E43: When nothing has worked for ROCD (What to do)

If you feel like you've tried everything to break free from Relationship OCD (ROCD), and you are out of options, you're not alone! ROCD is a complex issue that many people do not know how to treat or approach properly. In today's episode, I'm going to give you an understanding of how to approach things differently than you have been. With a high-level understanding of my approach, hopefully, you'll have a lot more clarity around how to move forward and break free for good!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everybody, welcome back to another episode of the For Love We Hill podcast. It is May 28th today, and I've got a fresh fresh I took a second there. Is it May? Yes, it's May. It's May 28th. I've got a fresh episode for you. Um, and I we're gonna be talking about those of you, it's for those of you who have tried everything, right? This episode will apply to everybody, but particularly those of you who have tried everything. You've done the therapy, you've gone through the courses, you worked, you you you've you've absorbed the content. So what why isn't anything changing? Why are you still stuck? Today we're gonna be exploring that, and I'm gonna be giving you some answers to that around how I approach things differently. Why why do my clients get the results that other people don't get with other therapy therapies? And uh so we're gonna be going into a lot of that and how my approach is really sort of uh a well-rounded, robust approach into addressing relationship OCD in the most accurate and efficient way possible, I believe. Um I've beg I've been doing this, I've been doing this almost 10,000 hours now, working with ROCD attachments and attachment specific clients. Uh, so I've really developed a robust, well-rounded, very specific way of looking and tr at and treating relationship OCDs. So I'm gonna give you a window into that today. Um, this is also gonna be available on YouTube. You'll find the YouTube link in my show notes because I do I do stuff on the whiteboard. So if you want to follow along and watch on YouTube and uh and watch me kind of draw on the whiteboard, that's gonna be there for you on YouTube. Uh, but nonetheless, uh excited to dive into today's episode and um and and we'll crush it. So uh I hope you enjoy. If you're watching this, you might be asking yourself, why is it, Alex, if I've tried everything that this is going to be different for me? Why I've if I've literally tried, it seems like everything to work through relationship OCD, why is it, Alex, that what you're selling me or what you're trying to sell me is any different than what I've tried before? I've tried the, I've I've done the practices, I've done the courses, I've done the therapy, I feel like I've done it all to try and work through relationship OCD, to be left yet again doubting my relationship, caught in doubt, fear, avoidance, and anxiety, having the urge to leave yet desperately trying to hang on, ruminating for hours and days, weeks, months, years on whether or not I'm in the right relationship, lying awake at night, sick with anxiety around whether or not to stay and leave, you know, constantly uh berated with breakup urges or statements in your mind that tell you you have to leave, that you're only lying to yourself and that you're only staying with your partner for your own selfish desires for closeness when really you just have to rip the band-aid off and leave. I mean, I've been there, I know what it's like, and I know what it's like to try so many different things to be left feeling like nothing's working. But I really want to show you how that things can be different, right? And so that uh I I want to give you a high-level understanding of what we're working with here so that you can make an informed decision of whether this is something that you feel called to move forward with, right? And I will so I want to break relationship OCD down in a way that you can understand exactly what's going on here. And I want to give, I want to provide a roadmap for healing uh in a way that makes sense to you. Because, you know, we uh I believe that if before we can make a choice in feeling confident and moving forward with something, we have to know what we're signing up for. And that's what I want to do today. I want to I want to give you a high-level understanding of uh what relationship OCD is and how to actually work through it. So if you look at the whiteboard here, I have this triangle that I've drawn, and there is ultimately three pillars to relationship OCD. At the top, we have OCD, and on the bottom, what you'll see is we have disorganized attachment. Which is a polarization, a psychological polarization between two different parts of us. On the left, we've got avoidant attachment, and on the right, we've got anxious attachment. And this will all make sense in a minute, but um, so what happens? Let's let's run through the typical scenario, right? You get into a relationship with someone who is emotionally available, and they're typically they're they're kind, they're they're you kind of say to ourselves, they're the best. They're they're like the best person that you know they're they're so great, they're so kind, and