Personal & REAL ROCD/RA Manon Story
Welcome everyone, welcome to Awaken into Love, the place to be if you want to heal from ROCD/relationship anxiety and develop a more awakened relationship. My name is Manon, the director at Awaken into Love and I'm so glad to be here today, to share with you my personal story about ROCD because in our team at Awaken into Love, every single person has a personal story with ROCD and I think that's very important that we share our versions of this experience with you because each of us is different and each of us has a story to tell.
So I'm very glad to be there today and to share some insight with you about my journey so ROCD journey starts very young and it's not the case for everyone. Some people develop it like when they are 25 and it starts when they are like in their first 10th relationship there's no rule but for me, it started when I was 14 years old with my first partner. I had a very young ROCD like young relationship so I was very young and of course, I had no idea what it was just to give you like fast forward to now it took almost 15 years of experiencing ROCD on my own and OCD, in general, to realize that it was a thing back then when I was 14 I just felt this sense of like being so different than everyone else at school at high school secondary school because most of the people were first not even experiencing relationship at that time I was one of the only ones that was kind of in love at that time with a boy and like actually like having a relationship with him but more so also the first one having myself obsessed so much about relationships it felt that for all my girlfriends or all people around me, love was simple not something you question just something that goes that flow from life and for me it was this intense questioning all the time that was very tied for me with a sense of guilt of being a bad person and being the one that was going to cheat or going to like leave my partner that's going to like be the one dropping the relationship and wasting his life that concept of been very present with me with the beginning but it's one of the stuff that I experienced with here many of them I think I've been through the old spectrum of ROCD experience where like the fear of cheating is one but also when it flip back and you can feel like starting to be obsessed about my partner is like not being the good one or like not loving me enough you know it keeps going back and forth and also at that time I think at that age when you're very young you're constantly with other young people and with ROCD there is this idea that love is something so serious that like your my my life is at stake if I'm not like staying with that guy forever if it's not the right one and that was such like almost a contrast with people around me teenagers that are so like free and so wild and so like they don't care so much but it fell for me that I was almost like in a relationship that was defining my life and I think I've heard and I've learned over time that's really how my brain was trying to secure so much when one of the only relationships that was starting to have in my life.
Speaking about thought and compulsion, I remember my thoughts being especially targeted at other boys in my opinion I get along with a friend in my classroom and that doesn't mean that I am in love with him, doesn't mean that I don't care my partner and then what follows is that sensation of disgust my partner almost like numbness be like I don't care about him anymore and then when I was back home, he was obsessing over and over again renting about like having those moments of playing with this guy or like this friend in class and be like oh did you feel that like mimicking like reexperiencing the sensation that I was living at that moment and it was this over and over again and each time it was more distressing it gets worse and worse to the point where I ended up confessing to my partner and it would like it was not necessarily like the best relationship I've ever been in at that time, it was very like, it was mad at me for having those thoughts and then that was the spiral I felt bad I felt so guilty and it was like this constant spiral and I think also what was a big thought for me in the back of my head constantly is like what's wrong with me for like having all these thoughts for not being able to just be with someone and be like okay I love him, I don't know but like being okay with it because it seems like it was such a heavy burden like a rock put on my heart, my life and that felt almost sometimes like but am I going to be living my entire life like this and that thing that's something that spiraled for a lot because that was my first relationship it ended up ending not for ROCD for other reasons. But after I had another relationship and it started again so after that first relationship there was aside from ROCD very traumatic because there was a relationship that was a bit hard for both of us we were two wounded people and very young so that was hard I had a new relationship in my 20s and I was hoping that by changing partner by having someone different that was very different from my first partner like in many aspects and I I thought like okay this time ROCD not going to show up because this one is the right one, but it happens that ROCD showed up anyway and very quickly in the relationship and that was such like a a hard moment for me because I was like oh my God it's not it's coming up again with this partner I failed again. It's, not the right one and that's where it began to spiral because I was like it didn't happen once, itβs happening twice, what's happening is there a truth dip down is there something happening with me? I think I've always like had these two almost like paths going in my mind one being what is wrong with him but deep down what is wrong with me and they were entwined and here sometimes it was more me, it was more the partner and that kept going like that for yours I think personally and it doesn't have to be like this with you.
