Living With Ocd Quotes

Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don't know any other way to live than by extremes because thier emotional theromastat is broken.

My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.

I'm tired of being inside my head. I want to live out here, with you.

It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.

Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over. I know how wrong this is. When I was a child, I didn't understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn't comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite--I'd be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn't have access to the body's emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology. It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again.

I guess I wonder what it would be like, to be living their live instead of mine.

My reflection followed me mercilessly in mirrors, car doors, shop windows. I lived in a world of circus mirrors, the grotesque distortion of my body looking back at me everywhere.

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands . . . and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

People who live with OCD drag a metal sea anchor around. Obsession is a break, a source of drag, not a badge of creativity, a mark of genius or an inconvenient side effect of some greater function.

You are living far too much in the realms of your head. That is an ugly, mean, scary place to be. I am not just saying your head is nasty, everyone's head is. You need to vacate that premise immediately and start living in your heart. Your heart is a much nicer social venue.

The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

Perfection I've lived with the pretense of perfection for seventeen years. Give my room a cursory inspection, you'd think I have OCD. But it's only habit and not obsession that keeps it all orderly. Of course, I don't want to give the impression that it's all up to me.

You're helpless to the behaviour but the effort involved is just unbelievable.

People who live with OCD drag a mental sea anchor around. Obsession is a brake, a source of drag, not a badge of creativity, a mark of genius or an inconvenient side effect of some greater function.

I could think of nothing but the loneliness, of being stuck in that glass room with only OCD for company. OCD, the bully; OCD, the oppressor; OCD, the destroyer of lives; OCD.

The tight ball of muck inside me—I opened it. I opened the shame, and it crumbled next to yours. This connection—the one I didn’t think we were going to have—let some of my muck go. And when it left my body, it evaporated into nothing. It had been living in me, but as soon as it was exposed, it disappeared.

Sometimes, I think about what would happen if you were gone. If I woke up from charging overnight and you weren't here. I would look around for you, calling your name. I wouldn't find you. I would be alone. that would make me sad. ... I know you would never leave me behind, but I think about it. I don't mean to. Why am I like that?

We might consider our role as parents not to be to reduce the pain our children must live through, but to help them learn how to suffer less.

I felt as if I were living just above the surface of my life. It was lonely and utterly exhausting trying to make sure that everything was perfect all the time. No truth left unsaid, no hand or surface unwashed. Whoever said that high school was the best time of our lives definitely did not have OCD.

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I’ve always preferred moths to butterflies. They aren’t flashy or cocky; they mind their own business and just try to blend in with their surroundings and live their lives. They don’t want to be seen, and that’s something I can relate to.

Someone asked me recently, what it is like to live with OCD. I paused for a while and said, imagine watching your sibling getting run over by a truck in front of your eyes, not once, not twice, but repeatedly like in a looped video, or your child getting beaten up at school, or your partner getting abused by strangers on the street - and the only way you can stop that event from happening is to keep on repeating the task that you were carrying out when the vision first appeared in your mind, until some other less emotionally agonizing thought breaks the loop of that particular vision and replaces it - and though you know, it's just a thought and not the destiny of the people you love, you feel it excruciatingly necessary to keep repeating the task until the thought passes, so that nothing bad happens to your loved ones - and that's what it is like inside the head of a person with OCD, every moment of their life.

I am better. I don't know whether it's for good, or if one day something might make me abnormal again. But that's the funny thing about living. If you do it properly, you don't know how the next sentence will begin.

How could you live somewhere so icy cold and imposing, so clearly in conflict with the rest of the city, the rest of the human population, and stay in love? As far as I can tell, love takes place in townhouses and cozy cottages and cramped studio apartments and rundown guest houses. This place might as well be an office building or a spaceship.

we began the process of learning how incredibly difficult it is to live with someone who is totally anal and slightly OCD (ahem…Victor). And someone who is perpetually accidentally hot-gluing herself to the carpet, and who is sort of mentally unstable, but in an “At-least-I-still-remember-how-pants-work” kind of way (cough…that’d be me). Victor remarked that comparing myself with the sometimes naked hermit next door wasn’t exactly a strong mental-wellness benchmark, especially since I often ended up pantsless myself. I raised my eyebrow at his seemingly seductive remark until I realized he was referring to the time he found me half naked because I’d just hot-glued my jeans to the carpet.