they're so caring. Yet why am I so plagued with this doubt? Why am I so plagued with the urge to leave? It must be a sign from my intuition that this relationship isn't right for me and that I need to leave, right? But what we're failing to realize, it's a huge mistake. If we buy into the story that our minds are trying to tell us that it's we're only experiencing this physical sensation, the breakup bridges of the doubt because we're in the wrong relationship, you're missing, you're completely missing the point. So what I want you to do, I want you to get on this a level with me and understand that you're missing the point. If you go down that rabbit hole and you believe those thoughts, then you're you're you're you're kind of missing the whole point of this whole thing. There's so much more to this that you can learn uh about if you just try to keep an open mind. And right, so and and many of you might be listening to this and thinking, well, that might apply to other people that actually have relationship OCD, but I don't really have relationship OCD. These doubts are just a sign from my intuition that I'm in the wrong relationship. I want you to get, I want you to get out of the mindset that that's a thing for you. And I want you to understand that what you're dealing with is something a lot more than that, right? It's a huge if you just take this as a sign that you're in the wrong relationship, you're not going to be able to get through this. There's no way you can work through this. Now, you might say, well, maybe if I just left my relationship, then everything would be better, right? That's not true. Relationship OCD will follow you around into the next emotionally available relationship that you get in. So, what I want you to do is I want you to try and keep a really open mind to what I'm sharing with you today, that you are not the exception. And this information does apply to you. So let's so I want you to look at the whiteboard here. So you enter a relationship with someone who's emotionally available. Now, most people would say, well, if I'm if I'm with such a great partner, shouldn't I be more at ease with someone who's more emotionally available? Actually, no, because when we have disorganized attachment, being with someone that's stable is actually quite triggering. Why is that? Because the emotionally available partner wants to get to know you, wants to get to know you deeply, wants to see you and know you on a deep a fundamental level. And unconsciously, that makes us that there's a fear response that we get. So what happens? We've got this avoidance over here, right? Under avoidant attachment is the fear of vulnerability and connection. Why is vulnerability and connection scary, we might ask ourselves? Why would we we be so afraid of opening up and being vulnerable? Well, because we have wounds either you have them consciously, or if they're unconscious at this point, of rejection and parentification wounds, which is a fear of being smothered ultimately. So along comes this emotionally available partner, and we start to have a physiological reaction, a psychosomatic reaction to the fact that they're so available and wanting to get to know us on a deep level of wanting closeness, of wanting proximity. We have these avoidant parts of us that are protective parts that jump in that say, this doesn't feel good to me, this isn't familiar, this doesn't feel safe. I'm worried that if this person really got to know me or got to know me, that they're not going to want to choose me. I won't be chosen, I won't be liked, I'll be rejected. If I'm too emotional, they won't like that. If I display certain emotions, I'll get rejected. And so we what we've learned is growing up, we've learned that it's better to be on our own, to be independent, to avoid connection, to avoid too much displays of vulnerability so that we could stay acceptable to those around us, right? So really, so what how then what happens, right? Well, we didn't learn that being with the right partner was going to be like this, right? We learn that you you're when you're with the right person, it's supposed to be all sunshine, right? And that you know, we'll we that we'll be free from doubt and that life will be amazing and finally make sense and things will click together and it will be easy and all this stuff. So what does it do? This triggers the hell out of these obsessive and compulsive Whoopsie Whoopsie. I uh one sec. I gotta pick my pen again. Where's my pen? There we go. There we go. And compulsive parts of us, right? So why does it trigger these obsessive and compulsive parts? Because a OCD is uh another system, a psychological system that's organized around protecting us, but this system isn't organized around protecting us from vulnerability and connection. This one is organized around protecting us from making mistakes, right? So the the fear the fear is mistakes. And why are we afraid of making mistakes? Because we are afraid of hurting our partner. Because we feel responsible for their emotions in in certain ways. We don't feel like we can tolerate someone else being upset or hurt, and that it was our fault that that they're hurt. Because why do you why do you believe that is? Why are we afraid of making