Spring Cleaning For Your Mind: Planting Seeds of Connection 

Introduction

As the days grow longer and the air warmer, many of us feel the urge to tidy up our homes and clear out the clutter. But spring cleaning doesn’t have to stop at your living but can extend into our minds if we choose. We can benefit just as much from clearing mental and emotional blockages, especially within our relationships. By taking time to nurture and strengthen our connections with loved ones, we plant the seeds for healthier, more fulfilling bonds. This spring, let’s focus on planting those seeds of connection to foster deeper, more meaningful relationships in our lives.

Identifying the “Soil” of Your Relationships

To begin nurturing healthier connections, it's essential to reflect on the state of your current relationships. Which ones are thriving and which could benefit from more attention? Think of your relationships as plants in a garden, with each one requiring a different level of care. Evaluate the emotional “soil” of these relationships by considering your communication patterns, habits, and emotional availability. Self-awareness plays a crucial role in tending to the health of these bonds, as understanding your own emotional landscape allows you to identify areas for growth and improvement. By taking the time to assess your relationships and their foundation, you set the stage for deeper, more meaningful connections. 

This also includes identifying any "weeds" in your garden - things that are growing where you don’t want them to, draining resources from the relationships you want to nourish. Are there relationships you're investing too much energy in, when it could be better spent elsewhere? Negative patterns or toxic behaviors, like poor communication, emotional withdrawal, or unresolved conflict, can also act as barriers to connection. These issues consume mental energy that could be better used for growth. To address them, open communication is key—have honest, vulnerable conversations, and practice active listening. Setting healthy boundaries creates a safe space for both parties to express their needs. Lastly, releasing old grievances allows room for your energy to be focused on more positive things, helping your relationships flourish in healthier ways.

Planting Seeds

To cultivate deeper connections, start with small, intentional actions that nurture your relationships. Active listening is a powerful tool—truly listen and be present, giving your full attention without interrupting or thinking ahead to what you’ll say next. Prioritize quality time, even in busy lives, by setting aside moments for meaningful interactions. Acts of kindness, like a thoughtful gesture or a simple note of appreciation, can go a long way in showing care. Vulnerability is equally important; share your feelings and create a safe space for mutual understanding and emotional openness. Begin with one small connection-building action each day—whether it's actively listening or showing appreciation—and watch how these efforts strengthen your relationships over time.

Nurturing the Seeds

Just like plants, relationships require ongoing care and attention to thrive. Consistency is key in building and maintaining strong connections—showing up regularly for your loved ones, even in small ways, helps reinforce trust and closeness. However, patience is equally important, as growth in relationships takes time and often involves ups and downs. Just as plants go through seasons of growth, stagnation, and even dormancy, so too do our connections. Relationships naturally evolve, and it’s essential to adapt to these changes. Embrace shifts in your connections, whether by rekindling old bonds or making space for new ones, and understand that each season brings its own unique opportunity for growth. Remember that plants can be beautiful and healthy even when they aren’t flowering or actively producing fruit, just as relationships can still be meaningful and valuable, even during quieter or less active times.

Conclusion

Spring is the perfect time to refresh your mental and emotional landscape, offering a chance to plant new seeds of connection and growth. Start small, nurturing these relationships with consistent care and patience, and watch them flourish over time. By committing to this ongoing effort, you create the space for deeper, more meaningful connections. Just as the flowers bloom in spring, your relationships can thrive with a little care, patience, and attention.

Spring Cleaning For Your Mind: Clearing out the Weeds

Spring Cleaning For Your Mind

As spring arrives and the season of regrowth kicks into full swing, we also find that more and more weeds begin to pop up. With the arrival of this season of renewal, vigilance is needed to weed out unwanted growth so that more of what we want can thrive. Just like weeds that creep into a garden, negative and irrational thought patterns, known as cognitive distortions, can take root in our minds, crowding out healthier, more balanced thinking. These mental "weeds" can hinder emotional and mental growth, leading to stress, anxiety, and strained relationships. Clearing out these distortions cultivates better mental health, improves our outlook on life, and nurtures more meaningful connections with others.

