The REAL Reason You Have Relationship OCD & Relationship Anxiety (the blessings and gifts of ROCD/RA)

The real reason why you have relationship OCD and relationship anxiety is also known as the blessings and the gifts of relationship OCD and relationship anxiety. 

Three specific disclaimers: one, of course, this is my personal experience, when I say the real reason it is a way for you to start to shift away from that survival brain to something that may be bigger, more expansive, more empowering for you instead of seeing relationship OCD as this disordered broken wrong thing about you, which we don't believe at  Awaken into Love which you probably already know by now. You're not broken, there's nothing wrong with you, you're not disordered, your brain isn't broken and that's something I want you to understand as we come into awakened love if that feels empowering for you.

So again know that this is my personal experience but I have used this type of perspective with my clients and members and it has been life-changing for a lot of them.  So I really wanted to share it with you the second thing that I want to bring up is that in this video, I am in no way bypassing spiritually emotionally, or dismissing the pain and the suffering that comes with relationship OCD I have expressed many times that I believe that relationship OCD was probably the top hardest alongside my dad passing, probably the hardest thing that I have ever gone through. 

I was debilitated by it I didn't know if I would ever be able to break free from it. I felt that I was in constant chains by it and I was debilitated it was something that pained me for decades of my life. Many of you know I've struggled with relationship OCD, anxiety, panic disorder, hypochondria, and other forms of obsessive-compulsive behavior, so I understand to the core to the bones of what it means and feels to experience relationship OCD and relationship anxiety.

So please know I am in no way dismissing the pain that you're in the suffering that you're in and I would never want to dismiss that or take that away I see you in the suffering of it and I hope that in some way this video can offer a place of compassion and kindness for that suffering to be able to uplift it in a way that it's seen and that it can start to use a different lens to empower itself. So that's the second thing I want to go over. And the third thing that I really want to say is that this video and my message might not resonate with your present self right now but if in some way I can speak to your future self that is going to remember this, is going to listen to this, then I hope that in some way I can start to shift your perspective on what you're going through to be able to empower you in a different way for you to be able to relax more into your nervous system and move from a place of survival to a place of ease because that's really what we want so if this message doesn't resonate with you I hope in some way that your future self will say “Ah I'm starting to see these little messages and these little things that Kiyomi has been speaking to me about and I am so proud of myself for being able to see that.”

 So as many of you know as I talked about at the beginning relationship OCD has always and was always an incredibly painful experience I struggled with panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive behavior since I was pretty young. I didn't realize that there were certain behaviors that I would do that would kind of be repetitive that would be until I was 16 and then I went through a traumatic incident that started to bring up really strong obsessive-compulsive behaviors moving into relationship OCD and throughout that journey.

I was always told by different psychiatrists and different therapists that you know, “there was something wrong with me”, “there was something that I needed to fix”, “ there was something that was broken with me” and that I needed to medicate and that I wasn't normal in part of society that's kind of what we start to feel when we see different therapists who believe that relationship OCD or any type of Mental Health Challenge means that there's something broken with us. 

Again not to dismiss anything that they have said if it's empowering for you, but for me there was a place within my heart and my soul that believed that there must be a greater reason for this, there must be a greater purpose for the struggles and the suffering that has occurred in my life and that's the distinction that we use at Awaken into Love.  When we believe that something is happening to us versus that something that's happening for us. And when we say something happening for us, it doesn't dismiss the challenges of it the anger that comes the the grief that comes the hatred that comes that we feel toward relationship OCD but it starts to allow this different perspective that brings a sense of Greater understanding and greater courage as we go through something as difficult as relationship OCD so there was always something within my bones and my soul that felt like maybe this is helping me in some way, even though I don't see it right now, even though I don't believe it right now, maybe just maybe all I need to do is take some steps forward, One Day, One Moment, One Second at a time because in different situations I was literally taking it one minute at a time but maybe I just need to put one step forward and Trust in this journey that I'm in. Trust that I've seen other mentors and other teachers who have been able to find gifts and blessings from what's going on and trust that I will be held and I will be able to get through this. There must be something deeper within this and so over time I started to dive into understanding what was going on within myself because there wasn't that much information out there at all. You guys this this happened when I was like in 2006 when the obsessive thoughts kind of really started to get intense I started to dive into understanding what could be happening what could be happening not to me but happening for me. 

 And over time, as I've been doing this work through decades or having experienced relationship OCD for a long time, I started to understand and started to have this perspective that maybe a relationship OCD was some sort of initiation and bear with me one moment as I say this but maybe relationship OCD is not necessarily there to punish me or to hurt me but maybe it's actually pushing me to evolve into a person that I deep down want to access which is my core self. 