mistakes and hurting our partner? Because we got a ton, what's the wound under this of shame, right? Of shame, of badness, right? And we believe that if we if we lead our partner on for our own selfish desires for closeness or whatever, and because and and we're looking at and these obsessive parts are like, well, what but if we're if we're like doing all this stuff like having breakup urges or the grass is greener or being critical of our partner or whatever it is, all these signs of avoidant attachment, then it must be because we're in the wrong relationship. So these parts are creating a story, the obsessive parts are creating a story around why we're feeling that way, and they're doing so, and they're obsessing an attempt to gain certainty over whether or not we're in the right relationship so that we can uh avoid making a mistake and hurting our partner and being bad. So OCD uh OCD is a huge uh organized around this huge shame wound. This huge shame wound up here. Right? So OCD. Right? But not only that, why is the why is the avoidant why is the are are our avoidant parts also activating? Well, because they also trigger and activate these anxiously attached part of us, parts of us, right? And the anxious attachment is things like you know clinging on or uh um uh terrified of loss, right? Just typically the most way the the the the the way that the anxious attachment presents itself in with relationship OCD is we we're afraid of loss, fear, loss, right? And but why are we so afraid of losing our partner? What is the wound? The wound is abandonment wounds. Abandonment wounds take all kinds of shapes and form. They uh they can show up because a parent was literally abandoned us or left us high and dry, or uh one parent left us high and dry. It can be emotional abandonment, uh neglect where our emotional needs weren't tended to. Uh, it can be that, you know, whatever. There's various different ways. So when I when you hear abandonment, I don't want you to automatically write it off as well. That doesn't apply to me because my parents didn't abandon me. They they they provided for me and they get, you know, bought me things and they uh, you know, whatever. You can still have all of your basic needs met, at least physical needs met, but still have abandonment wounds because the the lack of nurturance, the lack of being seen and supported and known and loved and valued and cherished and delighted in is an abandonment wound because children need that. So what happens is is along comes this mostly available partner, which to the avoidant side here is a threat. To the anxious side, it's the best thing ever. Because these anxious parts of us are typically very young and they are clinging on to this partner because finally somebody comes along that is giving us what is missing, was missing for our childhood. Terrifying for the avoidant parts of us, super comforting for the anxious parts of us, because they the our partner has is representing a sense of safety and stability in our life that we probably have never had, at least relationally. We've created a lot of stability in our life from avoidant from our avoidant attachment, like independence or being successful or whatever it is, but emotionally and relationally probably hasn't happened all that much. So these anxious parts of us, they cling to our partner, and they're terrified of losing our partner because to lose this sense of stability, this emotional and relational stability that's been gained from being with uh uh with a emotionally available partner is terrifying to these wounded inner children inside, right? Because it not only are we losing a person, we're losing a sense of stability that we have finally kind of obtained. So what happens is we get into this lovely little uh uh triggering the these three different subsystems, right? They're all activating one another. These the OCD, the obsessive parts are also triggering for the anxious parts because they're like the questioning, even creates a level of anxiety because well, what if why am I questioning things? Oh, I don't, you know, I don't want to have to lose my partner, but right, so you get into this dynamic now. What this is, and we're gonna be talking about the the internal family systems model for healing these pillars. One, two, three, these three pillars. Um, we're gonna be talking about how we use how what what I what I do, my methodology is I use both internal family systems therapy, which is parts work and inner child healing, but also we use the ideal parent figure imagery protocol developed by Dan Brown to heal these three pillars. So I want to walk us through um what that actually looks like. I want to give you a high-level understanding of what it looks like to work through this issue. Okay. So what we're gonna do is I want you, I'm gonna just give you an example. I want to, I want you to imagine something for me for a second. Um, I want you to imagine that you are five years old and you just got done a really fun weekend with your friends. And you go to school on Monday, and it's sharing time, right? You get to show and tell or whatever. You know, some maybe some kids are showing like things that they got, or some people are telling about their their their