What Are Cognitive Distortions?

Cognitive distortions are biased or irrational ways of thinking that can lead to negative emotions and behaviors, shaping our perception of the world in unhealthy ways. Common examples include overgeneralization, catastrophizing, and black-and-white thinking, all of which can cloud our judgment and influence how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. Just like weeds that invade a garden, these mental distortions take root over time, overshadowing more balanced, realistic thinking and preventing emotional growth. They affect our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, often leading to patterns of negativity, stress, and conflict. In relationships, cognitive distortions can cause miscommunication, create unnecessary conflict, and contribute to emotional distance, making it harder to foster healthy, meaningful connections.

Common Cognitive Distortions with Examples:

Magnification: exaggerating the importance of events or others.

• After making a minor mistake at work, such as a spelling error in an email, you think ”I am incompetent”. 

Minimization: downplaying the significance of events.

• When you get praised for your hard work and think, “That was no big deal, anyone could have done it.”

Catastrophizing: seeing only the worst possible outcomes of a situation, often without evidence. 

• "If I fail this exam, my life will be ruined."

Overgeneralization: making broad, sweeping conclusions based on a single or limited event. 

• “I felt awkward during my job interview. I am always so awkward.”

Magical Thinking: believing that your thoughts, actions, or emotions can influence unrelated events or outcomes.

• “They are sick because I am angry at them.”

Personalization: the belief you are responsible for events outside of your control. 

• "It's my fault they are upset. I must have done something wrong,"

Jumping to Conclusions: interpreting the meaning of a situation with little or no evidence.

• “She didn’t respond to my text, so she must be mad at me.”

Mind Reading: assuming you know what others are thinking without any solid proof. 

• “She wouldn’t go on a date with me. She probably thinks I’m ugly.”

Fortune Telling: expecting a situation to turn out badly without having sufficient evidence. 

• “I’m going to fail this presentation, I just know it.”

Emotional Reasoning: believing that your emotions reflect objective reality. 

• “I feel like a bad friend, so I must be a bad friend.”

Disqualifying the Positive: focusing only on the negative aspects of a situation and ignoring the positive. 

• You might receive several compliments at work but focus solely on one piece of negative feedback.

“Should” Statements: rigid, unrealistic expectations that things should be a certain way. 

• “I should always be perfect” or “I should never make mistakes.”

All-or-Nothing Thinking: thinking in absolutes, such as “always,” “never,” or “every.” 

• “People never agree with me” or “I always fail.” 

Weeding the Mental Garden

Identifying and challenging cognitive distortions requires awareness and consistent effort. The first step is becoming aware and noticing when you're engaging in distorted thinking. Once you're aware of these patterns, you can begin reality testing by questioning the evidence for your negative thoughts and considering alternative, more balanced perspectives. Reframing your thoughts to replace distorted thoughts with healthier, more realistic ones will help you see situations more clearly. Mindfulness and self-compassion can also help you to stay present and soften harsh self-judgments. Remember, just like gardening, weeding out cognitive distortions takes time and practice. Over time, with persistence and patience, these strategies can lead to a healthier mindset and improved emotional well-being.

Nurturing the Positive and Preventing Future Weeds

Nurturing positive, realistic thoughts is key to replacing cognitive distortions and maintaining emotional balance. Strengthen mental resilience by practicing gratitude, using affirmations to build self-esteem, and developing a growth mindset to approach challenges. This helps foster a healthier perspective and supports better relationships. Mental gardening, however, is an ongoing process. Regular self-reflection, journaling, seeking feedback from trusted individuals, and practicing mindfulness or therapy can help prevent new distortions from taking root and maintain a positive mental environment.

