Being Specific

I thought compiling a list of some o my obsessions over the years might be helpful because whenever I was in therapy, the psychologists that I spoke to didn't really seem to get it. It is very interesting that I did not even get ROCD symptoms (or ones that I recognised as such) until I was 29 after the ending of a very traumatic and abusive relationship. From then on I would have these thoughts and hideous accompanying feelings towards the members of the opposite sex and it was like living in a nightmare as I could not stop them. So here goes, a few that spring off the top of my head.

I can't stop thinking she looks like a frog and it really upsets me. 

Her legs are too short, it makes me feel weird.

Her eyes are too big, they scare me as they remind me of a big baby doll. 

Her eyes are blue, I don't want to be with someone with blue eyes, why did I get myself into this mess?!(It took me about 4 years to stop obsessing about that one).

Her head is too big. Why is her head so big? It's too big, it's not petite enough, it's massive. 

She looks like this Croatian footballer (can't remember his name) who is really not very appealing (she doesn't but it was very persistent for about a month).

I am scared as I keep seeing her head just on top of a big spider like out of a horror story. (I can report that that one only last just over a day thank goodness).

Why can't she just stay at that angle, she looks great from that angle but then she moves and looks weird.

Her voice is too low. 

I remember once watching a story about a young woman who was obsessing about certain pornographic images  and couldn't get them out of her head and had Exposure Response Therapy every day for a year and was laughing about the fact she had seen everything there is to see trying to get the brain to calm itself looking at those type of images. The next day I had penises flying around my brain for about 6 hours and was starting to panic! 

So on the whole I'm obsessed with physical features, although that is by no means the only thing that I could get hung up on. I know when I am really bad as I find myself constantly looking at people in magazines or on the TV and trying to work out whether I fancy them or not. I think in fact that I found a useful piece of evidence by doing that, although I always feel terrible if I am doing those kind of behaviours. I realised that I often felt the same way about what could only be described as some of the world's most beautiful people. Yes yes she looks amazing there when she is all made up but what about in that picture, she looks terrible without it all. I guess that modern culture and the world of tik tok and instagram can only serve to exacerbate the condition with its never ending reels of beautiful people enhanced by programmes and by only existing as 30 second adverts. Not real life at all. I know this to be true as half the time I look rubbish as I look terrible myself and because I can reason logically that people look much better when they make a concerted effort to look well groomed. I don't suffer as much from ROCD as I used to but I thought it would be useful to share some of these as I used to be so ashamed at myself for having these thoughts, even though I couldn't help it. I felt terrible because I felt like my relationship was a lie and that I was pretending all the time just so that I could get the benefits of being in a relationship and ergo I must be a terrible person. So if you are finding that you are having some 'crazy' thoughts and they are making you feel distressed, please do try and be kind to yourself. You can't help it, you cannot control what pings into your brain an they are only continuing because your reaction to them is out of kilter, your 'fear' prat of your brain is over reacting and essentially causing them to come back again as your brain tests whether there is anything to be scared of still but you can definitely learn to live with them, turn the dial down and if you're really lucky may get rid of them altogether... until the next time.