Many of the haters call me mental, which, by the way, is quite true, both metaphorically and clinically. It's true clinically because I am a person on the spectrum with OCD, and metaphorically, because I refuse to accept the sanity of unaccountability as the right way of civilized life. I am not going to glorify the issues of mental illness by saying that it's a super power or that it makes a person special. On the contrary, it makes things extremely difficult for a person. But guess what! Indifference is far more dangerous than any mental illness. Because mental illness can be managed with treatment, but there is no treatment for indifference, there is no treatment for coldness, there is no treatment for apathy. So, let everyone hear it, and hear it well - in a world where indifference is deemed as sanity what's needed is a whole lot of mentalness, a whole lot of insanity, insanity for justice, insanity for equality, insanity for establishing the fundamental rights of life and living for each and every human being, no matter who they are, what they are, or where they are.

Because now mental health disorders have gone “mainstream”. And for all the good it’s brought people like me who have been given therapy and stuff, there’s a lot of bad it’s brought too. Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. “Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I’m so OCD.” NO YOU’RE FUCKING NOT. “Oh my God, I was so nervous about that presentation, I literally had a panic attack.” NO YOU FUCKING DIDN’T. “I’m so hormonal today. I just feel totally bipolar.” SHUT UP, YOU IGNORANT BUMFACE. Told you I got angry. These words – words like OCD and bipolar – are not words to use lightly. And yet now they’re everywhere. There are TV programmes that actually pun on them. People smile and use them, proud of themselves for learning them, like they should get a sticker or something. Not realizing that if those words are said to you by a medical health professional, as a diagnosis of something you’ll probably have for ever, they’re words you don’t appreciate being misused every single day by someone who likes to keep their house quite clean. People actually die of bipolar, you know? They jump in front of trains and tip down bottles of paracetamol and leave letters behind to their devastated families because their bullying brains just won’t let them be for five minutes and they can’t bear to live with that any more. People also die of cancer. You don’t hear people going around saying: “Oh my God, my headache is so, like, tumoury today.” Yet it’s apparently okay to make light of the language of people’s internal hell

Since we choose our bodies and the lessons that come with living that life, those with crippling imperfections--a physical handicap, maybe, or a psychiatric struggle related to depression or OCD--have done so to grow their souls in some way. I wish my body were a lot of things it’s not--relaxed instead of anxious, five foot seven and a hundred twenty pounds instead of five foot one and…never mind.

No way," I tell her. "Once was enough for me." And I mean it, though it has nothing to do with Paul and his blue eyes, and everything to do with how very, very tired I am with this hidden battle for my own thoughts, the burden of counting, the work it takes to hide it. The Djinn hates it when I'm adrift in the world, trying to live my life; he prefers me anchored to my home, where I can feed his need for numbers without fear of discovery.

Uncle Van was my only uncle and therefore my favorite uncle. Mom had a nickname for him, which was Van “Are You Going to Eat the Rest of That?” Branch. He lives in Hawaii, in a caretaker’s cottage on a huge estate that belongs to a Hollywood movie producer. The Hollywood producer was hardly ever there, but he must have OCD because he pays Van to go to the house every day and flush the toilets. The Hollywood producer also has a house in Aspen, and one winter the pipes froze and the toilets overflowed and wrecked a bunch of antiques so he’s totally paranoid about it happening again, even though pipes can’t freeze in Hawaii.

Addiction, OCD, and mood disorders like depression and anxiety share a central feature: a narrow self-focus and intrusive rumination. For addiction, that rumination is cyclical, quieted only temporarily by the object of the given addiction—whether it is a substance or a behavior—and then it is set in motion again as soon as the object fades from focus. For OCD and eating disorders, that rumination manifests in uncontrollable compulsive behavior. For depression, it manifests as a sense of failing, catastrophization, and guilt. Hendricks sees this short-circuiting of rumination as the most significant potential benefit of psychedelics. “You think of somebody who’s addicted to a drug, and they’re almost spinning their wheels, thinking about how am I going to get it next? And if you can have an experience in which you’re suddenly thinking outside of yourself, you break from these self-nagging thoughts. Suddenly, you’re not even thinking about your desire, your craving, for that