Fresh Start for Your Mind

Spring cleaning for your mind is about clearing out the harmful things cluttering your mind like cognitive distortions, allowing for a clearer, healthier mindset. It's normal for these distortions to arise, but with awareness and effort, they can be managed and replaced with more realistic, positive thinking. By doing so, you can foster emotional growth, strengthen relationships, and improve your overall well-being. Just like a garden, your mind can thrive when you nurture it with care and attention.

Pot Fillers vs Pot Drillers Spring Cleaning for Your Mind

A Mental Reset

As spring quickly approaches, the familiar urge for a thorough spring cleaning often follows. It’s a time to tidy up, refresh, and clear out the clutter in our homes. But what if we could also apply this concept of spring cleaning to our minds? Imagine clearing away the mental clutter, letting go of the negative patterns and influences that drain our energy, and replacing them with habits, people, and practices that nurture our self-esteem and mental well-being. One way we can give our mental spaces the spring cleaning it deserves is by clearing out the things that drain our self-esteem and replacing them with what builds us up.

“Pot Fillers” and “Pot Drillers”

Our self-esteem can be compared to a pot that can either be filled or drilled into, impacting how we feel about ourselves. “Pot fillers” are the people, activities, or habits that positively contribute to our self-esteem, uplifting and supporting us in ways that foster growth and confidence. These might include practices like positive affirmations, healthy relationships, engaging in self-care, or accomplishing small, manageable goals.

On the flip side, “pot drillers” are those things or individuals that drain our self-esteem, leaving us feeling depleted, discouraged, and less confident. They poke holes in our sense of self and often take more than they give. Examples of pot drillers include toxic relationships, negative self-talk, unhealthy comparisons, burnout-inducing commitments, and habits that don’t serve us. Recognizing and differentiating between pot fillers and pot drillers is key to cultivating a balanced and healthy sense of self.  

Know Your Fillers and Drillers

The first step in fixing up our self-esteem pots is to take inventory of what fills and drains your unique pot. Start by reflecting on your current self-esteem levels. One way to do this is by drawing your pot and reflecting on how full it feels right now.  Draw a line or color in your pot to note how full it feels at the moment. Once you've done this, take some time to write down the pot fillers and drillers in your life. For pot fillers, ask yourself: What people or activities leave me feeling energized, supported, and valued? What are the things I do to nourish and value myself? For pot drillers, reflect on: What people or situations leave me feeling drained, criticized, or inadequate? What are the ways I interact with myself that make me feel less than? Write down what you come up with on your pot drawing. By getting clear on these, you can start making intentional shifts toward prioritizing what fills your pot and minimizing what drains it.  

Cultivating More “Pot Fillers”

To intentionally add more pot fillers to your life, start by practicing self-compassion and positive self-talk. Be kind to yourself and recognize the importance of nurturing your mental and emotional well-being. Setting boundaries is another key pot filler. Boundaries protect you from draining people or situations by learning to say no when necessary and prioritizing your peace. Surround yourself with people who uplift and inspire you, whether they are friends, family, or mentors who genuinely support your growth. Make time for activities that foster joy, growth, and fulfillment, like hobbies, exercise, or creative pursuits. To integrate more pot fillers into your daily life, consider scheduling regular self-care practices, such as taking a walk, enjoying a relaxing bath, or engaging in a mindfulness practice. Seek out supportive friendships and mentors who encourage your development, and take time each day to practice gratitude, acknowledging the positive aspects of your life. Setting achievable goals that gradually build your confidence will also fill your pot. By making these conscious choices, you’ll create a life that nurtures and supports your self-esteem and overall well-being.  

