Dear ejsid123:

Reads to me that it is your major anxiety that is troubling you in this new relationship and not a valid gut feeling. When you suffer from intense anxiety, that ongoing, excess fear interrupts much of your thinking and feeling, sticks to almost everything that is going on in your life.

Such intense anxiety interferes with physical attractions feelings as well (“I don’t get that feeling of ‘I want to rip your clothes off!!”)

Relax best you can- our thinking and feelings are reliable when we are relaxed. Invest in relaxation skills- guided meditations, mindfulness (moving/ day-to-day living kind of ongoing meditation), competent psychotherapy if possible for you.

And do post here anytime you want, with concerns about your relationship or otherwise, if you would like my input, for one.

anita

Dear ejsid123:

Yes. A person is not likely to feel attraction when anxious and overthinking. When you overthink- you under-feel. When you live in your head, thinking, thinking, distressed- you don’t live in your body. This is why anxious people complain about living-in-their-heads. They (as I have been) overthink.

Having suffered from anxiety for decades, and still (although in the process of healing), I was a stranger to my body, confused, unaware. A practice of slow yoga helped me a lot at the time, to come down the elevator from my head to my body.

anita

Dear ejsid123:

I am familiar with OCD and the newer term ROCD. A relationship causes you anxiety, you try to find the logic behind it so to justify ending it, so you see the man in an unflattering way, you go on with ongoing commentary about how unattractive he is and so forth.

This is something for you to notice as it happens, dismiss the commentary that is aimed at ending the relationship, the unreasonable complaints about who he is (not). Apply relaxation techniques, attend competent psychotherapy so to manage and heal the underlying anxiety which is fueling your ROCD.

This is going to be tough, so brace yourself for the long haul. Take a day at a time, sometimes a moment at a time, calm yourself repeatedly and get the therapy help that you need…?

anita

Dear ejsid123:

You are welcome. It is important that you do explore and learn to manage the ROCD while you are in a relationship with a decent man (can’t explore it outside such)- it is an opportunity to confront and manage these ROCD symptoms.

Here is what I suggest to do currently as an unflattering thought occurs to you about the man:

Disengage from the thought. Instead of having the thought “catch fire’ so to speak, having it stick, let it go. How? Prepare a place in your brain where you go to when you have an ROCD thought. That place is a place of safety and calm. From there you observe (not engage with) the ROCD thought. You look at it, not get into it. Observe it and let it dissipate, disintegrate.

anita

Dear ejsid123:

Did you explore in therapy your relationship/s with your mother/ father as a child (and currently)?

Do you see a connection between these early relationship/s and your ROCD?

anita

Dear ejsid123:

Anorexia Nervosa, OCD and many, many mental diagnoses are combinations of symptoms with anxiety as the core issue, the underlying problem.

So I would go before the Anorexia to look for the cause of your anxiety- when you wrote that your mother is “sometimes quite critical of others”- how has she been critical of you (as early as you can remember)?

anita