Dear Nala1234:

Welcome back! We communicated back in October 6-18, 2022. On Oct 8 last year I mentioned ROCD to you. A year and 2 months later (today), you asked if what you’re experiencing- with the same boyfriend- sounds like “ROCD or just anxiety?“. I will try to answer your question at the end of this post.

Back in October 2022, you shared (I am adding the boldface feature to the quotes): “I feel a lot of built up guilt… I base a lot of my happiness on the happiness of others, especially my immediate family. If they are unhappy I blame myself… My upbringing never really taught me how to process sad or negative feelings. If there was a problem, I was taught to…  always have my guard up… it has always made me think I can’t let anyone ever see me weak… I don’t question my parents love for me… (but) It is a depending love..  it makes me feel like, if I cannot help them then they will..  not like me.. It is how I am asked for things. It is always such a guilt trip and makes it nearly impossible to say no. Guilt trips are a bigggg thing in my family. They have been used my whole life“-

– Re-reading the above, I am noticing the following: (1) your anger (in the part I boldfaced) at the people in your immediate family who guilt tripped you so heavily and for so long. (2) your distrust in your parents’ love for you, suspecting that their love will not be there if you don’t submit to their guilt trips and do what they want you to do. (3) you grew up suppressing and repressing (pushing down) your negative emotions, guarding them from being expressed.

You shared today: “I get these horrible intrusive thoughts about my significant other…  They always get triggered by some kind of small action that he makes. Things that should just pass by, feel like an explosion of emotions in my head and body. For example, we were leaving the store a couple days ago with just one item. As we finished checking out, he started to walk towards the exit without grabbing the one item, assuming I would grab it… I immediately felt this overwhelming sensation with negative thoughts like ‘he doesn’t take care of you.’ ‘how can he be so rude to the person he is supposed to love?’ ‘he is so inconsiderate. Only ever thinks about himself’ ‘what is wrong with him?’… ‘He always just assumes you’ll take care of everything’ These thoughts put me in panics. They make me question everything. Every move he makes, I try to analyze. The feeling that overcomes my body is so overwhelming… This happens every so often randomly and it makes me feel like I am losing my mind”-

– seems to me that when your significant other (I’ll refer to him as S) left the item for you to carry, your suppressed and repressed anger from your childhood erupted. The incident of S leaving the item for you to carry was a small incident, but your childhood pent up anger is HUGE, and your emotional reaction to the incident was proportional to the amount of your pushed-down anger at your parents for guilt tripping you and making their love for you conditional on you submitting to their guilt trips.

Him leaving the item for you to carry made you think of/ feel your parents leaving their happiness for you to carry (“If they are unhappy I blame myself“, Oct 2022).

The thoughts that crossed your mind during that incident regarding S: (1)  “he doesn’t take care of you.“- a thought that follows perhaps an earlier life thought such as: my parents don’t take care of me: they make me feel guilty and they won’t stop no matter how badly I feel! ‘

(2) “how can he be so rude to the person he is supposed to love?“- a thought that follows perhaps an earlier life thought such as: how can my parents be so rude to me, a person they are supposed to love? (3) ‘he is so inconsiderate. Only ever thinks about himself‘”-… my parents are so inconsiderate of me, they only think about themselves, their unhappiness, their feelings, not mine!

(6) “He always just assumes you’ll take care of everything“- a thought that follows perhaps an earlier life thought such as: my parents assume and demand that I will take care of their feelings.. what about MY feelings?

As to your question: “Does this sound like ROCD or just anxiety?“- my answer: it sounds like a mix of anger and anxiety.

“Need some insight/ advice“- it is very difficult for most (if not all) children and adult children to talk negatively about their parents, particularly when heavily guilt tripped as children, but it is necessary to do so when one’s parents’ behaviors were indeed significantly or severely negative, having created an emotional backlog of (understandable, valid) hurt, anger and fear inside you. Quality psychotherapy is the best place to do it, to talk and process these backlogged, pushed down intense feelings, so that their intensity lessens and lessens and you reach a place of peace within yourself.

What do you think of my reply, Nala1234?

anita