How to Overcome ROCD Guilt
“How do I overcome ROCD guilt?”
You feel like the whole responsibility of the world is on your shoulders. You experience an immense pressure to figure things out and come to a decision. You feel guilty for doubting your relationship and having thoughts of leaving. You might feel like every day you haven't made a decision, you're just leading your partner on more and more. Or maybe you feel guilty for thinking of another person and wondering if you’d feel happier with them instead.
As one Redditor put it, “There is a huge sense of urgency and yet you're paralyzed and literally don't know what to do. There's so much evidence for and against and you're literally stuck. You feel like by just staying in the relationship, you're hurting them.”
At the heart of ROCD guilt is the feeling that 1) you are doing something wrong, or 2) you as a person are bad. Either of these experiences is truly miserable, and each gets in the way of recovering from ROCD.
In this blog post, I explain why ROCD guilt so often shows up, why it’s not a sign that you’re a bad person or that you’re doing something wrong, and, most importantly, how to find relief. When you find relief from guilt, you can focus more on recovering from ROCD and showing up in your relationship.
When ROCD guilt shows up, don’t confess
The most common response to guilt is to try and alleviate it as soon as possible. This is done by confessing. Confessing usually looks like telling your partner all of the things you feel badly about, such as doubting whether you love them, wondering if your anxiety is your gut warning you, feeling attracted to other people, and so on.
Confessing often feels like the right thing to do. If honesty is important to you, then confessing can feel like a way to be honest. But - and this is a big ‘but’ - confessing is almost always selfish. Confessing is almost always about relieving yourself of the sense of guilt, not about doing something for the well-being of your partner.
So, the first step to handling ROCD guilt is not confessing to your partner. Don’t spill your doubt and guilt onto them and ask them to reassure you.
Why?
When you confess and seek reassurance, you’re doing a compulsion. Doing compulsions make ROCD worse, and that’s the opposite of what we want.
When you confess to your partner, you probably hurt your partner and hurt your relationship.
Not confessing your doubt and guilt can actually be an act of kindness and love to your partner. There are other places where you can work on your guilt in a way that will be less hurtful and more productive for your recovery.
Let’s look now at what ROCD guilt is and why it so often shows up.
Symptoms of ROCD guilt
Here are some of the most common symptoms of ROCD guilt:
Feeling guilty for doubting your relationship
Feeling bad about yourself for having urges to break up
Criticizing yourself for not knowing whether you love your partner
Judging yourself for feeling attracted to other people, including an ex
Blaming yourself for hurting your partner’s feelings
Being angry with yourself for having judgmental thoughts about your partner
It’s difficult to put into words how deep this experience of guilt and suffering can be. Some people say that the feeling of guilt is the worst part of their ROCD, far stronger than the anxiety. However your guilt feels for you though, there are ways to find relief.
What causes ROCD guilt?
The first step to finding relief from ROCD guilt is understanding why the guilt arises in the first place. When you know why it arises, you’re much more likely to let yourself off the hook and quit judging yourself.
Here are three causes of relationship anxiety guilt:
Unhealthy assumptions about relationships
Most of us have unhealthy expectations about being in a relationship. For example, most people I’ve worked with have voiced feeling like they should already know whether they’re in the right relationship, or whether they’ve found “the one.”
Expectations like this set us up to feel guilty when we inevitably don’t meet them.
Here are some other unhealthy expectations that we’re taught to believe about relationships:
If you were with the right person, you wouldn’t ever feel doubtful or uncertain about it.
If you ever don’t feel in love with your partner, then it means you don’t really love them.
If you ever feel attracted to another person, it means you’re not in the right relationship.
In order to relieve yourself of guilt, it’s vital to challenge these unhealthy expectations and choose beliefs that are more fair and realistic. For example, you can be in a great relationship and still question at times whether you’d be happier with someone else. You can deeply love your partner and still have moments when the feeling is absent and wonder whether you actually love them.
Your personality type
People with relationship anxiety and ROCD are often very moral and conscientious, meaning they’re focused on doing the right thing. They often leave themselves little space for making a mistake. Combine these high personal expectations with the unhealthy beliefs described in the section above, and you wind up with a person who is very hard on themselves and feels a tremendous amount of guilt.
Early life experiences
Early life experiences can also cause ROCD guilt later in life. Maybe other people criticized you for worrying and being more sensitive, or maybe they outright told you that you were bad. Either way, early life experiences like this set the foundation for how we treat ourselves as adults, and can cause us to feel bad for things that we otherwise wouldn’t.
When you understand what causes ROCD guilt, you’re in a better position to validate your experience by saying to yourself, for example, “Of course I’d feel guilty. Everything I’ve learned about relationships has told me that I shouldn’t have thoughts or feelings of doubt.” Or, “I’ve been hard on myself throughout my life. Of course it would show up here too” When you do this, you begin to let yourself off the hook and to heal from ROCD guilt.
