Thank you for addressing all of these issues Anita, this has been very helpful and interesting to me.

I hope you can maybe share more when you have the time, I will do the same.

I am seeing a psychotherapist but he is not using CBT, we are trying to get to the bottom of my anxiety but at the moment the process seems a bit stuck, and I am having all of this emotional turmoil that you so well described – at times I feel as though the issue has resolved and when I think back on it it seems so strange and ridiculous that I have had such thoughts. Then something triggers it again and I am back to square one.

I do trust my therapist though so hopefully there will be progress with time. I have been seeing him for over two years now and he has helped me a lot with other issues. I did feel that there was some progress on the ROCD front as well but lately this doesn’t feel like it is the case anymore. I do hope progress can be achieved with this kind of therapy and not only through CBT, maybe it just takes longer.

Thank you for your support and for taking the time to respond to me.

Thank you, Anita.

My therapy was helpful so far in helping me manage my relationship with my mother which was a source of stress to me before. I cannot “prove” that the therapy changed that, I can only observe that this aspect of my life has greatly improved since I’ve been seeing this therapist. Also, I was having a hard time accepting the possibility of having children and of getting married. I have since got married without too much anxiety and have decided I did want to have children, which I believe is what I always wanted but was afraid of.

These are big steps for me, because I was always worried I will not be able to make such decisions without suffering from constant doubts and pain.

However I do feel that the ROCD issue is rooted deeper than that and is probably my main issue, and that some of my life circumstances lately have probably contributed to the increased level of anxiety. So maybe it’s not surprising that we haven’t managed to solve it just yet.
Also I think I have been resisting the therapy quite a lot. My therapist hasn’t said this to me in these words but that’s what I conclude from things he says and from the somewhat stuck feeling we are both getting, I believe.

I like him because I feel that he is truly present and listens to what I say, and he also speaks more often than some therapists, I’ve been to others before and some of them hardly speak two words during a session, I do feel it is more helpful when the therapist responds to what’s being said. Also, I once saw him in possibly my worst “spike” ever, and I felt a lot better after speaking to him. Something in what he said helped me a lot that day and it was so precious and meaningful to me, because I was such a mess before seeing him.

It does help to share all of this with you, thank you for your kind presence.
And again, please don’t feel the need to respond to everything or at all, I don’t want to exhaust you:)

Dear Anita,

Your words and your attitude are very calming and healing to me, thank you for your presence here.

I think some therapists believe that their most important function is to just be there and let the patient talk freely, and that the space and time they offer to do that is enough. And maybe it is so for some people. At least this is how I interpret this silence, which I find quite frustrating and disrespectful, even.

I had a therapist before who was actually quite good but didn’t speak much. It was not as extreme as the story you told about yours, but once I went to him feeling really bad. I just sat there and only said something about how awful I was feeling. I couldn’t say anything more. He didn’t say anything either, at all. He was silent during the entire session and when the time was up that was it. I felt so hurt by that, I felt that he just abandoned me there with my feelings and didn’t bother to help me work them out by speaking to me.
But he was a good therapist, because I told him about how hurt I felt by that in later sessions and he did adapt himself and started to speak more. That’s why I believe he might have thought before that I wanted him to just be silent with me or something. Maybe some people react better to that than to words, but I’m a very verbal person and I need words, words reassure me and calm me down.

Yes, my husband is a good and loving man and I am actually very lucky to have him in my life, even if I don’t always remember that. I would say that he has qualities which cannot be measured with analytical tools, like the ones that I sometimes apply to dissect his personality and intellect and to find him inadequate. Right now I am able to see that, but I am sure I will come back here on times when I will not be able to see that at all. Sometimes, when I feel good with him and think back on these spikes and torments, I wonder if he might not be just the right person for me – exactly because there is something about him which eludes the kind of analysis and measurements I try to apply. Because I have a very judgmental side and I tend to label other people, measure and compare them (and myself) too much.

I do try to understand where the initial anxiety is coming from, but it’s hard to pinpoint and map that out.
I do have some ideas but I have to stop now. Maybe I will write more about that later.

Thank you for reading.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Midnight.

Dear Nina,

Thank you for your post, I think you really got it right.

I know “Up” and I knew what this video was, I tried to watch it again just now but couldn’t go through with it because it is just so sad and touching. Thank you for linking this even though I’m crying right now:) I think it gets to me even more now because we are trying for a baby and have had some misfortunes with that so far.

I agree with the points you listed, you are so right. This thing I am dealing with is so tricky and consuming that it sometimes takes over me and I feel trapped in the relationship rather than seeing things as they truly are – which is how you described it.
My husband really is a great guy and when I let him and myself be, instead of judging and looking for the bad things, it can really feel great to be with him.
The problem is that this thing is always lurking, and when it takes over it just makes all the good things disappear. And it demands so much attention and I can only hear this voice telling me how everything is wrong.