One of my main themes has always been attraction and like always when I was with someone feeling like I was attracted by someone else, the guilt and the shame of that because I was like that's horrible you're betraying your partner, what if he knew, that was a very intense thought like what if he knew what's in my mind and sometimes he knew because I ended up confessing over and over again.
And the more I confessed, the more like the shame came and so as I was saying at the beginning it's been over 15 years, even now like 20 years but like until I discovered I was 15 years of being alone with that and I didn't realize what it was, I thought it was me that had a problem, nobody else in my surroundings sounds to have this kind of problem at all and when I open up to some friends being a teenager being a young adult they were like pretty like you know, like well maybe you just don't love him anymore or maybe it's not the right one. You know it's normal, it's okay and that was getting things worse and worse so fast forward to my relationship that I still have now with my partner it's been seven years we've been together and he was also such a different guy from my past partners, he is older, he has kids, he like a more grounded person also like more way safer for me but still ROCD came up right at the beginning and that's where I started like really becoming depressed I think until then I was like in survival mode and trying to make sense of what was happening by just thinking there's something wrong with me but maybe it's also specifically my partner like but when I saw that it was repeating over time and I'm not saying that if it happens with just one partner for you it means that the partner is the problem but that's how my process worked I was like okay the third time it comes again but I was still like it's me I have a problem I am a bad person I'm just not like equipped for that world I'm not equipped for a relationship. I'll never be happy ever life is just doomed for me and I'm going to break his heart, he's a great guy and he's loving me and he's like really obviously someone that's wanting the best for me. But still, he is like I am triggered and I have ROCD and I remember precisely having the first night at our apartment and inviting some friends from work and one of his friends was a bit like was talking with me and it had again like that, oh what if I'm like attracted by his friend, what if I'm not faithful to him and what if I want to kiss that boy and you know how it is. And then I broke down.
And then I broke down in the bedroom and I just broke down and cried and cried and I told him I need to confess something, I need to tell you something, it was maybe 4 months we were dating and I told him you know what I have a problem. I think I'm not a normal person each time out with someone, I'm starting to obsess about other guys and he was so understanding but also I could see as high as it was what do you mean exactly, do you mean that my colleague is attractive to you? I was like yes but at the same time, it's not what I mean. I feel attracted but I'm not attracted. It's that I'm scared that I'm going to be attracted and I felt that it was a bit upset but also trying hard to understand me and so it went like this for a few hours talking about it when it started, it keeps going and we started there we stopped there and you say that it was committed to helping me whatever it was and I googled online and that's where I found a video of Kiyomi saying like to be honest my first video was not Kiyomi, it was a french guy that was talking about relationship anxiety in French and I've never heard about it and in the comments, someone mentioned Awaken into Love. So I went there, but my level of English was not that good at that time, so I was like okay I need to try and I remember I was on my couch in my apartment in Paris and the relief of seeing this person saying this is a thing that has a name this is something that exists that other people experience and breaking down and crying and calling my partner as I have found something, I'm not the only one experiencing, that it happens to be something that exists and from there, my healing journey began and that day when I found out about ROCD was in 2018. So we are in 2024 so it was a long time ago.
I would say, to be honest, I know some people that recover pretty fast from ROCD. For some people, it's a journey that like you understand the concept and you heal it and you feel better and you can move on and get married, and like for me it's not been like that. It's not been a fast process it's been a slow process and to be honest with you as I am still the Director of Awaken into Love, I'm still journeying through my ROCD journey and I think that's a reason why I need to share my story because I don't want people working with us to think that if you're not done with ROCD there is a problem with you.