uh their weekend, and you are just over the moon. You're so excited to share the class with the class what happened to you over the weekend, and you start sharing, but you're so excited, you're so excited that to share with the class that you didn't realize another cat class already, another kid in class was already talking. So you just blah blah you start talking over them. And the teacher uh stands up and says, sit down, shut your mouth, and let the other kid finish talking. It's very rude, it's very rude to talk over someone when they're already talking. You should know that. How old are you? You're five, you should know that by now. So you're gonna have to wait until they're just finished talking. And just imagine. I mean, teachers are like this, people are like this, parents are like this. Imagine how you feel in that moment, just to picture yourself there. You're five years old and you're in class, and just imagine how you're feeling in that moment, right? Shame, embarrassment, alone, all of these really difficult, painful emotions. And nobody's there to comfort you or soothe you. You just have to kind of eat it. So, what happens in these moments? Well, from a parts perspective, from an internal family systems perspective, a protective part will jump. In and say, I'm never gonna let you raise your hand in class again. I'm gonna start, I'm gonna limit what you say in class from now on. I'm gonna be very cautious of what you say. And I'm not gonna just blurt out things impulsively. Um and I'm gonna make you quiet so that you don't speak too loudly because I never want you to feel the way that you felt in class that day. I I never want you to feel that again. So we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna change how things are done around here. And then you grow up and you wonder why you have this social anxiety, you wonder why you have difficulty speaking up, you wonder why you have difficulty expressing your authenticity and being playful and joyful because you forget. You forget that that day back in class at five years old, you got shamed by the teacher. And um, and it's not until we obviously we get into therapy that, and hopefully the the right therapist that allows you to look back in time and peer back into the past to where these things happened, which are the source of why you're struggling today. So I want to give you that example because I'm gonna we're gonna be using that example to help you understand how we heal these three pillars to relationship OCD. So, what we do. So let's say you came to me and you say, Alex, I have a lot of social anxiety. And I I just can't seem to I can't seem to perform at my best at work because I don't know the right things to say, or I stumble over my words. I just get this intense anxiety whenever I come forward with things to say. And I say, okay, what we do from an internal family systems perspective is we look, we would start with the part that's anxious, right? So it's a part of you, it's anxious, just like the obsessive part, or just like the avoidant part or the breakup urges, it's a part. What we do is we focus on it, right? And when you focus on it, you focus on it from a place of mindful separation, just noticing how it is. We can actually start to interact with it. And what we do is as we develop a trusting relationship with that anxiety, uh, and understand that it's trying to protect us from getting shamed, and we get to know it enough, we will start to be shown that this goes back in time. What will happen is the curtain will open or the gate will open, and you will start to see those early moments in which you needed to develop the social anxiety to protect from being humiliated or shamed, right? So, what happens is this quite spontaneously, usually as we stay with the protective system, it opens us up and allows us to see the memories and the experiences that led to the need for protection. Right. So, guess what we do then? As soon as we start to see that, and as soon as we have this capacity to channel this level of compassion, step forward as the adult, looking back in our history, looking back to this the the the kid, the the ourselves peering through memory into when we were this age, we can't help often but feel this compassion for these parts of us, right? And what we do is what heals all of this, what will change the social anxiety permanently is we actually travel back in time into that moment. We go into that memory as an adult, and we start to get in touch with this little part of us, with this five-year-old, for example, in this case. And we you we spent, we oh, we lovingly sit with them, right? And we get them to tell us about how bad it was. And so they share all this, right? They're they're so happy usually to have us return to them. They're over the moon that someone's finally come back to them. And we feel what they felt, we get in touch with the feelings that they've held. And then we offer the chance, what we witness them, and we offer the chance to for them to have what was missing, what was incomplete at that moment. They might say things like, Well, I need to leave. I need you to take me out of here because I don't feel supported. That might be what we do. Or they might say, I needed everyone