How Relationship OCD Helped Me Awaken

Also available on Apple iTunes -Awaken into Love Podcast

So on today's podcast, I'm going to be talking about what if ROCD was helping you? So before we start this, I want to just do a quick grounding technique, just a couple of deep breaths, starting off with an intention as a community together. But if you're driving, I invite you to just skip this part because we're going to be closing our eyes. But if you're not and if you're in a quiet space, close your eyes, place your hand on your heart and know that there are so many people right now all around the world just like you, with the same thoughts and feelings listening to this.

So I'm going to invite you to just visualize that for a moment. Hand on your heart, closing your eyes. Just visualize the idea and truth that there are so many people around the world just like you who are tuning in right now. Someone's listening from England, Italy, France, Russia, Thailand, South Africa, the Caribbean Islands, the United States. Someone who is exactly like you with the same story is listening right now. Just visualize that. We say this all the time, and it's such an important core of our work because it's really the truth, which is that you're not alone. I'm going to invite you to just take three deep breaths for me. And as you let it out, I'm going to invite you to visualize yourself being held and supported right now. As humans, we thrive in connection and belonging, and many people don't know this, but belonging is essential. Just as food and water and shelter, since our brains can't tell the difference between reality and non reality, we can visualize instead, which can be as powerful as we can get and feel the same effect. So in this moment, as you're taking these breaths, I really invite you to visualize this community of people all around you with you. You're not alone as you listen to this podcast. Hmm. And one more nice deep breath. And let it go and let's start.

So what if ROCD was helping you and I hear some of your triggered parts going, helping me leave my relationship, helping me find my truth, or some of you might be thinking, bullshit Kiyomi and you're two seconds away from kicking out of this podcast, but hear me out. I felt this way, too. And actually, we hear this every day with our graduates from the course and community and people who work with Alexis as well. ROCD has helped me. They said ROCD has taught me something profound. When looking through the lens of awakening and freedom, it unraveled trauma and coping mechanisms that were holding me back. It healed different parts of me and in turn changed me into a person that was more profound, awakened and expansive than ever before. So what if this could be your reality? What if ROCD and anxiety wasn't there to punish you, but to teach you something to awaken? What if the suffering wasn't this horrible devil pushing you, saying you were unworthy or undeserving, but the complete opposite? What if ROCD and anxiety was a pain and darkness needed in order for you to awaken into your own wholeness? For you to love and experience freedom and connection with your partner in the world like never before. Just take that in for a moment. What if ROCD and anxiety and your suffering wasn't trying to hurt you? But to help you. 

If you've been in our program and you've done work with us for a while, you're probably already used to this idea and have gone through it yourself with your awakening. And if you're just starting and you're shaking your head at me or you're feeling triggered, I want to remind you that that's okay. You're so welcome to feel that too. Every emotion, feeling, thought, whatever you're experiencing is welcome here, always with Awaken into Love, none of it is wrong. You're just human and different protective mechanisms may arise. And that's okay too. But the one thing I will invite you to do as you listen is to bring an intention of compassionate curiosity to the words I speak in this podcast with an understanding that we are here to support you. I also want to say that I am in no way negating the pain, the suffering or the struggle of ROCD, anxiety and suffering. This work is hard and at times it feels so unfair and it doesn't feel right. I totally, totally understand that those probably parts of you that are like F gratitude, I hate this. F this, I hate this, ROCD does not help me. And if you're experiencing that and if you're feeling that right now, that's okay. We're never negating your pain or suffering. We really understand. What we're saying is to try on another outfit, see how it resonates with you knowing that this outfit could help you find a little bit more freedom in your life as you awaken. So something that I hear all the time when we're in sessions with clients is "I have always been anxious or I have always been an over thinker". This is especially true when we're going through consults or when Alexis is working with clients. We always hear I've always been anxious, I've always just been an over thinker, I think a lot I overthink a lot. I overanalyze and I just can't turn it off. Looking back at my childhood and adolescent years, I never actually thought of myself to be particularly anxious. I didn't have the classical symptoms of, you know, panic, rocking back and forth with my head down in my lap, sweating or shaking. But I did have some things that many tend to overlook, especially mental health professionals. My childhood was filled with stomach aches. I tried to lie to get myself out of things because I was scared. I was scared. I couldn't tell. My mother had guilt and shame. I was super focused on how people around me felt hyper responsible of my parents, black or white, thinking, checking over and over if I like something or if I felt safe, disorganized attachment and just being highly sensitive. And as I look back, I realize that these are manifestations of anxiety and fear that I carried throughout my childhood that were manifested into obsessive compulsive behavior and anxiety. Coping mechanisms that came up as a way to cope because I didn't feel safe. But here's the truth, I carry these coping mechanisms for years and I still have the tendency to do so because I am human. I was raised in a Japanese culture. Guilt and shame are regarded as normal, and so is hyper responsibility and thinking of others before myself. Now, what's interesting about these coping mechanisms is that we don't realize how over time they keep us small. I mean, you might hear the word hyper responsibility or black or white thinking or caring for others. And there might be a part of you that's like us. So what? So what? It's just the way I am. But in reality, these coping mechanisms, although they served us when we were younger, do keep us small, and they do at some point in our adulthood, start to cause us immense suffering. And usually if we don't have the suffering in our lives to force us to awaken, we then keep these tendencies that keep us small, restricted and in pain. Before ROCD, I was all of this. I had all the coping mechanisms and so much more, I was living day to day in a sort of survival and I didn't realize that until I did this work. It was like I was always on edge, extremely hard toward myself, even though I didn't realize it when people said, "You're so hard on yourself." I was like "What? I don't think I'm hard on myself, I like myself." That's a lie, I was really hard to myself blaming myself for things that were just human, feeling like I needed to fit this perfect role, striving for perfectionism because I was scared that if I wasn't, I wasn't enough or that I wouldn't be loved, not giving myself the love, kindness and compassion that I really deserved. 

