How Typical Relationship Advice Can Worsen Relationship OCD: Understanding and Navigating ROCD
Ever feel like common relationship advice is making your OCD worse? In this episode, learn why typical advice like 'trust your gut' and 'when you know, you know' can be harmful for women with relationship OCD. We'll explore how these pieces of advice may feel like gaslighting and how intrusive thoughts can hijack your intuition. You'll also get tips on building self-trust, managing doubts, and improving communication in your relationship. Plus, find out about Thrizer, a tool that simplifies out-of-network therapy billing, and discover helpful courses to support your mental health journey. Let's break the cycle and move toward more secure and healthy relationships.
00:00 Introduction: The Struggle with Relationship OCD
00:18 The Harmful Impact of Common Relationship Advice
00:57 Sponsor Break: Thrizer - Simplifying Therapy Payments
01:53 Debunking Popular Relationship Advice
02:46 A Real-Life Example: The Story of Jake
05:23 Recognizing the OCD Patterns in Relationships
07:21 What to Do Instead: Building Relationship Confidence
09:49 Practical Tips for Self-Trust and Decision Making
11:21 Conclusion: Embracing Uncertainty in Love
12:05 Next Week's Preview: Self-Trust and Confidence with Melissa
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Erin H. Davis: [00:00:00] Have you ever found yourself caught in an endless loop of worry? One day you feel completely in love and then the next you feel consumed by doubt. Then on top of that, whenever you go to your friends or co workers or even your mom for advice, you get terrible advice that only makes your relationship OCD worse.
In today's episode, you're going to learn why common relationship advice can be harmful for women with relationship OCD. And what you should do. So by the end of the episode, you're going to be able to spot that popular relationship wisdom through an ROCD lens, where you can feel validated by knowing that this advice that you've been getting makes things ultra confusing.
So I want you to feel seen. I want you to feel heard because you are not alone in feeling. This way about your relationship and and you can feel equipped to get the right kind of support For these questions and these doubts. All right, so that whole trust your gut when you know, you know And if you have doubts, that's red flags So let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsor if you're a therapist Thrizer transforms the way clients interact with their out of network benefits as you know clients need to manually submit super bills and for out of network sessions and then wait months for reimbursement with thrizer.
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You can try Thrizer completely for free with my link and you can go to join. Thrizer.com/erin. Now, let's get back to the episode. So, today we're calling BS on all of these popular pieces of relationship advice. Because those pieces of advice might actually be making your relationship OCD worse. So let's talk about why these pieces of advice might actually feel like gaslighting for people who are experiencing OCD.
So, that first line of advice, trust your gut, uh, yikes, like that's really hard for an OCD person to trust their gut because they don't know what's their voice and what's the OCD voice. Your intuition gets hijacked by anxiety. You don't even know where to turn and it, then it gets hard to even trust yourself.
It's like you have instincts to do one thing, but then there's this voice telling you to do something else. You go to get advice, and the advice you get just conflicts with all of the above. So let's take an example here, where let's imagine you're in a relationship with someone named Jake. Jake seems like a fantastic guy.
You met him at a friend's wedding. He was everything you thought you wanted. He's kind, he's stable, he's successful. The first few months were perfect. You felt the butterfly feeling, you know? But then Something shifted, your first intrusive thought came up when Jake laughed at something that you didn't think was actually funny.
In that moment, you started to second guess your relationship. You started thinking, what if we're not intellectually compatible? Then here comes the spiral. You're googling. How to know if we are intellectually matched. How to know if he's right for me. Then you start getting those physical symptoms like you feel nauseous, you get headaches, you get chest tightness, you can't really eat, and then, uh, you don't want to spend as much time with Jake.
Then you're waking up the next day and you're wondering, Do I love him enough? Why don't I feel those butterflies anymore? Shouldn't I feel more attracted to him? What if I'm settling? What if I'm afraid to be alone? So those are those obsessive questions. Then you start to get into the compulsions. You're checking if Jake is talking to his exes.
You're comparing yourself to his exes. You're taking online relationship quizzes. You're asking friends about your relationship constantly. You know what? You may be making a pros and cons list about your relationship. You may even put it into chat GPT and say, Are we right for each other? You're analyzing old text messages for signs that something is wrong or that you're not compatible.
Then you finally reach your breaking point. Jake plans a wonderful date. You're so surprised, but even during the date. You're just watching him talk and you feel outside of your body when he's talking. And then you start to think, why can't I just enjoy this? Why am I analyzing every little thing? Then you start to wonder, am I smiling enough?
Am I being weird? Do I look happy enough? It's so much noise going on in your brain when you would love to just be enjoying the date. All [00:05:00] of this starts to impact your relationship. Suddenly Jake starts to act distant. He feels emotionally hurt because you don't even seem to have fun on these dates that he plans.
Oh my gosh. Don't even. Talk about intimacy. There's no way you can be intimate with him right now because you're so wrapped up in these worries. All of those fun moments are ruined by checking your feelings. The turning point for you is that you finally realize that this wasn't about Jake at all. This is the same pattern that happens in every relationship.