in the class to have my back. So imagine for a second that just put yourself there. Imagine you're you're at that in that classroom, you're feeling terrible, right? And everyone in class stands up and says, You can't say that to so and so. We don't like that, Mrs. Whatever. We you need to be nicer. We have we we love you. We love uh Alex in that case. So we don't want Alex to feel bad. Just notice kind of the boost that you get. You have people there that care about you. And then let's say the teacher says, you know what, I'm having a terrible day. That's just completely unacceptable, Alex. I'm so sorry. I I I really owe it to you. Like, um I I I just really want to apologize. It's just not okay what I said. Suddenly you feel even a little bit better. Oh, okay. You don't feel as alone anymore. There's there's accountability taken from the person who was harmful. And then you have your adult self there to to comfort you and and help you. And then at that point, the memory starts to get um rewritten. And what happens on on a sort of on a uh on a brain level is now because the memories change and reconsolidated, and there's research, memory reconsolidation is the research behind how this is so effective. That when the memory becomes reconsolidated, there's a new emote emotional learning that's happened that re sort of replaces what's what's happened before. You're a your brain no longer associates these social situations with any form of threat. Your brain actually associates it with support, which starts to become, I can speak out, maybe something won't happen the way that I particularly expected, but I know that things are okay afterwards, and I have the support to navigate difficult situations, right? That changes the way that our we perceive life. And so what we do is we do the same thing for these three pillars because these wounds right here, for example, on the OCD, these shame wounds and badness wound, that's rooted in a core memory. These rejection and parentification being smothered, these wounds right here, those are rooted in a core memory. And these abandonment wounds, those are rooted in core memories. We can go back in time, we connect to the the obsessive and compulsive parts, for example. And as we stay with them, like we did the anxious part and the example, they bring us to the shame wounds, times in where we felt bad, times where we felt like a bad person, uh, whatever, when we felt responsible for other people's feelings. And as we heal those, it eliminates the need to obsess, right? Because, and and really, you know, when it comes to relationship OCD, there if the partner is, you know, if it's uh if it's a good enough partner and they're respectful and caring kind, there's no right or wrong relationship. There's only a need to understand if it's right or wrong because we're afraid of making mistakes. We're not afraid of making mistakes anymore. We're just we can just be more at peace in the relationship, right? Right. And lose all these unrealistic expectations around how it should be or whatever. We do that same thing for the avoidant stuff. We go in, we heal the rejection wounds, the the prejudification wounds being smothered. And when there's no more pain in there around that, we don't, we're not as we're not afraid of vulnerability and connection, right? We feel much more inclined to want to be very deep with our partner because connection, that type of connection feels really good and really nourishing. So uh when we're not when we don't feel so much pain and fear around rejection, we're willing to go there with our partner, talk about things, open up, be really transparent, be really honest, be really, you know, vulnerable with our emotions. It feels really good because it feels good to be seen. It's something we've always needed, but it wasn't safe to do so. The same as with a fear of loss. And some of you might be saying, Well, oh my God, Alex, what if I'm not afraid of losing my partner anymore, then what? Why would I stay then? Well, because you you need them in a way. We need others, right? So there's a need for closeness and connection. So it just allows you to enjoy your relationship more when you're not afraid of losing it, when you're not grasping so hard. Um, right? So this is how we heal relationship OCD. And what most approaches fail to do is they fail to address these pillars. I've I've only uh the the reason why I'm on this because I've got like 10,000 hours doing this, you know, specifically with ROCD clients. So I've been able to really develop a really robust understanding of this issue. Also, because I'm internal family systems, uh uh I use IFS, so we just naturally uncover these things. So this is so, but what of a lot of other approaches won't do, like ERP? ERP will only focus on obsessions and compulsions. And what ERP doesn't do is it doesn't have any understanding of emotional wounds. And what what a lot a lot of people with OCD have in common too is they are so afraid of upsetting others and they have such loyalty, they have such a fear of others being disappointed in them or or or not being perfect, or seen in a positive light in others' eyes, and it's that they don't want to blame anybody for their problems, right? And uh so what