My obsessive thoughts kept me away from experiencing deep connection and freedom. I didn't question what society said or the full stories or beliefs in my mind. I lived blindly in the belief that whatever I was told in my mind was the truth. Whatever was in the media was the truth. Whatever I saw on movies was the truth and I believed those things. And in turn I was constantly living up to an unrealistic expectation with this belief that I was never enough and that I could never be enough. Oh, well, that's a lot, right? It's a lot, and if you're feeling overwhelmed, I hear you. It's heavy and it weighs on us over time until something significant usually comes into our life, whether it's an outside event or an internal event like ROCD and anxiety that forces us to step into our coping mechanisms, our darkness in order to say, "Hey, this isn't serving you anymore, there is so much more to this.". 

I remember one day being in the shower. This was back in 2012. It was like a hot summer day. And as I was showering, I had an epiphany, as I know many of us do, in showers, and at that time when I had ROCD, I actually had a lot of epiphanies coming through, which I'm so grateful for. But I had this epiphany in my mind where I was seeing suffering and this ROCD as this horrible entity, this monster. And I was just grabbing my head in the shower, like almost in a way where I was trying to pull out the obsessions, pull out the feelings, and just blamed myself so hard for everything I was feeling. Why can't I get it right? What's wrong with me? Why am I so flawed? Why are other people so happy? Why can't I just be normal? There's people with ROCD who are getting better, faster, and I'm not. That means I'm bad. Something is bad. I am bad. There's something wrong with me. And the thoughts just kept going on and on. And I kept leaving them to the point where I just sat down in the tub and I just cried so hard. And what's a little bit sad about this part is that I remember just crying so silently like I was trying not to be loud. I didn't want anyone to hear me because I don't want to worry my mom or my stepdad or even my dog, which comes to show how hard I really was on myself. I felt bad for feelings, that I felt bad for crying. I didn't want to be a burden. And as I sat there lying in the tub, I kept believing these thoughts and I was trying so hard to stop them. And in that moment, I paused. It was like a big wave came over me, like this force in my body, where in that moment I felt like I stepped out of my body and thought, "Oh my God, why am I so freakin hard on myself and for what? For what?". 

In that moment, I remember that the pain had pushed me to this point where I realized that this wasn't working anymore. That blaming myself and putting myself down and being hard on myself and asking myself what was wrong with me wasn't working and it never worked. It's like our brains really try really, really hard to figure out what's wrong. And there's a part of our brain that feels as though it's accomplishing something when we overthink because it thinks that we're solving some sort of puzzle. But I recognized at that moment that putting myself down had never worked, and in fact, it made me feel worse. It made me feel disconnected. It made me feel numb. And in that moment, the pain had pushed me to this point where I knew that I needed to change. The pain and suffering had gotten my attention so much to the point where I knew that I needed support and help.

 So we see this all the time with our clients and also, you know, with ourselves. Suffering comes up and says, "Hey, you're believing something that's not working for you, you're believing false things that hurt you and that's taking you away from the love that you have with them. It's not your fault. I'm teaching you how and this may take some time, but these coping mechanisms now are an invitation to be integrated. It's been years. It's time to find freedom, find freedom from false beliefs that you've believed yourself to be. I am suffering. I'm here to show you that you're more than this. And I will show you how by bringing in the darkness that will push you to awaken.".

