ROCD Success Story
Note: this is a story about my struggles with ROCD. It is not offered or intended as medical advice. It is based on my personal experience and beliefs. It may contain triggers for you. It will and can get better.
We talk about OCD primarily as a thought disorder, but I think that's misleading. OCD is, at least to me, primarily a feelings disorder.
I first realised I had OCD in 2014. I say realised because I was not diagnosed as such. I was listening to an old episode of Invisibilia — an NPR podcast — and it was a story about a harm-themed OCD. While the specific theme didn't mean much to me, the way they described the pattern of thinking did. It has taken me a long time to understand this, but paying attention to that pattern, and the way those thoughts make you feel, has been one of the most useful tools in my recovery.
In 2014 I was in a long-term and very happy relationship with my high-school sweetheart. We had been together for three or four years, after a long period of me trying to woo her. We had recently moved in together, were finishing uni, and were planning for the future. Then, seemingly overnight, I entered an obsessive spiral of intrusive thoughts. I don't remember why, but I suddenly felt I had to know with 100% certainty that I really loved my partner. The thought came with a lot of mental and bodily anxiety. That anxiety took over my nervous system and became my default emotional and mental state for the next year. How can you feel certain about your feelings for your partner when all you feel is anxiety and panic?
I write this all with 12 years of hindsight, therapy, and hard work. At the time, I basically fell apart. I had constant panic attacks. I saw a number of different psychologists, most of whom thought I was just young and confused with a touch of GAD. My partner and I moved into separate places, although somehow we stayed together. I had never thought or heard much about OCD aside from the general misconceptions about tidiness. It wasn't until I heard that podcast that I started to understand what was going on. I pulled out my phone and googled "can you have OCD about a relationship?"
The journey from that point to here has been long. I am now in a different relationship — although the first one didn't end because of my ROCD. Over a period of a few years I managed to dig myself out of that place. Learning what OCD was helped a lot. I did a lot of CBT around labelling thoughts, and a lot of mindfulness. I didn't do any ERP, didn't start any medication, and didn't have a psychologist who specialised in OCD. But I somehow recovered fully in that relationship, and had a number of OCD-free years before we eventually separated for other reasons.
It wasn't until 2024, when I started dating my now-current partner, that it came back. From almost day one of dating her, the old feeling was there. But it seemed significantly different this time — different enough that I didn't realise it was OCD again until a few months in. I found dating with OCD particularly difficult. I had no history of happy memories to fall back on (although mining those memories is itself a compulsion for me), and dating is, for most people, a period necessarily filled with uncertainty. I couldn't handle that uncertainty — so from day one I was chasing intrusive thoughts down rabbit holes with endless compulsions. Checking my feelings of attraction. Checking how attracted I was to her. Checking how happy other people seemed in their relationships. Comparing how I felt now to how I'd felt in past relationships. Fixating on perceived flaws. Breakup compulsions I felt unable to act on. Every second of every interaction with her was filtered through this lens of judgement, analysis, and anxiety.
All of which is fuel for the OCD fire. If you always feel anxious around your partner, isn't that a sign it's wrong? If you panic when you get a text from them, isn't that a sign? If you struggle to kiss them, or say anything affectionate, or just enjoy their company… so many signs it's wrong. I felt sure I was in the wrong relationship. That I was lying to myself and to her about my feelings. And that one day it would all end in catastrophe.
My partner and I celebrate our two-year anniversary today. We're living together and are trying for a baby. I am happy. I can say, with a lot less doubt than before, that I love her and want to be with her. I still have moments of that old feeling. Bad weekends here and there. But I feel like I have my life back. I believe my path out of that hell was made possible this time by three main things: ERP with a qualified psychologist, escitalopram (or a similar SSRI), and a community of people I can talk to about my struggles.
I won't say too much about the specifics of ERP — that information is everywhere — but it absolutely works. It started working for me within a few minutes of my first exposure. (If anyone wants advice about my specific routines and exposures, I'm happy to answer questions in the comments.) SSRIs played an equally big role. I had never taken them until about a year ago. I was scared of the side effects. I felt too proud. But being on them — after a brief period of hell with increased anxiety just after starting — has absolutely changed my ability to recover. They've given me space to breathe. By taking the edge off my anxious response to intrusive thoughts, they've allowed me to engage with the exposures properly.
With hindsight, I can see how my search for certainty was the very thing stopping me from feeling it. I was so desperate for confirmation of my feelings that I looked for it everywhere. And when your analytical, anxious brain is constantly checking for proof of love, you will not find it. The feelings I was searching for — love, attraction, affection, trust, compassion — only come when you're not looking for them. In the small moments of a relationship, when you're just being, not thinking.
We talk about OCD primarily as a thought disorder, but I think that's misleading. OCD is, to me, primarily a feelings disorder. It is our reaction — in both body and mind — to these thoughts that creates the discomfort. I think we subconsciously decide that if a thought makes us feel this bad, it must be true. But when you can learn to sit with the discomfort, and stop trying to chase the anxiety away, the thought and the feeling start to come apart. Thoughts are not real. They are just thoughts.
Finally, after all this yapping, it is the community of fellow OCD sufferers that has helped me most, maybe without realising it. So I guess I wanted to give something back, and share my success story. I'm sure I'll have ups and downs from here, especially with some big life changes on the horizon. But I'm more relaxed about it now. If something comes up that makes me feel that way again, I'll try to pay attention to the feeling of it first, not the content of the thoughts. And then hopefully, I can say: it's just OCD again.
Jonny