Q. How can I be certain that what I fear will happen will never really happen? A. Sadly, the answer is you can't be certain! If you suffer from OCD you probably want a 100 percent guarantee that you will never do anything dangerous or that no harm will ever come to you or your family members. Unfortunately, life does not work like this. If I think about it, I know that there is no guarantee that I won't be hit by a car coming home from work today - but somehow my brain automatically accepts the very small chance of this happening and so permits me to go on living my life. More than two thousand years ago the Buddha (a great psychologist besides being a religious teacher) warned that one of the key things that makes us suffer is that we always want more than we will actually get - whether what we want is material like gold and jewels, or (my addition) in the case of OCD, more certainty than you will ever achieve. Thus the solution the Buddha might have offered you in northern India those thousands of years ago might have been something like this: "To stop suffering you must learn to accept that you will never achieve as much certainty as you want, no matter how much you pursue it; so it is up to you to choose: Either accept this truth and live your life happily, or fight against this truth and continue to suffer." Let me say it again for emphasis: you will never be certain that you won't act on the urges you have, or that the terrible things you fear will happen will not actually happen - but I can assure you that the odds of these things actually happening are small enough that it is not worth wasting your life trying (in vain) to get 100 percent certainty. Better to trust in yourself, your religious beliefs, or in evolution having prepared us well for surviving in this world. If evidence from brain studies better helps to convince you this is true, brain imaging studies of OCD sufferers now suggest that there really is something wrong with their "certainty system"; whatever automatically lets someone without OCD feel that things are OK does not function correctly in the OCD sufferer's brain (who then tries to convince himself that everything is OK, eventually becoming tired and frustrated when he cannot use other brain functions to achieve 100 percent certainty).

When you look at the impossibly long list of symptoms and maladies for which antidepressants can be prescribed, it’s practically farcical. These drugs are indicated for classic signs of depression as well as all of the following: premenstrual syndrome, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder, anorexia and binge eating, pain, irritable bowel, and explosive disorders fit for anger management class. Some doctors prescribe them for arthritis, hot flashes, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, and panic disorder. The

a celebration of the president’s bravery during the campaign, rendered in shiny black and white, like a giant Victorian steel engraving executed by OCD fairies. The president stood smiling, her arms outstretched to America. Her opponent loomed behind her, as he once actually had, Verity herself having watched this debate live. Seeing this now, she recalled her own sickened disbelief at his body language, the shadowing, his deliberate violation of his opponent’s personal space. “I don’t think anyone I know believes there was ever any real chance of him winning,” she said to Eunice. “I don’t know whether I did myself, but I was still scared shitless of it.” She was looking at how the artist had rendered his hands. Grabby.

OCD is a terrible neurological and genetic disorder that cannot be cured. At best, it can be managed. And, as we’ll see, managing the disorder comes down to managing one’s values.

The next step is to encourage the kids to choose a value that is more important than their OCD value and to focus on that.

DO YOU THINK I WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS? Do you think that I wake up in the morning and say, ‘You know what would be really fun, let’s spend hours and hours locked in my head, let’s not leave my room, and hey, while we’re at it, let’s cut out all the people who care, because there really is nothing better, no, I cannot think of anything I would like to do more, than to reject the perfect, happy life I could have, and choose instead to live stuck on repeat in my own private hell’?

Pain of mind is worse than pain of body.” —Publius Syrus

I feel so terrible.” “Why?” “For not noticing.” “You couldn’t have. I live my life trying to come across as normal. All my energy seems to go into making sure no one does notice anything at all. If you knew, that would have meant I’d failed.

Until that moment, I'd been living in my own little universe of good-luck hell.

As a writer, I get that it’s hard to make a compelling movie about two people who meet at a house party, share similar interests, get married, live another fifty years in harmony, and then die. But real life doesn’t need to be dramatic to be enjoyable.