I say this a lot, happiness is a great motivation, but so is suffering when we experience pain and suffering. If we have the right tools that propels us to our greatest awakening, we can start to see our shadows and darkness as just a path toward awakening. I love Thich Nhat Hanh on this incredible Buddhist monk who always says extensive suffering like anxiety, depression or OCD is like a bell, it's like a bell. Tara Brach, another incredible teacher and mentor who was one of the biggest helps for me during the process of ROCD, even says that the suffering and the stories we tell ourselves are like this false suit that we wear. She calls it the space suit self, with this knowing that when we are born, we are born as love with innocence, but that we come into this world and there are different challenges we start to develop this space suit self. The space suit is an accumulation of all of these protective mechanisms to keep us safe. But it can also start to protect us in a way that prevents us from living a full life and then starts to feel like a prison. Now, this is the thing. There's nothing wrong with having protective mechanisms and coping mechanisms and there's nothing wrong with suffering because in reality, suffering is part of life. We grieve. We feel anger. We feel sadness. We feel fear, confusion. This is part of just being human. But the part that really gets stuck is when we start to identify with what Tara Brach calls the “Space Suit Self”, as if the ROCD anxiety and pain and our suffering is us. Instead of recognizing that the pain is a space suit, keeping us protected. And the pain and suffering in the darkness is not us, but it is just a path, it's just part of being human and part of living this life. But it can also help us. It can also teach us where to awaken and where to find freedom. Tara Brach says it so beautifully, she says, that we each have our own styles of leaving home. Our space suit strategies to cope with the pain of unmet needs, yet waking up is a universal process. Slowly or quickly we come to see that we've been living in a contracted and often painful reality. We want to reconnect with our innocence, our basic goodness. We want to know the truth of who we are. Our sincere longing turns us toward a path of false refuge, a place where we can finally feel safe enough to step out of our protective suit and experience the freedom of natural presence. 

So here it is. It is through our suffering and our pain that we start to awaken. The suffering and pain is like a mindful balance, directing us to come back home to ourselves, to our love, to our freedom, to start questioning our beliefs, our false stories, to start taking off this protective space suit. It is only when we start to identify with our suffering, with our ROCD thinking that it is us, that our thoughts are us, that we are our feelings and our beliefs, that we cause ourselves extra pain. If we can start seeing ROCD or suffering or darkness, not as a way of punishment or in a way where it's trying to hurt us, but in a way to show us where we're stuck in our space suit, our protective mechanisms, that in reality, our ROCD is actually just pointing us back home to our truth, our love, freedom and joy, not only with ourselves, not only with the world, but with our partner as well. 

So something that you can do as an exercise to start changing your perspective around pain and suffering. I know that with ROCD and anxiety, there's a tendency to go into black or white thinking, so something that may come up for you is "I need to embrace suffering and pain 100%". Know that resistance is normal and expected. You might be asking yourself, "What's wrong with me? I've been pushing away suffering." I know that this is the natural tendency of just being human, of coping. I want to remind you that you don't have to dive in and immediately go, "I love suffering and pain. I embrace everything." I definitely don't do that. But my practice has been to see what it's teaching me, what my suffering is teaching me, and the same with my clients as well.

So in the next moment, tonight, tomorrow, I invite you to journal and ask yourself;  1. What do I believe about ROCD and anxiety?

2.Do I believe it's out to get me to hurt me and punish me?

3.What could it be teaching me?

4.How has ROCD anxiety made me awaken?

5. What have I learned from it that has actually helped me and my partner?

6. What do I continue to look forward to in suffering and how it could teach me? 

We tell our clients and course members this all the time, but becoming aware is the first step in awakening, which you're already doing right now. There is no specific point of perfection in awakening that doesn't exist and it's not possible. Awakening is a process. It's a lifelong journey. Awakening means opening your eyes, seeing what's there and becoming present. Moving away from becoming numb or unconscious, it just means seeing.

So the first step is seeing and then the second is questioning becoming compassionate and I'm curious, what do I believe about ROCD and anxiety? How can I see where it's teaching me, where it's helping me?

This is the method of awakening. It's a slow, beautiful process, unraveling things that tend to just unravel and change over time, the way it needs to happen throughout our life in different stages. And as we start this awakening process, we start the process of moving away from identifying with our pain and our space suit. We start to move into identifying with who we are and what we deserve; love, freedom, expansion and awakening.