How to Manage or Remove Pot Drillers

Recognizing and managing pot drillers in your life is essential for maintaining a healthy sense of self-esteem. Common pot drillers are activities, commitments, or people that don’t align with your well-being. Work to identify them and establish better boundaries. By setting firm boundaries with those who drain your energy, you protect your emotional reserves and allow room for positive influences. Reevaluate any commitments where you may be overextending yourself, leading to burnout. Sometimes it’s necessary to step back from certain obligations to avoid emotional depletion. If you identify someone in your life who is unintentionally draining your self-esteem, having an honest conversation can help. Approach the topic with kindness and vulnerability, explaining how certain behaviors or interactions affect your energy and self-worth, and discuss ways to create a more balanced dynamic. If negative self-talk is a pot driller for you, challenge those critical thoughts by replacing them with affirmations of your worth, such as “I am capable,” or “I am deserving of respect.” By implementing these strategies, you can minimize the impact of pot drillers and protect your mental health. If you find yourself struggling to address pot drillers on your own, reaching out to a therapist can offer you the tools and support you need.  

Maintaining a Balanced Self-Esteem Pot

Maintaining a balanced self-esteem pot requires recognizing that both pot fillers and pot drillers will always be present in life. The key is not to eliminate all the drainers but to find balance by actively filling your pot with positive influences while managing the drainers. Ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection are essential to this process, as they help you stay attuned to the people, habits, and thoughts that affect your self-esteem. Just as spring cleaning isn’t a one-time task, maintaining your mental and emotional health is an ongoing practice that requires regular attention. Frequently reassessing your boundaries, relationships, and self-talk allows you to adapt and ensure that your self-esteem pot stays as full as possible, even when life throws inevitable challenges your way.  

Sustaining A Healthy Mindset

In conclusion, maintaining a healthy self-esteem requires recognizing the impact of both pot fillers and pot drillers in our lives. By intentionally nurturing the things that fill our pot and minimizing the things that drain us, we can create a more balanced and resilient sense of self. Spring cleaning for your mind isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing process of nurturing your mental health, setting boundaries, and practicing self-compassion. Take time today to reflect on what fills or drains your self-esteem and begin taking small, intentional steps to cultivate a more positive, supportive mental and emotional environment. Just as we give our homes a fresh start in spring, we have the power to refresh our minds and nurture our long-term well-being by prioritizing the things that lift us up and protect us from what holds us down.

1 - SHAME

Shame often plays a very large role in the experience of intrusive thoughts. Whether we carry a lot of shame or we are terrified by the thought of experiencing shame, this unprocessed emotion can be a major culprit to fueling your intrusive thoughts and your reaction to them. For many people who have not experienced much shame or failure, the thought of it feels unbearable. Because they have been mostly successful or have had parents who shielded them from failure they don’t believe in their ability to cope with the idea of failure. Others may have experienced traumatic or negative events that left them with boatloads of shame that they didn’t know what to do with. This unprocessed shame fuels intrusive thoughts and the response to them. 

2 - CONTROL

Our relationship with control also plays a large factor in OCD. If you have a hard time letting go, or trusting yourself or others, then you often feel out of control. Then OCD amplifies as a result of trying to feel in control but making you feel out of control in other ways. Order or symmetry can help you feel in control when the intrusive thoughts lead you feeling completely out of control, but then when it becomes a compulsive need you may feel out of control again. Unfortunately, we only have so much control in life. We have to accept that we can’t control everything. Try exploring how you can trust yourself to make empowered decisions no matter what’s going on in your life, instead of feeling the need to be in control all the time to avoid any adversity.

3 - FEARS

Our biggest fears are an obvious underlying factor that spikes OCD. Are you deeply afraid of shootings, or failing, or dying? Your OCD, intrusive thoughts, and hypervigilance will be activated around related triggers. We’re all scared of something and we can’t make our fears go away- they are natural. However, they can feel more manageable or less scary by spending some time journaling about why your biggest fears are so scary to you and exploring how you can find comfort when you’re feeling afraid.

4 - STRESS

Increased stress in our life naturally makes us feel less in control and activates our nervous system. These two factors serve as a great breeding ground for OCD to spark and grow. If you are experiencing heightened stress due to work, family, or major life changes it can be helpful to understand this may be why your OCD is worsening or heightened. Practicing stress management techniques or using boundaries can help to reduce stress and the severity of the OCD symptoms. 