Being a parent is hard. It's way harder than people assume it will be before it happens to them. It causes stress, overstimulation, sleep-deprivation, and worst of all, the sense that people are watching to see how good you are at it and how good a person you are in general. It may seem as if people care about you more, focus on you more, now that you are responsible for children. And children will press your buttons and try to make you frustrated, because making you /anything/ is fascinating to them. But what your children can't understand yet is that if you have OCD and you're stressed, exhausted, frustrated and over-stimulated, your disorder flares up. And when your disorder flares up, it targets everything you care about the most and tries to bind it to a living nightmare. This disorder can trick you into thinking you're the worst of the worst. But you are not the best or worst parent who ever lived. You are just a person with thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Remember, being self-compassionate mostly just means being honest. When you make a mindful statement about fearing harming your children, you are being honest about your experience. When you criticize yourself for having thoughts and for being afraid, you are essentially lying to yourself about what is evident. You have OCD. Commentary about how good a person you are is a distraction from the important work of keeping your OCD from commandeering your family. Similarly, it's important to remember that all healthy parents have "unhealthy" thoughts about their kids and have doubts about their abilities to raise them. They're supposed to. Treating yourself fairly and compassionately is the only rational way to navigate parenthood, with or without having OCD.

We can see this in Homosexual Obesessive-Compulsive Disorder (HOCD). It’s worth mentioning that this abbreviation does not really express the nature of the disorder in this manifestation, as it can happen to anyone who suffers from OCD, independently of their sexual orientation. So it might be more appropriate to refer to it as Sexual Orientation OCD. In Sexual Orientation OCD, the person is plagued by doubts regarding their sexuality, fearing that they might be attracted to somebody of the opposite sex (if they’re gay) or of the same sex (if they are straight). At the heart of this suffering, there’s the fear of never being able to feel fully attracted to their partner, or of having a fulfilling, loving relationship with someone they love and for whom they know, with absolute certainty, they feel attraction. When the disorder is in full-swing in this manifestation, the resulting anxiety can distract the sufferer from enjoying intercourse, which prompts them to believe they must be of a different sexual orientation. Here is when the OCD finds, yet again, a good disguise. To the sufferer, the notion that their obsessions are turning them off sounds absurd, and it seems much more probable that they are just in denial by telling themselves that they have OCD. A similar, but in many ways more extreme form of OCD is POCD, or Pedophilia OCD. As the name suggests, this OCD is characterized by the fear of being a pedophile

current hypothesis is that psychedelics will work on disorders where there is a great deal of internalized thinking. Rumination, whether it’s about depressive thoughts, whether it’s about alcohol, whether it’s about heroin, whether it’s about cleanliness and OCD, whether it’s about body shape as in anorexia, I think those disorders will respond.

The key is to remember that, if a thought is causing you anxiety, and you find yourself trying to do something to get rid of the thought (including the question “What if it’s not OCD?”), then it’s more than likely OCD. The OCD likes to hide itself, trying to make you believe that you don’t have it. The obsessions, like with any other OCD manifestation, are intrusive and cause great distress to the sufferer. In the case of ROCD, they might get worse at moments in the relationship when the partners are about to face some new commitment,

Practice ERP together. This way, even if you don’t have intrusive thoughts yourself, you’ll be able to offer support and acceptance and to empathize more with your partner, as they treat their ROCD. Turning off the light and lying next to each other deliberately thinking the scary thoughts goes a long way to intimidating the OCD into submission. Don’t treat the ROCD like a taboo topic. There’s no need to never refer to the ROCD or for the OCD sufferer to be afraid of admitting they are having intrusive thoughts. One thing is to not confess them and another altogether different thing is to feel ashamed. Let your partner know that you don’t mind if they are having intrusive thoughts, but be firm in reminding them not to confess them, since this is a compulsion.

Experiencing trauma, abuse, or bullying may all be triggers that bring on both obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Teenagers and young adults who were raised by anxious parents may learn obsessive compulsive behaviors. Teenagers and young adults who were raised by “helicopter” parents may find it difficult to cope in the world and may develop OCD to try and cope with the stress of adult life. Prolonged exposure to stress and the resultant anxiety seems to be quite a prominent OCD trigger. A sudden accident or trauma like a car accident or accidental death of a loved

It’s worth mentioning that obsessions often take the form of questions (OCD used to be known as the “doubting disease”), typically “what if” questions. Some examples include: ● “What if my partner loves me more than I love him/her?” ● “What if this is not the right person for me?” ● “What if I am stuck in the wrong relationship?” ● “What if I made a mistake in getting together with my partner?” ● “What if there’s some with whom I would be more compatible?” ● “What if I’m attracted to someone else?” ● “What if I am leading my partner on?” ● “What if I am secretly a cheater?” ● “What if I hurt my partner by staying together?” ● “What if my partner is not as smart as I am?” ● “What if that other person is more attractive than my partner?” ● “What if I am deluding myself and/or my partner?

