Dear Lea:

“my thoughts come and go way too fast”- you can slow your thoughts down. It will not be easy and it will take time and practice, but it can happen. A consistent, every day practice of Mindfulness will do the trick, over time. There are plenty of mindful exercises for you to choose from, and if you practice a few every day, over time, your thoughts will slow down. There is plenty of online resourced on Mindfulness, including on the home page under BLOGS.

As a matter of fact, when you post to me next, slow  down your thinking by slowing down your typing. It will be difficult, not something that comes naturally, but practice it and over a long time, it will become natural to you.

Regarding him having been “extremely cuddly/ touchy” at the beginning, and then turning “clumsy.. like he didn’t know how to physically  act anymore..  holding my hand made him asking questions.. should I? Shouldn’t I?”-

– what happened, seems to me, that at first his OCD stayed away from the cuddling/ touching, it didn’t interrupt him. But OCD caught up and inserted itself into the cuddling and touching. He became self conscious, doubting if he is cuddling and touching “correctly”, or if he is making mistakes. His OCD ruined his initial spontaneity. It happened not necessarily because he felt that you and him were getting serious, but because it takes OCD time before it inserts itself into a new territory.

I agree that it was not your job to be your ex boyfriend’s/ ex friend’s therapist and that you  indeed were a teenager and not a professional therapist with the proper certification. It was not within your power to fix him, or significantly help him. I am glad you ended that relationship.

– and you can’t fix or significantly help the current love-interest. You wrote that he told you that he has a “‘form of OCD’ not a ‘classical’ one”- the categorizing of mental disorders is an artificial categorizing- hardly any person fits exactly into a category and we all experience some characteristics from most of the categories.

Back to my suggestion that you type your next post to me slowly- please do so. Practicing slow typing to me will help you even though you won’t feel like it and it will be difficult. If you continue to type quickly, there is little to no help in it. In other words, we can continue to communicate forever and it will make no difference to your well-being. On the other hand, every time you produce a slowly typed post to me, you will be helping yourself.

anita