“if you did not get so alarmed by having those thoughts, if you took their power away, that could help very much. When you have those doubts, does it make you think you have to do something as a result of the thoughts? And the doing something scares you?”

You really hit the nail on the head.
I’ll describe how it used to be with my ex and how it is now in my current relationship.

With my ex the thoughts were usually centered around the worry that I didn’t really love him, that the relationship wasn’t meant to be because he was somehow wrong for me. Because I never felt in love with him in the beginning, and he was the one who insisted more on us dating whereas I wasn’t so sure, I later felt that this meant the relationship was somehow not “valid” or “real”. That I wasn’t really attracted to him and was only with him because he pushed me into it and so on. There might have been some truth in that, but I have stayed with him for a few years and endured these thoughts all the time and was constantly anxious. Whenever I would think about that (which was most of the time), I would tell myself that these thoughts meant I had to break up with him. So the worry and rumination were about – should I break up with him or not. That made me very anxious.
At some point it became too much and I ended it and felt mostly relief.

Now with my husband, the thoughts are more centered around a specific “flaw” that he has, or at least it’s a flaw in my eyes. I keep thinking about it and getting very anxious about it, comparing him to other people, even to people in the street I don’t even know, and keep convincing myself that he’s somehow less valid as a partner for me than almost anyone else. I know how crazy this sounds, especially since I’m not even talking about a physical flaw that can be seen right away on strangers.

When I get really bothered by these thoughts, I am no longer tormented so much by the fear of “having” to leave him because I have already decided I won’t and chose to marry him, so it is something I know I don’t want to do (break up).
I am however petrified by the idea that these worries are the truth – that I cannot be truly happy with someone like him. And so my thoughts this time around are less centered on an action I feel I need to take, they have taken the form of determining whether or not I could still be happy with him. Although in these moments of extreme anxiety it seems to me there is no question about it – that I obviously cannot be truly happy and fulfilled with him and would therefore be doomed to leading an empty, unsatisfying life where I only pretend to love him and actually be dead inside and lying. It is however very very disturbing as I then feel I am stuck in this situation and there is no way out. The “action” in this case presents itself more as the necessity to “look reality in its face”, so whenever I’m happy with him or laugh from something he said and so on, if I’m entering this state of mind at the time the thoughts would surface and say something like “you think you’re enjoying his company but you really are just compromising and settling, it could be so much better with someone else, stop lying to yourself” and so on. And it’s making me very anxious. It really does sound like some creepy mental illness… which is less scary to me than the idea that these thoughts are right and true.

I’ve had similar feelings and worries in every committed relationship I’ve had or every budding relationship where I knew the guy was interested in me. And the “action” thought was always about breaking up. Sometimes I didn’t even know what was bothering me in the other person or the relationship, I only felt this anxiety and strong feeling that something was wrong and I needed to get away from the person and not see them anymore. I did not get this so much, or not at all, in relationships where I didn’t feel secure in the other person’s interest in me. But these usually ended quite quickly anyway.

Sorry, I wrote quite a lot…
Thank you for listening.

Dear Anita,

Your last post really resonates with me, but I am wondering why it is that I sometimes get this “trapped” feeling, mostly around people.

I sometimes had that reaction with friends too when I was younger, I would feel that the friendship or the person was somehow weighing on me and getting me anxious and I would find some way, or excuse, to distance myself from that friend.

But going further back, I really cannot understand why this should be. I had a good childhood and was loved by my parents. I don’t remember feeling trapped around them, I liked being with them and was not scared of them or anything like that. I was feeling trapped and scared sometimes around my brother, he was a few years older than me and would terrorize me quite a lot when my parents were away. I did feel trapped in that situation with him when we were alone in the house, I kept waiting for my parents to get back from work so that I would feel safe again. But could that really be the source of all of this? Could it really have been THAT bad…? I have a good relationship with him now, although we’ve had our differences in the past, he’s not an easy person.

Dear Anita,

Thank you.
I don’t think my memories regarding him are dry or devoid of feeling, I do remember quite well moments where I was scared and angry, feeling that I hated him and feared him and that I didn’t feel protected in that situation.

I also remember some fun moments with him, but to be honest I usually ended up crying because he would play with me sometimes when he had nothing better to do, then would get bored of it and would find some way to make me cry or feel stupid and worthless. So what was before a fun, exciting situation for me, playing with my big brother, would turn into a mess of feeling hurt and wretched.

He would also hit me quite a lot but I guess all of that seemed and still seems to all of us as a more or less normal situation of siblings bickering, when my feeling was that I was his victim and that none of that was “fair” to use the somewhat childish word, because he was so much older and stronger so he had all the power.

But even saying all that I find it hard to believe this could be the cause, because a relationship with a brother certainly can’t be as important and determining as a relationship with a parent, can it?

Dear Anita,

Thank you, I understand what you are saying. I believe you are right.

I will bring this up with my therapist and see if we can explore this further.

I really appreciate your insight and support, it means a lot. Thank you.