Do NOT reassure your partner. As tempting as it might be to try and reassure your partner that they are a good person, that their thoughts don’t mean that they are a cheater, or that they like someone else, or that they are in the wrong relationship, make an effort to not offer reassurance. A hug or a laugh might work better instead. Reassuring your partner only serves to decrease their anxiety at that moment, therefore feeding the OCD cycle. Reassurance-seeking is, after all, one of the most common compulsions in OCD.

The goal is not to make the thoughts go away--it is to make them cause less interference in your life. -          Doing CBT can make the sufferer more confident--not by creating more certainty, which is impossible, but by making the sufferer more comfortable with uncertainty. - Reassurance, rationalization, and avoidance are never productive--they are part of the OCD cycle.

three main steps to follow in this: Accept that you have / your partner has OCD Let the OCD scream at you as much as it wants Believe in your values. That is, live as though you have confidence in those values, even if the OCD makes you feel like you don’t.

Other common obsessions are a fear of hurting others (this is usually known as harm OCD), which might manifest themselves as intrusive thoughts depicting violence inflicted on oneself or others; or perhaps, the fear of running someone over while driving and not having noticed it; or the worry that one might commit a criminal act against somebody who is vulnerable, such as sexual assault of a minor, or abusing, or stealing from an elderly person, etc. Compulsions vary depending on the individual.

Try not to beat yourself up when you have trouble handling the OCD. This is normal, and attacking yourself over it will only make the OCD worse. - Choose to live as though you do have certainty, even as you are plagued with uncertainty. -          Remember to be loving, affectionate, and understanding with your partner, especially as it relates to your ROCD, because it is as painful and confusing to them as it is to you. - Remember that with treatment, it gets better, and that you are doing this for you, your partner, and your relationship.

OCD is a shape-shifter, and as one of our favorite authors, Katie d’Ath, has said it has a way of convincing you that it’s not really OCD. So, often, when dealing with an intrusive thought, one might be tempted to treat it as if it wasn’t just that--an obsession, a thought, but instead as something of paramount importance. When the intrusive thought is of a new character or content, it’s easy for the OCD to disguise itself and one of its many disguises is the question, What if I don’t actually have OCD and I’m just lying to myself?

Emotional Discomfort Intolerance People who have OCD have an irrational fear of either embarrassing themselves or of becoming insane if they experience or work through their negative emotions. As such, you may perpetuate compulsive behaviors as a way to either reassure yourself or to avoid having to acknowledge and deal with your own emotions. For those with OCD, not having to deal with, or even experience our negative emotions may become a priority over just about anything else. THE

Then I got on the OCD Center of Los Angeles website, almost by accident--I had been googling a description of this behavior and it was one of the top results--, and there I read for the first time about Relationship Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I have to admit, I felt somewhat relieved. This meant, to me, in my love-addled mind, that there was a chance he truly loved me.

It’s important to note that all of these questions and obsessions still center around the “rightness” of the relationship. In other words, the ROCD sufferer finds him- or herself constantly trying to determine whether his or her partner is “The One'' and to establish this as a fact, with a hundred percent certainty, since OCD comes down to an extraordinary discomfort with uncertainty.

