thoughts with internal reasoning, we will automatically turn to our external word for self-soothing. With ROCD our compulsions will be relationship oriented. These behaviours aimed at self-soothing are what psychologists call “compulsions” and can be especially damaging when it comes to ROCD, due to the fact it will directly impact someone else.
Typical ROCD compulsions can look like:
Asking for constant reassurance from friends, your partner or family about how you feel, your compatibility with your partner, or their innocence — if you OCD is fixed on them doing something wrong.
Fact-checking and deep-diving obsessively on relationship-related topics online and on forums out of a need to find reassurance. Unfortunately, if you look at ROCD or other OCD forums, they are filled by people looking for reassurance; sharing their stories in the hopes others will tell them they aren’t as bad as their anxiety thinks they are.
Being hyper-alert to any potential trigger and checking your feelings moment to moment. Your partner may say something nice to you, which triggers an anxious reaction in you and leads to an obsessive cycle over if you feel the same way, etc.
Comparing your relationship to others as a means to reassure yourself that yours is good.
The problem with the above, and all OCD compulsions in general is that they never bring long-term relief to the sufferer. They may do temporarily, for mere minutes perhaps, but not once reality has set in. Ironically, in carrying out a compulsion you’re only sending the message back to yourself that something IS wrong which feeds into the OCD cycle. This is where ROCD differs from general anxiety, which can more easily be calmed.
Individuals with ROCD stay in a perpetual state of anxiety, filled with invasive thoughts that cause distress. I’d like to say I’ve recovered from the worst of my ROCD, but the invasive thoughts still persist in the back of my mind — as if my brain is stuck on high-alert. I can manage them and accept their presence, but it can still be tiresome from time to time.
3. Triggers and Avoidance
Each OCD has it’s own set of triggers unique to the theme. Individuals with cleanliness OCD may struggle to be around kitchen surfaces, whereas those with existential OCD may find it difficult to sit with reality without being triggered by a thought that wonders if they are real or in a simulation.
At their worst, ROCD sufferers may struggle to be around anything that could trigger their relationship-oriented thoughts and fears. For example, I sometimes struggle when a partner expresses their feelings towards me — it can immediately make me uncomfortable, mainly due to the thoughts that fill my mind that pull me to seek reassurance.
Others may avoid certain songs that speak of love, romcoms or romantic relationships entirely. It was a struggle to step into my current relationship, knowing that I may be faced with the same fears I was before. Ultimately, I had to choose love, because our growth is only ever found where we’re uncomfortable — especially when it comes to ROCD recovery.
Briefly Touching On ROCD Treatment
ROCD treatment is complex. In my personal opinion there is much more going on beyond a potentially dysregulated brain area. It is often identity and moral-based, so there are likely limiting or irrational beliefs that are driving the fears. For example, why is it we believe we may cause harm to someone? What is it about relationships that make us feel unsafe? Why are we looking for perfectionism in our relationships? Societal, political and religious, and sexual factors may contribute.
Treatment, again, in my experience, requires the strengthening of brain areas involved in self-regulation, the dampening of brain areas involved in anxiety; exposure to the anxieties that fear us, and the dismantling of the beliefs and assumptions that underpin our worries.
OCD and PTSD/CPTSD also share close ties. This makes sense to me as trauma, especially trauma inflicted at a young age, can severely impact our world-view and sense of self. Driving those bliefs that feed into the fears I mentioned previously.
On a neuronal level, there is a known link between serotonin levels and OCD in the brain. Pharmacological treatment with anti-depressants such as SSRIs can help increase brain-serotonin and are effective in dampening the presence of invasive thoughts and anxious feelings.
Whilst SSRIs help relieve symptoms, as they did for me, I do believe that these should be used in conjunction with therapies that tackle the underlying beliefs and teach us to self-regulate . I am someone who believes that mental ailments don’t occur in a silo.
There is often a basis for such difficulties that can be uprooted.
Finally, treatment can also involve changes in daily practice. Therapy being a good addition, but practices such as meditation are also known to help with OCD symptoms.
Thank you for reading this article. My name is Joe, and I write about personal growth and relationships. Subscribe and follow the page for frequent updates.