5 - TRAUMA 

Past trauma often directly affects the nature of OCD obsessions and symptoms and increases overall hypervigilance and our nervous symptoms responses. Sexual trauma may lead to intrusive thoughts around sexually adjacent topics. Trauma of losing a loved one or witnessing death or illness may lead to intrusive thoughts and OCD symptoms about your own health. Sometimes the OCD symptoms and trauma responses are less obvious, but often a history of trauma can lead to OCD as an attempt to avoid the triggering experience of feeling helpless, powerless, and out of control. You may be able to reduce and resolve some OCD symptoms by processing past trauma and learning to regulate your nervous system through trauma therapy with a licensed mental health professional. 

6 - VALUES

Intrusive thoughts are often so disturbing because they are in a stark misalignment with our values. If you highly value your family or pets, thoughts about doing anything to hurt them would cause significant disturbance. If you value your reputation, career, or respecting others, the fear of being “cancelled” would feel uniquely terrifying. The stronger our values the more disturbing the intrusive thought feels because it’s directly countering who you feel like you are and what you feel like you appreciate. Recognize that these intrusive thoughts don’t mean that you don’t value what you thought you did, but you are so disturbed by these thoughts because they are counter to your values.

7 - SENSITIVITY

Finally, many people with OCD are highly sensitive people which means they experience emotions deeply and often physically and are natural scanners of others moods and actions. Therefore, high sensitivity layered with the other factors listed above, like shame and fear, means you may be feeling shame, fear, trauma, and helplessness at a higher intensity that makes the intrusive thoughts more disturbing. Also, many people with OCD are highly sensitive but often avoid feeling their emotions. They tend to overcompensate by trying to be logical and thought focused to avoid the feelings which can lead to obsessive thinking. Balancing feeling emotions first or with logical thinking on a regular basis can help to reduce the OCD intensity.

What Are Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are disturbing or unsettling thoughts, images, or urges that feel unwanted. Intrusive thoughts are incongruent and threatening to who you are and what you value and care for. They feel like you are being punched in the face by your own mind. Intrusive thoughts take your worst fears and warp them to make you feel like you’re in a living nightmare and you're responsible for it. Given this intensity, it makes perfect sense that compulsions often follow the intrusive thought. You want to do whatever you can to make the distress go away, even if it is short-lived. 

Intrusive thoughts thrive in areas that are ambiguous when there’s not a clear answer. For example, doubting your sanity, sexuality, integrity, intentions, or anything that can be easily seen or detected. Intrusive thoughts are a necessary part of an OCD diagnosis but many people struggling with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, or no diagnoses may experience the unpleasantness of intrusive thoughts. 

Your Intrusive Thoughts Might Look Like This: 

• What if I have an STD?

• What if my kid falls off his bike and gets run over?

• What if I hurt myself?

• I’m going Crazy.

• Did I leave the stove on?

• I’m going to fail.

• What if this is cancer?

• What if the results are wrong and I do actually have an STD and I spread it?

• What if my dog dies?

• Was that a bump in the road or did I hit someone with my car?

• I hit someone with my car.

• I should cut myself with that knife.

• What if I’m pregnant?

• Am I dying?

• What if I give my grandma the flu and kill her?

• What if I accidentally said something racist and get cancelled?

• What if I never find a purpose?

• Am I really here or is this existence fake?

• What if that person wants to take my baby?

• What if I drove my car off the road? 

• What if my kid has cancer?

• What if God heard me and I go to hell?

• What if God didn’t hear me and I go to hell? 

• What if I have cancer and I’m dying and I don’t know? 

• I have cancer and I’m dying and the test results are wrong.

• What if I’m not attracted to my partner like I thought I was?

• I said the wrong thing and they aren’t going to forgive me.

• What if I’m not attracted to my partner anymore? 