I might be myself struggling with ROCD in the back of my head or like some resurgences or some relapse all my life and I work with it and that doesn't prevent me from being happy for helping others with ROCD and to also experiencing a much richer, in deeper life, so that's a message that I want to share because I've heard a lot of people and talk with a lot of our clients saying that for example XY people that seem so healed and they feel so much better what if, what about me, what if I am failing in my healing journey and I'm like no way, I'm still struggling I'm still taking meds, I'm like still in it but that doesn't mean that we can't leave or start to leave even if we're experiencing it and that's the message that I want to share with you. So my last words for you would be that if you're in the ROCD journey, no matter if you're just starting it or if you've been there for years and you're like one of the OG of Awaken into Love, like me that are like been there forever like oh my God what am I still all those people are coming like coming and leaving and I'm still there, you're not alone, I'm there with you and that doesn't mean anything about you being a failure but you not being good at the healing Journey, it just means that we're all different and also that deepening into that healing Journey can be a beautiful thing that's how I see it. I see that every time ROCD is coming back every time ROCD is in the background of my life, I see it as an opportunity to deepen my healing to become a more awakened version of myself and so I tend to now be like oh like ROCD is there how great it's still there because I still have room to grow so not seeing it as something that says something bad about you but almost an opportunity to grow even more. I know it's hard. I know suffering and to suffer is hard and it's not something that I want to bypass in any way but I want to tell you that from my personal experience and thinking I was the exception that I was failing at healing being now at Awaken into Love as a director like having like journeyed from so far on this journey.
I can tell you that we can all of us find freedom for it, no matter what this Freedom looks like. For some people, Freedom will look like never had a thought ever that happened. I don't know why I do and why some of them do not but for some people like me it's like leaving maybe with like this background of ROCD sometimes but also thriving expanding being fulfilled having a great life and having to go through milestones with my partner and seeing my life expand in front of my eyes so I want to give you that hope that's possible for you too so when I think about myself before I did the work before I even found Awaken into Love I was in the dark I was extremely anxious I was controlled by my thought and my feelings and my sensation I thought that what I thought was was where I am and what I thought was also what's going to happen it's like I was entwined with cognitive distortions meaning that I thought that everything was so black and white everything was catastrophic everything was like horrible and also I was in such a heightened state of emotion. All the time I had no way to bring compassion to myself. I was so hard on myself so ashamed of myself and also that's not a very pretty part of my story, projecting so much onto my partner and being so mean, sometimes humiliating, like bypassing the fact that I was projecting onto him stuff no matter we all have a like relationship that can be flowed and some faults are always in my opinion but like I was projecting so much anger so much like sadness and being in such like hate and state of emotion with this almost this roller coaster of like confessing and feeling guilt and they're feeling like anger again like my life is literally like a train on a roller coaster with no rest, no emotional rest, no mental rest and I think no physical rest I even ended up having like a very serious health issue for different reasons but I believe that it was also triggered by such a high level of Stress and Anxiety on a daily basis that was me before after doing the work with Awaken into Love not only the Academy, I was also an Awaken into Relationship member which was a whole program that's called AIR. I awakened, I think that's the beautiful part about Awakening love, and what Kiyomi created as the founder is to be able to put people through, to guide people Gently and subtly through healing from ROCD from a very CBT, exposure part but also on the background, almost like inserting some spiritual loving concepts and that awakened me so profoundly that I can't even describe like it's almost like the person I was before, I don't even remember so much it feels like a distant shadow a little bit. When now I feel like I'm a human being who's way more hopeful that's one thing that sees the bigger picture and that starts also to be more how can I say like not so stuck with my emotions with my thoughts, with my feelings and just way more connected to myself.
I think that's also a huge benefit from working with us is that we're not just helping you get rid of ROCD and bye-bye. It's like how can you also like connect with yourself and become a better human being for yourself for your partner for others for the world so it has a bigger purpose.
I'm also that's personal because I know it's not the past for everyone. I'm a very spiritual person not necessarily in a religious way but in spirituality for me being like connecting with something bigger could be nature could be love. For me it's nature, it's love and feeling that almost like ROCD is part of something much bigger and that's so so that changed life because you don't see life through this little distorted lens of fear and anxiety but you see it from like a wider more expand expanded perspective and that's been that changed everything.