Self-harm OCD can come at you from multiple angles at the same time. It says that you will hurt yourself when you don't want to. But thinking about hurting yourself all day is likely to make you unhappy. It doesn't have to if you can view thoughts as meaningless objects of attention, but we're not born naturally adept at this. We're born to seek out threats to ourselves and eliminate them, perhaps even if the so-called threats are just our thoughts. Never forget how brave you are for living with OCD and trying to cope with someone in your head that keeps threatening to kill you. This means that to be self-compassionate about self-harm obsessions, you have to start by understanding that this really just is hard. You may think of yourself as weak or foolish for worrying about your intrusive harm thoughts. Or maybe you think you're crazy or going to lose it. The truth is the opposite. You're not crazy. By recognizing how much of you there is to love, you simultaneously create an environment where your OCD is just OCD, your thoughts are just thoughts, and your ability to overcome your challenges is without limits. Interacting compassionately with your mind means talking to yourself as you would to a good friend. Teasing is allowed as long as it isn't mean-spirited. If you can use humor to relate to the darkest of thoughts, you can help yourself through the darkest of times.

riding thoughts out.” - If an intrusive thought comes up, I will observe it, acknowledge it, and let it be. - I will allow the anxiety to be there until it dissipates naturally. -          If Sophia notices that I am uncomfortable, I will simply tell her that I am riding out my OCD, and will not provide more details even if she asks, as detailing it will only increase the importance that we both assign to the intrusive thought. This will also allow Sophia to treat her own OCD, as she will have to deal with the anxiety of not knowing what my intrusive thoughts are.

intimate with one’s partner ● Comparing one’s relationship to those found in movies, books, and TV ● Trying to persuade oneself that one’s not hurting one’s partner ● Rationalizing one’s fear of commitment ●        Reminding oneself that it’s all ROCD and therefore the relationship must be right (beware of the OCD trap!) ●        Ruminating for long periods of time on the right-ness of the relationship, one’s feelings for one’s partner, and one’s partner’s perceived flaws and qualities, in order to justify staying in the relationship

Since many of the compulsions take place in the sufferer’s head only--rationalicing, rumaninating, avoidant behaviors, reassurance-seeking, repeating phrases/mantras in one’s mind, and many other mental gymnastics--it can be difficult to identify this manifestation of OCD at first.

Because both the obsessions and the compulsions are in the sufferer’s head, it can be extremely difficult for them to keep from engaging with the OCD. Indeed, it can sometimes be hard to notice that one is performing compulsions at all. For example, it is very common for the ROCD sufferer to try to “push” unpleasant thoughts, such as doubts about the “rightness” of the relationship, out of his or her mind, but this too is a kind of compulsion, and it will only make the unpleasant thoughts more painful when they inevitably return. By the same token, one can’t simply think to oneself “this is just my ROCD,” because such a statement is also a form of reassurance. What one has to do is train oneself to just let the thoughts be there--to observe them and accept them as they are, without engaging in them, but also without trying to get rid of or otherwise neutralize them.

For the partner of that ROCD sufferer, we have a few practical tips, advice that I’ve come to rely on myself over time, from us both. First and foremost, remember that your partner has OCD. Before getting upset at them for confessing an intrusive thought, urge, feeling, or sensation, try to remember that OCD is a disorder and that your partner is genuinely suffering at that moment. Approach them with empathy, listening and then dismissing the thought as just that; laughter also helps. If you laugh at the intrusions, the OCD loses some of its power.

POCD has aspects of moral scrupulosity OCD and harm OCD, and may leave the sufferer feeling much the same as someone afflicted with HOCD--namely, afraid that they will be unable to have a normal relationship. Common compulsions that people with POCD engage in are avoidant behaviors such attempting to keep away from minors or places where minors gather, like schools and parks; checking for arousal or lack thereof, in an attempt to “confirm” whether one is actually attracted to minors; and confessing one’s fears to a close confidant, often followed by asking that person whether they think the sufferer is a pedophile.

For someone without ROCD, a more present concern might be how their partner feels about them. But for the ROCD sufferer, a lot of energy and thought goes into the problem of whether their feelings for their partner are genuine or strong enough, or whether there isn’t someone else or some other relationship that is more perfect. For them, if a relationship isn’t perfect, then might that mean that it isn’t right? If the ROCD sufferer confesses these concerns to their partner, they are likely to cause a good deal of pain, and may even accidentally convince their partner that the relationship is indeed wrong somehow, or that the ROCD sufferer isn’t as invested in the relationship. And it stands to reason: if you didn’t know that your partner was dealing with OCD, it would be easy to look at the above questions, and the list of obsessions from earlier, and see them as evidence that your partner doesn’t care about you, or maybe actively dislikes you. In a worst-case scenario, the ROCD sufferer might, in fearing that their relationship is somehow wrong or doomed, actually precipitate the end of the relationship itself.