Whether it's a perfect one or a terrible one, you find something to obsess about. That's when you know. It's OCD. And it's not about love. That other traditional piece of advice that you get about when you know, you know, it's, Oh my gosh, so confusing again for the OCD person. Cause they're like, well, how do I know?
I don't even know like if we're meant to be together. So somehow we're supposed to feel like, and imagine that there's this magical feeling that is like, Oh, it's going to be this happily ever after when really you're finding yourself. Doing excessive calls in text, you're demanding an immediate response, or if you're not saying it out loud, you're definitely feeling it.
The other thing you're doing is you're experiencing a constant relationship analysis between looking at TikTok and Instagram. And let me tell you, all of that is Toxic, because it's not doing anything to upgrade your relationship. It's only helping you see the lack and those pieces that you don't have, because guess what?
Your relationship isn't going to be perfect. Your relationship isn't going to meet a hundred percent of your needs. You have to learn to meet some of those needs on your own. It's not fair to put it all on your partner. And the problem here is when you have gone through so many relationships or you're finding yourself single and you haven't found that one person that you want to spend a lot of your time with.
You may have even found yourself with a relationship coach. A relationship coach in the sense of like a dating coach. Maybe you just haven't found the right match you tell yourself. But problem here is you're going to continue to find yourself in obsessive loops and worries and doubts because you haven't fully addressed this cycle, these loops.
All right, now that we've exposed this popular relationship advice, let's talk about what you should do instead. First of all, I've got a relationship confidence course that has five chapters all on helping giving you some groundwork foundational. Tools to help you feel secure in your love life. So like some of those concepts include mindfulness, gratitude, using healthy communication.
So you can start with my course today. And it's this self paced course all online. I'll put a link in the show notes so that you can go straight to the checkout page. Next piece of advice I have for you is let's delay. Skip and decrease getting those reassurances from our family and friends and even your boyfriend.
Okay, so cut back on those things because a lot of those things can set you up for negativity for the lack and that scarcity mindset. But we want to step into an abundant mindset and a And a mindset that is open to growth. Okay? So if Jake is not planning a date exactly the way you wanted, let's focus on how he tried, the efforts he did make to put the date together versus gossiping about him to your friends.
And so when you start to kind of. Cut out some of that negativity and you stay consistent with that, you will start to learn to trust yourself in that you're going to do good things by your partner and you're not getting in that spin up that happens whenever you ask for reassurance and you get that relationship advice that just makes you feel more confused or invalidated or anxious.
And here's the thing about relationship OCD, OCD loves to ask questions that are unanswerable It's impossible situations. So you can never know the future. You can never have 100 percent certainty in your relationship or in much of anything. And so someone with OCD, they want control. OCD creates that impossible situation where You feel like by doing these behaviors or these things, we're doing these behaviors like checking their phone or asking for reassurance will somehow help you feel more secure and trust your decision in the partner you chose.
But what that actually does, it just undermines you time and time again, because you know, inevitably it makes you feel like you don't trust your capacity to make decisions. So to start to rebuild your self trust, Start small. So before, when you start to notice, if you're questioning, do I love them enough?
Shift this to a more here and now question of [00:10:00] like, what's for lunch? Or, which movie do I actually want to watch? What activity would feel good to me right now? I also encourage you to challenge that perfect decision myth. You know, that perfect decision myth of, oh, if I pick this person, then I'm going to be happily married with them, and then we're going to have kids, we're going to have a great life together.
Versus like, well, what, what would happen if I pick this other person to date or be with? Because y'all, I get it. This dating world, it sounds like a nightmare. Like you are talking to multiple people at the same time and you know, you can't be with more than one person for the rest of your life. So you have to make a choice and you find yourself going down every endless path of like what life would be like in the long run with these dates.
So there isn't a perfect decision. Every relationship involves uncertainty and healthy relationships are built on choosing each other despite the unknowns. So some quick tips to help you in building that self trust and kind of checking in with yourself. You can ask, is this thought helping or hurting me?
Would I give this type of advice to a friend? Is this anxiety speaking or is this the real me? And lastly, what would I choose if fear wasn't in the driver's seat? So overall, when you're getting that popular relationship advice, first of all, just try to cut it out to begin with, but then you're also going to be working on your own self trust journey.
And remember, building self trust isn't about never having doubts. It's about learning to sit with the uncertainty and still move forward. It takes a lot of courage and bravery to do that, and I get it. Your relationship OCD wants guarantees, but love, like the real healthy love. It doesn't come with that, and that's okay.
So if you're tired of the toxic relationship advice that's making your relationship OCD worse, go to my website at livebeyonddoubt. com. I've got a self paced course and coaching programs available to you. Come back next week where I'm going to have my dear friend, Melissa, come on the show and we're going to have a whole conversation about self trust, passion, and how to build that self confidence when you've been traumatized by religion.
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✅ Break free from the mental spiral so you can fully embrace the love you deserve. Download my 10 Tips for ROCD Checklist here.
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*This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
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