Dear V:

I suffered from OCD since a very early age, diagnosed with it later on. ROCD is a term that was coined later, I don’t know when, and it may be internet related because the behavior includes googling and there is a community of ROCD people as well as HOCD who do post a lot.

You asked for tips:

1. Don’t google ROCD, don’t google anything related to it. If you are suffering from rOCD, then the googling itself is a compulsion, the C of the OCD. No matter how compelled, resist the compulsion and don’t google.

2. If your relationship is indeed healthy, if the two of you are honest and kind to each other, then focus on these Values: honesty, respect, kindness and not on your Feelings. Appreciate these things about him, take in that good feeling of knowing he is honest with you, respectful and kind.

3. In any relationship between two people, the two don’t always feel love for each other. In all romantic relationships it happens that the person notices… no love, no affection, and instead there is a distance. This happens because feelings are not permanent. They are like the weather, sometimes it is rainy, at other times the sun shines, and it changes. So let the feelings be, don’t try to force a feeling any more than you will try to force the weather to be a certain way.

4. When a person suffers from significant anxiety, and particularly OCD, the person gets scared of this and that or the other thing, different things at different times. A thought can be scary, and often is when one suffers from OCD. As I wrote above, in any romantic relationship, sometimes a person doesn’t feel love for the other. A non OCD person doesn’t get alarmed. But an OCD person gets alarmed: oh, oh, I don’t feel love for him.. what does it mean? Is it over? Will I ever feel love for him? .. And so forth.

Therefore, I suggest you talk sense to yourself when you are engaged in rOCD thoughts, repeat to yourself what I italicized above.

-And post again anytime you want to.

anita