The Intensity of Intrusive Thoughts

For many people, reading this list could be validating of their intrusive thoughts that activate their whole body and nervous system. For some people, reading this list might help them realize the unlikeliness or commonness of their thoughts. And for others, they may often suffer from being plagued with thoughts like these, but don’t feel the need to enact the compulsion. Either way, intrusive thoughts are not easily thwarted. They feel so terrifying or unsettling the nervous system is activated to a state of hypervigilance and urgency that no answer is good enough to calm yourself into a safe, relaxed, and mentally clear response. 

Fortunately, when we are able to see our intrusive thoughts for what they are, they can become more manageable. Try some of these strategies to work on showing your intrusive thoughts who the boss is and not letting them control you any more. These thoughts themselves aren’t ridiculous, they are often pretty common, but the intensity on the dial is just turned up several degrees too high because they feel so scary and counter intuitive to you.

6 Tips To End Intrusive Thoughts

1. Write Out Your Intrusive Thoughts

Writing out your intrusive thoughts is a great way to externalize them, reduce their power, and help you see them more clearly. A great time to practice this exercise is to write them out when you're feeling overwhelmed, but an even better habit is to practice writing them out regularly. This helps to clear your mind of them and consistently create a practice of “letting go.”

2. Accept Your Intrusive Thought

See your intrusive thought for what it is. It’s a junk thought. It’s an intrusive thought. It’s not who you are. It’s a product of either trauma, a predisposition of OCD, or your brain working out logistics. Sometimes we just have thoughts that mean nothing. Your brain is wired to scan for safety and explore options. Your brain is just looking out for you or it’s just filtering through what it knows. Your brain is sorting information which includes the facts that a knife can cut you, your car can run over someone, and your child could get hurt. But, just because your mind is exploring these possibilities, it doesn’t mean these bad things will happen! By accepting these thoughts for what they are we can change the way we talk to ourselves and the need to act so quickly or at all to make them go away.

3. Practice Mindfulness and Grounding 

Mindfulness and grounding are challenging but very helpful ways to break or lessen the intensity of obsessive thinking. When an intrusive thought comes up, practice a body scan to find where there may be tension or hyperactivation in your body. Your head might feel dizzy in your head, tight in your arms, or tingling in your fingers. Sit with this sensation and practice taking deep breaths in through your nose, filing your diaphragm or belly, and exhaling through your mouth. This exercise can help to calm your nervous system and lessen the intensity of the experience. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise is great for grounding and being more present as well. State 5 things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste to get out of your head and back in your body. 

4. Share Your Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts thrive on shame and isolation, so sharing what they are with someone you trust can help to lessen the power they hold over you. Talk to a friend or loved one that you believe can meet you without judgement. Or, share your intrusive thoughts in therapy or a support group. Keeping them in only magnifies them and the embarrassment you feel related to them. Don’t let them control you. They are just thoughts, but you can take actions to help you feel better. 

5. Laugh At It’s Ludicrousness 

If you can, find the humor in your intrusive thoughts! Practice this: “Ha! That was just a dumb thought. That’s just my OCD, OCDing.” and then be done with it. This skill is hard and is usually only an available option after having more acceptance and mindfulness of your intrusive thoughts. It’s also easier to use after being able to share and relate with others who have experienced something similar. This form of self-talk and finding humor in the situation without putting yourself down can be a powerful tool.

6. Explore Underlying Factors 

Intrusive thoughts can be better understood and reduced overall when we understand some of the underlying factors. Stress, shame, control, trauma, life changes, emotional awareness, and our unique values have a large impact on our intrusive thoughts. Learn more about these factors in the next blog in this series.

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Talking about OCD can be very difficult for both the person experiencing the disorder and for the loved ones witnessing their experience. For those experiencing it, the disorder and its effects can feel really hard to explain and for those witnessing, OCD can be hard to understand. OCD can feel particularly difficult to understand because of the largely internal experience of the condition and the intensity in which it is felt by the person experiencing it.