will happen is the the past will be concealed because we don't want to point the finger. We we're typically people that blame ourselves before blaming other people. Uh um, so we we uh so it's hidden, it's more hidden. So, but things are changing now in the therapy world, right? We're not we're not stuck with like old barbaric techniques that are just more cognitive and behavioral. We're actually uh we actually have the capacity to be able to understand and be tap into our emotional world in a much different way. Another thing is that I think like ERP is good for things like uh contamination OCD or whatever, because you know, you you like there, it's ERP is more looking at this issue as this as though it's an irrational fear. So you you intentionally expose yourself to the thing that would bring you a lot of anxiety, and instead of doing a compulsion that would alleviate the anxiety, like reassurance seeking or checking or whatever, you sit with it. That's good to some degree because you want to be able to like sit with feelings and not run away from them and learn to tolerate them, which is good, but it completely but you gotta take it goes way further than that. So that's why I believe this is a much more well-rounded, more permanent sort of healing technique rather than just giving some uh giving temporary relief or coping strategies for this issue. What we also do, so we use what what do we do? We use IFS, which we just talked about, but we also use ideal parent figure imagery. And what ideal parent figure imagery is is it we give we we engage with the positive the positive opposite of attach of what our attachment relationship was and through repeated engagement with imagery that provides what was missing in our childhood, just much like IFS does in a s in a way, but ideal parent figure imagery goes into uh you know bringing in ideal parent figures that are perfectly suited to our uniqueness and allow us to feel absolutely safe and secure, seen and known, attuned to, delighted in, uh encouraged, right? And that posit and that repeated engagement with these ideal parent figure positively remaps our attachment and our internal working model of attachment so that our brain, again, changes its perception on relationships from being a source of threat to a source of comfort. So there's a lot more to ideal parent figure imagery that I won't actually go into today, but I do want you to know that we use a combination of ideal parent figure imagery and primarily we use IFS to heal relationship OCD from the root. Um so uh I hope you're still with me. I hope this is helpful for you. I mean, I I realize this is a lot of information, but I wanted to give you a really well-rounded understanding of what we're dealing with here and why um why things might have not felt very uh complete for you for for for you and your healing previously. Because I my guess is is that uh these pillars weren't actually being addressed, and they need to be addressed in order for us to move through this issue. So um, yeah, so I will leave you with that now. What what here's a couple of options for you. If this feels like like if you're feeling more informed and you have an informed understanding of what's going on here, and you feel like this is something that you really resonate with, you can do one of two things. What I'd encourage you to do is join my course and community, my ROCD course and community, uh for 37 bucks a month. You get access to the practices that allow you to do this, guided practices. Uh you get access to uh the tools, the practices, and the information on how to do this. But what you also get is you get access to a private Facebook community where you can come ask questions, and you get access to my bi-weekly support groups that where you can come. There's a community of individuals that are showing up every two weeks, sharing about their experience, their progress, the parts of them that they're working on. It's just a really great space to come and be supported for a really low cost. If this is also if this is resonating, what I'd also encourage you to do, if it feels right, is get book book a session with us, book a discovery call, because uh we can help you one-to-one work through this a lot quicker than uh than you obviously you would in the course, but we can start to help you unpack these issues and help you work through these uh with someone from my team. So if that resonates for you, I would encourage you to do that. Uh, all the information is gonna be in the show notes. So just so to sign up for the course, you can sign up in the show notes. If you want to book a session one-to-one, sign up in the show notes. Everything's gonna be there. Uh yeah, so I hope you all have a great day. I know we're heading into the weekend. It's not Thursday today, so I hope everyone has a good weekend. The sun is really coming out here in Ontario, Canada. We're getting a lot of nice warm weather, so I'm really happy about that. My parts are happy around the the emergence from from winter and into spring, and now heading into summer. So I'm feeling really good about that. And I hope it's treating the uh the warmer weather is treating all of you really well as well. And I will see you in the next episode.