Loneliness can worsen the symptoms of OCD. Being alone with your compulsions and obsessions can mean that they just become a bigger part of your life.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD
This is one of the rarer fallouts of living alone. This is actually a vicious circle. Loneliness causes OCD and people with OCD are shunned by their peers, which amplifies their loneliness and makes their condition even more severe.
OCD isolates the sufferer, and this detachment from others, where the person suffering from OCD is left alone with nothing but his or her obsessions and compulsions, can exacerbate OCD.
Alone time is the worst. When you are alone, with nobody else there to pull you back into reality, OCD can kick your brain to the curb and grab control of your mind in an instant. Being alone with your obsessions somehow makes them more real, resistant, and powerful, enabling them to ambush you with ease.
Some people with OCD may intentionally withdraw from social interactions or spend most of their time alone. People with harm OCD, for example, experience intrusive thoughts about hurting other people.
OCD can make it difficult for people to perform everyday activities like eating, drinking, shopping or reading. Some people may become housebound. OCD is often compounded by depression and other anxiety disorders, including social anxiety, panic disorder and separation anxiety.
People with OCD are usually aware that their obsessions and compulsions are irrational and excessive, yet feel unable to control or resist them. OCD can take up many hours of a person's day and may severely affect work, study, and family and social relationships.
“Many who have OCD and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) choose not to date and avoid intimate relationships. There are many reasons people resort to this choice; chief among them is the desire to prevent or lessen their anxiety through avoidance of stressful situations.”
Well, the best treatment is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) known as Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. Instead of avoiding your triggers, ERP involves exposing people with OCD to things that trigger their symptoms.
Never seek reassurance from yourself or others.
Instead, tell yourself the worst will happen, is happening, or has already happened. Reassurance will cancel out the effects of any therapy homework you use it on and prevent you from improving. Reassurance-seeking is a compulsion, no matter how you may try to justify it.
Repeating compulsions can take up a lot of time, and you might avoid certain situations that trigger your OCD. This can mean that you're not able to go to work, see family and friends, eat out or even go outside. Obsessive thoughts can make it hard to concentrate and leave you feeling exhausted.
Sleep is particularly important for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a disorder marked by intrusive thoughts and compulsions. An exhausted brain can cause OCD symptoms to feel much worse.
If you have OCD, you can undoubtedly live a normal and productive life. Like any chronic illness, managing your OCD requires a focus on day-to-day coping rather than on an ultimate cure.
You can get it under control and become recovered but, at the present time, there is no cure. It is a potential that will always be there in the background, even if it is no longer affecting your life.
Unfortunately, OCD doesn't just go away. There is no “cure” for the condition. Thoughts are intrusive by nature, and it's not possible to eliminate them entirely. However, people with OCD can learn to acknowledge their obsessions and find relief without acting on their compulsions.
In fact, more than 2 million adults in the United States have one or more of the different types of OCD, including relationship OCD. Dating with OCD may feel challenging as you try to navigate the relationship at first, understand what causes OCD to get worse, and how to help.
Severe and untreated Relationship-OCD can cause marriages and relationships to break down. As a person's OCD escalates, their compulsive behavior may become more than their partner can tolerate. In some cases, it may even become unsafe for the partner or any children they have in common.
At its most severe, OCD can lead to suicidal ideation or action. This can happen when the symptoms of OCD have fully taken a hold on a person and their entire life revolves around responding to OCD obsessions and compulsions.
Primarily obsessional OCD has been called "one of the most distressing and challenging forms of OCD." People with this form of OCD have "distressing and unwanted thoughts pop into [their] head frequently," and the thoughts "typically center on a fear that you may do something totally uncharacteristic of yourself, ...
It's an often-misunderstood mental illness characterized by thoughts and behaviors that can make it tough for people to go about their day. Often, OCD is confused with being a perfectionist. And while OCD can certainly be driven by perfectionism, it's not the same. Nor is it perfectionism taken to the extreme.