For The Person With OCD

Explain Your Unique Experience 

If you’re wanting some help or understanding from your loved ones in your life, start by trying to explain your experience to them. You can break apart the different parts of your experience as explained in the previous blog. Think of explaining these questions: What are your fears, obsessions, intrusive thoughts, and self-doubt? How have you been battling them with compulsions and rituals? And how has this been affecting you? If that feels too difficult, start by letting them know that you’re struggling and need help and seek support from a licensed mental health professional to better understand your experience and be able to articulate it. 

Ask for Support and Set Boundaries 

It’s hard to ask for support and it sometimes means facing some fears about feeling like you’re failing or having to share some about your internal world. But, these conversions that may bring up some discomfort can lead to a lot of growth. If you know that there are certain behaviors that your loved ones do that trigger your intrusive thoughts and shame about your disorder, let them know or ask them to refrain. If you need to set some boundaries to have some time and space to relax or destress to help manage symptoms, let them know this too.

Share How You Want To Grow

It’s also important to let your loved ones know how you hope and want to grow in better managing your OCD. For example, you may want to

• Get in therapy or find a consistent schedule for treatment.

• Work on managing and reducing compulsions.

• Work on boundaries, reducing unhelpful people pleasing, or reducing stress.

Consider realistic goals for making OCD more manageable. The disorder may not disappear completely, but what would progress look like for you? For example, could you aim to check the house once at night instead of multiple times? A realistic goal might be getting to the point at night where you can complete one routine “sweep” of checking the house and making sure everything is in order instead of several rounds of compulsive checking and getting out of bed to make sure the door is locked and the stove is off? 

For The Loved One Supporting Someone With OCD

Learn What OCD Is - And Isn’t 

A great way to start understanding more about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how it’s affecting your loved one, is by checking out the first blog of this series to get an overview. Know that OCD is not “just anxiety,” or that your partner is not a “clean freak.” Know that OCD is a mental health disorder that typically feels very much out of their control. Ask your partner to describe their OCD to you.

Understand How Real Their Fears Feel

Although your loved one’s fears or concerns may seem irrational, false, or unlikely, the nature of OCD makes these fears feel incredibly real. It’s likely not helpful to try to convince them otherwise when they are wrapped up and consumed by an obsession. It’s going to be hard to support your loved one if you can’t accept how real these fears feel to them. Try thinking this: Imagine being flooded with out of control thoughts telling you that your worst fear is happening and it feels completely real- how miserable would that be? Start from this place of empathy and then get curious about how you can help your loved one better manage these fears.

Practice Patience and Reduce Judgement

Know that OCD can cause a lot of distress and shame. Try to let go of judgment of your partner to help lessen the distress. Your partner likely has some awareness that their fears and doubts are unrealistic, but they are affecting them tremendously nonetheless. OCD can make people feel very alone, afraid, embarrassed, especially when people feel like it’s out of control and not managed. Be patient with them! It takes time to learn the skills to manage OCD. Give them space to respond to symptoms as they pop up.

Ask About Boundaries And Triggers

After learning more about how OCD affects your loved one’s life. Ask how you might help avoid triggering shame or heightening their symptoms. What are some topics, news stories, or situations that cause their OCD to flare? Ask how you can help them manage symptoms or feel more at ease. Help them explore where they can set boundaries to reduce excessive stress in their life or routine. 

Encourage Growth

Sometimes loved ones worry that if they don’t push or challenge the OCD that their loved one will never be happy. Their symptoms of OCD may be affecting you too. Let them know how hard it is to see them struggle and if it’s affecting you as well without blaming.

For example:

“I feel (xxx), when you (xxx) I know this is hard for you, but our relationship is important to me and I want to explore ways to make it healthier.”

Ask how they would know their OCD is manageable and what you or they can do to help get to a manageable place. When in doubt refer out and encourage therapy and treatment!

