Dear Midnight:

You worry about exhausting me… no need. I read your posts and respond because it is energizing to me, not exhausting. As you share your experiences and thoughts as honestly as you do, you are teaching me and helping me. I am here on the website on a Win-Win mission. So here, it is the same. I am helped by you while I hope to help you. By being helped by you, what I mostly mean is that I am learning from you. Learning and healing, for me, happen hand in hand.

I too like a therapist who talks. My first ever therapist- did not say to me a single word. I don’t remember if he said “hello” at first or if he told me his name. But if he did, he said nothing else. I saw him maybe a few times and left the last time in frustration because he refused to say a word. As I left his office… guess what: not a single word. That was more than 30 years ago.

Your partner/husband reads like a good, loving man. Your ROCD symptoms stem, I believe, from anxiety in you that predates your marriage by many, many years. Nothing to do with him. It probably stems from your relationship with your main caretaker, your mother…?

The fear you experience, the fear that fuels your ROCD is the same fear, is it not, that you had as a child? Fear is the most powerful emotion there is. When work is required to heal, and the work has to do with confronting fear- almost everyone runs away.

Confronting fear is not something you can decide to do and then proceed to doing it. One needs help, competent help and lots of patience… and timing too.

I wonder if you too will run away from this very thread. Hoping you will not, I must be gentle and careful. Fear needs confronting, but it needs to be done oh so gradually, with someone you trust. I suppose you already confronted some of it with your therapist; you already started the process.

Continue with extreme patience. And post anytime: energize me that way!

anita