Be patient with your partner. This can be hard to do sometimes, because ROCD, like all forms of OCD, is persistent. But the more patient and understanding you can be with your partner, the easier it will be for them to treat their disorder. That said, be firm. By now, you should have a pretty good understanding of what your partner needs to do to treat their ROCD. If you see that they’re just giving in to their compulsions, remind them that it’s important to both of you for them to continue treating their OCD. Patience is all well and good, but there’s no sense in being patient with your partner when they’re actively worsening the disorder. Above all, be supportive. In any relationship, partners have to support each other. ROCD naturally can be extremely painful for you as the partner, but it is also a very personal struggle for the OCD sufferer. And as with any struggle, one of the best things you can do as their partner is provide love and support. Remind them not to be so hard on themselves when they do fall into the traps of their ROCD.

Having OCD has made me a more intense, sensitive, and compassionate human being. I have been humbled by my disorder. It has built character even while tearing at my soul, my heart, and my self-esteem. It has enabled me to fight harder, to strive for the good and the truth inside me. It has made me less critical and judgmental of others who suffer in their lives.

Virgo–Scorpio: Sexy Sextiles You two pay attention to the details, but you share OCD tendencies. Your high standards meet Scorpio’s laser focus, and you can get lost in detail rather than focusing on the bigger picture. You both have hidden depths. Once unleashed this can be a hotbed of pulsating passion.

For all of you who might be experiencing this, or something similar, I want you to know that it doesn’t go on forever and that ROCD has in fact a very good prognosis. Treatment with CBT and ERP is very favorable and has shown to produce effective results within a short period of time. In our case, after Hugh began practicing ERP with the help of his therapist (to whom I am eternally grateful), his attitude changed overnight. It was a revelation. He had been cold and distant and I had in turn reacted defensively. But then he made an effort to do ERP and in a matter of days he was completely different around me. He treated me with more kindness and he didn’t shy away from showing affection. Of course, there were still moments when he would be afraid and engage in his OCD. But those were nothing compared to the barrage of intrusive thoughts that harassed him and the compulsions he was giving into before. I felt like we might make it through to the other side. Now I understand that there isn’t really another side. We have needed to learn to keep going with the intrusive thoughts, but doing our best to ditch the compulsions. You might wonder that I speak in the plural here. Well, we both interact with Hugh’s OCD. I make the mistake of offering him reassurance more often than I would like to admit, and I sometimes ask him about the thoughts, both things I should never do. But even though OCD is incredibly tough, one can learn to live with it. And that has been one of the greatest lessons we have learned so far. We live with the OCD not as our companion, but as a condition, like so many others, in our lives (don’t forget that I also have OCD, although it doesn’t manifest as ROCD).

a few words on something that I believe affects both Obsessional Jealousy sufferers and ROCD sufferers alike--the fear of losing the marriage. Often, what hides behind the intrusive thoughts is a deep-seated fear of the relationship not working out. In my case, I saw my parents go through a painful and messy divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. In Hugh’s case, his self esteem had taken a heavy blow a few years before meeting me, when his girlfriend at the time left him for another guy. He began having ROCD thoughts shortly after that relationship ended. The fear of commitment that ROCD sufferers experience might stem from trauma, and the wish to avoid feeling vulnerable again. Commitment to a relationship means trust and trust means vulnerability. The fear of being vulnerable is at the heart of OCD.

Humans are obsessed with ceremony. In some cases, this fixation can even become pathological. Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder (OCD) is a condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and fears and the urge to perform highly ritualized actions in order to alleviate those worries. These actions have some of the core attributes of cultural rituals: they are characterized by rigidity, repetition and redundancy, and they have no obvious purpose. Nonetheless, those who suffer from OCD feel the compulsion to perform them and become intensely anxious if they are unable to do so.