Promote Relaxation and Distraction 

The intensity of OCD symptoms can be managed better by reducing stress and practicing more relaxing and distracting activities! What can y’all do together? Mindful, creative, intellectual, and active hobbies are a great way to improve your relationship and help them manage their OCD. Try yoga, painting, building, walks, hikes, cooking or baking together, puzzles, games, or any activities that are shared interests.

What Is “OCD”?

OCD is a commonly referenced acronym for the mental health disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Many people have heard of the term OCD and have a preconceived notion of what this disorder means. Common misconceptions are that it means someone is a “clean freak,” "perfectionist," "type A," or that they can’t leave the house. These are mostly just stereotypes.

While OCD may involve compulsions around cleanliness and order for some, this is not a defining feature of the disorder. Many people with OCD defy these stereotypes—they may be high-functioning, successful, and unconcerned with whether the counters are clean.

OCD is also not just heightened anxiety. A diagnosis of OCD does require the presence of anxious or intrusive thoughts, but these thoughts are so overwhelming that they become “obsessions.” A key component of OCD is that obsessions are followed by compulsive actions. Together, the obsession and compulsion cause dysfunction, dissatisfaction, or impairment to the person’s life and overall wellbeing.

The “O” in OCD: Obsessions

The “O” in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder stands for “obsessive.” Obsessions are intrusive or unwanted thoughts, urges, or impulses that are persistent and consistent.

What sets obsession apart from general anxiety is how disturbing or distressing the thoughts, images, or impulses are. These thoughts feel so unsettling that the person feels compelled to act to make them go away.

Obsessions may include:

• Unwanted or taboo thoughts, such as imagining yourself doing something you would never intentionally do (e.g., hurting yourself or others).

• Fearful thoughts, like losing control, contaminating others, or spreading disease.

• Order-related impulses, such as needing things to be arranged “just right” in a way only the person with OCD can identify.

Often, these core fears overlap, such as a fear of contamination combined with a fear of harming others. For example, someone with OCD might have a terrifying thought that they unknowingly engaged in unsafe sex, contracted AIDS, and are now spreading it to others.

Living with these distressing thoughts can feel like a personal hell because the thoughts contradict the person’s values, making them feel uniquely scary and uncontrollable. The incongruence between intrusive thoughts and personal beliefs makes the thoughts feel real, adding to the distress.

The “C” in OCD: Compulsions

The “C” in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder stands for “compulsive.” Compulsions are repetitive actions or mental rituals performed to calm, neutralize, or reduce the distress caused by obsessions.

Compulsions may involve:

• External actions: Handwashing to remove perceived “contamination” or driving back around the block to check you didn’t hit someone.

• Internal rituals: Praying, counting, or mentally reviewing events.

While compulsions provide temporary relief, this relief is usually short-lived and leads to more distress. The fleeting relief reinforces the need to repeat the behavior whenever the obsession arises, and over time, the compulsion can take on a life of its own. For example, handwashing might escalate into excessive handwashing, then excessive showering, and eventually avoiding certain places altogether. At this point, the person’s life becomes consumed not only by the obsession but also by the compulsion.

The “D” in OCD: Disorder

The “D” in OCD stands for “disorder,” which is an important distinction. It separates those with occasional OCD tendencies from those who meet the criteria for a diagnosis.

To be diagnosed, obsessions and compulsions must:

1. Be time-consuming, taking more than one hour per day, or

2. Cause significant impairment in daily life, such as difficulty functioning socially, occupationally, or in other important areas.

Having intrusive thoughts or a preference for cleanliness or order doesn’t necessarily mean you have OCD. If the obsessions and compulsions aren’t paired, aren’t daily and time-consuming, or don’t disrupt your life, they likely don’t meet the criteria for OCD.

Coping With OCD:

OCD is not a death sentence and can be managed. However, it thrives on shame and isolation, so seeking treatment or sharing your experience with others can help tremendously.

In the three remaining blogs in this series, you’ll learn more about how to talk to your loved ones about OCD, manage intrusive and obsessive thoughts, and explore some of the underlying factors of OCD.