How do handle your ROCD guilt
Here are three ways to find relief from ROCD guilt, in addition to not confessing.
Stay in your relationship
Many people leave their relationships when they feel guilty. This is often done out of a place of feeling so badly about themselves that they believe their partner deserves someone better. But really, that’s something for your partner to decide themselves.
You might also feel so guilty and bad about yourself that you feel tempted to leave your partner for your own sense of relief. Example: “If I’m not in a relationship, then it’s no longer bad of to feel attracted to other people.” Leaving for this reason is just another compulsion, since it’s about making discomfort go away as soon as possible. Again, the path of recovery from ROCD involves not compulsing. So, provided you’re in a relationship with no flags, consider staying. Give your relationship a chance. And give yourself the chance to work through your ROCD before making any major choices like breaking up with your partner.
There are no bad thoughts
There are no bad thoughts. So, let yourself off the hook. Give yourself permission to have whatever doubt thoughts naturally show up.
Your brain is a word machine. It creates over 50,000 thoughts a day, and most of them are negative (focused on what could go wrong). Brains worry about money. Brains worry about health. Brains worry about everything, so why would relationships be an exception? In short, having doubt thoughts about your relationship is inevitable.
Punishing yourself for having doubt thoughts is punishing yourself for something you don’t control. It’s totally unfair to do to yourself. Don’t make yourself feel guiltier than you already do! As Helen Keller said, "Guilt is a terrible burden to carry." So rather than add more guilt, be kind to yourself. Do everything you can to relieve yourself of that burden.
If you feel like it would help to forgive yourself for having these thoughts, go ahead and do so. "Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself," wrote Bryant McGill.
For many people though, just recognizing that they don’t control their thoughts - that their brain creates tens of thousands of mostly negative thoughts a day - is enough to stop holding themselves accountable, and to start creating a sense of relief.
How would you treat a loved one?
If a loved one came to you and confessed having “bad thoughts”, would you punish them? Would you guilt them? My guess is no. My guess is that you would let them know that they’re not a bad person, and that there’s nothing wrong with them for having thoughts like this.
I encourage you to treat yourself the same way you’d treat them. Treat yourself the way you’d treat a loved one who felt guilty and shameful.
When guilt is useful information
ROCD guilt is uncalled for, since you don’t have control over your thoughts, feelings, and urges. That being said, sometimes another type of guilt shows up that is important to listen to. I think of this as “useful guilt”. This is guilt you feel over things that are under your control, such as if you repeatedly break up with your partner. This kind of guilt tells you that you’ve acted in a way that’s counter to your values, and that you would do well to act differently going forward.
As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, "Guilt can be a motivator for positive change." So, rather than try to get rid of every last trace of guilt, get good at recognizing when guilt has something to teach you. When you listen to this kind of guilt - guilt about something you have control over - it can help you to change your behavior toward something more in line with your values as a partner.
In summary, when you feel guilty over something you have control over, look more closely to see what you might learn from the guilt.
But when you feel guilty over something you don’t have control over (like doubt thoughts, or urges to break up, or attraction toward another person), practice letting yourself off the hook. Remind yourself of healthy expectations for a relationship. And treat yourself with the same level of kindness and understanding with which you’d treat a loved one who was having a hard time. After all, you didn’t choose this stuff - it just showed up.
Conclusion
The far majority of ROCD guilt comes from judging and being disappointed with yourself for having certain thoughts, feelings, and urges, mainly doubting whether you’re with the right person. But it’s unfair to guilt yourself over something you don’t control (you didn’t choose these thoughts or feelings). When you let yourself off the hook and give yourself a break, you’ll feel less guilty and more able to focus on what matters most right now: recovering from relationship anxiety and ROCD.
If you’re suffering intensely from ROCD guilt and are finding it difficult to find any relief, you can always find a therapist who can help you to overcome this obstacle to your recovery.
Meet Cameron
I help men and women recover from relationship anxiety and ROCD. I’ve helped people who are dealing with relationship anxiety for the very first time, or who have struggled with it for years. I’ve seen again and again that recovery is possible. I’ve also seen that, as strange as it sounds, guilt can be a doorway into healing your relationship with yourself. My job is to help you in doing this.
Reach out for a free consultation to see if I’m a good fit for you.
Or check out my online course. It’s on-demand, and includes over 3 hours of audio and 10 practical tools to use in overcoming ROCD.
I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and I see clients both online and in downtown Oakland, California.
Notes:
This post is for educational purposes only. Because I don’t know the specifics of any one reader’s relationship and life circumstances, I cannot make any recommendations about whether to stay or leave a relationship. The comments on this blog post are intended to help readers think through their situation and make a decision that they themselves think is best for them. If you’re being abused or grossly mistreated in some way, please speak with a professional about receiving support.
This post is not as a means for diagnosis. Diagnosis of OCD or any other mental disorder requires live interaction with a licensed mental health professional.