Plenty of people have borrowed the term “OCD” to make fun of the way they feel compelled to alphabetize their spices or wash their tennis shoes. And many of us do exhibit OCD-like characteristics every now and then—running back to the front door to make sure it’s locked or stepping over cracks in the sidewalk. But more often than not, these behaviors are quirky and short-lived; they don’t cause us ongoing distress, significantly impede our lives, or drive our family members too crazy. A severe case of clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder, on the other hand, can be as debilitating as the worst case of depression. The constant pattern of repetition may help reduce uncertainty by creating the appearance of warding off trouble and keeping people safe—but it is enormously stressful and a terrible burden to bear. Some people with OCD commit suicide to escape the constant barrage of messages and impulses. “It’s horrible,” says Elias. “It’s torture from the inside.

Mental health problems don’t define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and you feel the rain, but, importantly, YOU ARE NOT THE RAIN.

the OCD approach was weirdly liberating. I could acknowledge these fears, then wave the wand of “maybe, maybe not,” the gold standard treatment for OCD. Those words robbed my thoughts of their power and value. I could live by what I did know and value. I could wait to move forward until the mirage eased. I could take care of myself and watch the anxiety fade away.

One of the great breakthroughs in my own recovery was coming to understand that, while I can’t rid myself of the nagging “what if” questions that plague me, I can choose not to give them my attention.

I have existed for 21 years. I didn't live them all, but from now on I am hoping to.

By wishing that pain and discomfort were not a part of life, by living a life dedicated to the avoidance of pain, risk, and uncertainty at all costs, your life gets smaller and smaller, and worry and anxiety become your constant companions.

I can actually follow the plot of TV programs now, and I no longer use books as masks—I read them like a normal person, just like you have read this. Which assumes you are normal; maybe you’re not. Maybe none of us are. Maybe none of us would want to be anyway. But, for the sake of argument, let’s call me normal now. I am better. I don’t know whether it’s for good, or if one day something might make me abnormal again. But that’s the funny thing about living. If you do it properly, you don’t know how the next sentence will begin.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave. —BLADE RUNNER (MOVIE, 1982)

Virtual reality is finally, well, reality—and it’s getting a lot of buzz, thanks to platforms like the Oculus, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear and the Microsoft HoloLens. But a lot of the talk about VR focuses on video games. While exciting, we believe this technology is capable of doing a lot more, including applications that literally save lives.

Not only does exercise reduce stress, but it also seems to improve the mind-body connection, which is important when living with OCD.

I'll Be There For You" These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

She looked down at her burger. “Josh, I’m just a little run-down, okay? I’m sleeping with Sloan in the hospital every night. I’m living off of black coffee and whatever I can shove in my mouth. My OCD is manic—” “You have OCD?” It didn’t really surprise me. I’d seen a touch of it in her since I’d known her. One of my sisters had it. I knew it when I saw it. “Usually it’s not this bad, but it gets worse when I’m under stress.” She finished the burger and balled up the paper like it was an effort to even do that. Then she lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes. She was falling apart. She was deteriorating physically and mentally trying to keep Sloan together. And where the fuck was I in all this? Failing her. She wouldn’t ask for my help. I knew her well enough to know this, and I hadn’t even been to the hospital in three days to check in on her. I’d left her on her own with Sloan and Brandon’s family and all the rest of it. I should have been there. Maybe I could have gotten ahead of this life-support thing. Taken a spot on the overnight shift to be with Sloan so Kristen could get some sleep. Made sure she ate. Talking to me or not, Kristen never turned down food. I blamed myself for this. But I blamed her too. Because if she had let me, I would have taken care of her. We could have taken care of each other, and neither of us would be in such bad shape. I reached over and threaded my fingers through hers. She didn’t pull away. She looked too tired to fight me. She squeezed my hand, and the warmth of her touch coursed through me. “I’ll go to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll talk to his parents, and I’ll stay with Sloan today. I need you to go home and sleep. And tomorrow I want you to go to the doctor. Call to make the appointment tonight because you might have to fast before they do bloodwork.” She just looked at me, her beautiful face hollow and weary. She was always so strong. It was scary seeing her declining like this. Love did this to her. Her love of Sloan. And probably her love of me too. I knew it wasn’t easy on her. I knew she thought she was doing the right thing. But fuck, if she would just stop. If she would stop, we could both be okay.

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too

I have existed for twenty-one years. I didn’t live them all, but from now on I am hoping to.