Maybe relationship OCD and relationship anxiety aren't there to demonize me or to ultimately hurt me but maybe it is my only way to be able to start to question my thoughts to be able to start to question my emotions, to be able to start to move away from this place of codependency and deep attachment, toward believing that another person or another situation would be the cause of my happiness, to be able to start to question societal beliefs that are restricting my core self and to be able to start to move into a place of unconditional love, where I was operating in a place of conditional love. 

 So I started to see relationship OCD in this challenge, in this Darkness as a place of initiation and what initiation means in a dictionary form is to step in, to step up, to come into a a threshold so when a girl becomes a woman during the menstrual cycle that is one form of initiation, when a boy becomes a man that's that's another initiation when a maiden becomes another that's another initiation. 

When someone is going through a specific profession and moving from a student to a teacher that's another initiation and I believe that in life we are asked over and over again in different forms to go through initiations and initiations are hard, they are hard and sometimes initiations feel wrong, but the purpose of initiation is to allow us to step into a place of true Evolution and growth. It pushes us to a place of true expansion and evolution and I believe that deep down we crave a sense of evolution. There's a part of your soul, there's a part of your psyche, that knows that you are not meant to be in a constant place of survival which is what relationship OCD is. It knows that in some way you have specific wounds and traumas that you are specifically and only looking out of believing that they are you and believing that this is the only way to live and it's not but the only way for us to be able to truly push yourself into Evolution, truly push ourself into a place of expansion, is usually through the darkness. And the Darkness is the initiation of relationship OCD.  

So what if relationship OCD and relationship anxiety weren't again meant to truly hurt us or to demonize us or to say that there's something wrong with us? But usually, as human beings, we do need places of struggle, we do need places of suffering to change, to evolve.

I love happiness, I love pleasure, I love comfort and I believe that as humans we are meant to experience these Joys and this beauty and this happiness in our life. In contrast, especially as I watch my son recently, I noticed that he goes through specific milestones and each Milestone requires regression, it also requires a sense of growth, and that growth is uncomfortable for him to get to different Milestones as he grows and grows. As he grows, as he starts to reach, he starts to have teeth, as he starts to sit up and he starts to try to crawl, he struggles through it. His body is struggling through it trying to find its Center and so I believe in a lot of ways, the suffering or the struggle that we are going through is pushing us into our next phase. 

So what if we can start to see the challenges that we are going through specifically relationship OCD and relationship anxiety as that push? What if again it's not meant to label us as a disordered broken person but meant to nudge us into something that could be greater for us, this is something that I personally experienced I've come to find through my journey of relationship OCD and relationship anxiety that it has ultimately been a blessing for me.

Again, you might be seeing this and being like Oh my God Kiyomi, it is not a blessing at all, it is not a gift at all, it is a curse and it is the worst thing in the world.  And I want to look at you and say I get it, I totally get it and you can feel that way, you can hate it, you can curse at it, you can be angry at it, you have all the right to feel that way.  

And what if in some way this could be your teacher, what if this in some way was preparing you for a version of yourself that you will in the future be so in awe by, be so shocked by? I mean I ask this in my KIC (Kiyomi’s Inner Circle) Circle all the time. I say to them in what way do you feel like relationship OCD has pushed you how have you grown? 

So many people, almost everyone can raise their hand and say I'm able to be more compassionate to myself I'm able to be with my emotions, I'm able to access my inner child that for a long time has just wanted to be held, wanting to be seen by me. I'm able to express my needs,  I'm able to recognize that boundaries are extremely compassionate and good for my relationship. I'm actually for the first time able to find happiness within myself. I'm able to question the thoughts because I thought the thoughts were me, the thoughts that were saying that I was a horrible person, that I needed to leave my partnership, that I was wrong that I should be ashamed of myself, that I'm unattractive, that I'm ugly that I'm not worth it.  All of these things that have put me down, I realized that those thoughts aren't me and I don't have to believe them. I'm realizing for the first time that I don't need to follow every single emotion because every time I follow every single emotion, my life feels chaotic, it's felt dysfunctional, it's felt not stable. I realized that I don't have to live the stories of my mother, my mother's told me for a long time who I need to love and who I need to marry, and the first time I decided to take my power back and say I get to decide that for myself.  I get to live according to what my heart is saying, oh for the first time I was able to have a communication or have this deep communication with my partner where we saw face to face with each other, was able to sit with my partner in their pain because I have been able to know how to start to sit with my pain. 

Through the relationship OCD for the first time I was able to step into something that felt good for me because my whole life, I felt like I wasn't able to access what felt good, what felt pleasurable until I was able to earn it but now I realize that I'm able to feel fulfillment, to feel happiness. It's the first time I've felt unconditional love with myself and with my partner, but the first time I've been able to recognize that maybe just maybe there's something greater outside of me and that I can surrender into that. It's the first time where I have felt true love for myself, for my partner, and even for this world. 

That's on a micro level you guys, that's on a micro level of how if we choose. If we choose this initiation, we can step more into this place of change within ourselves individually. But there's also something that's even more powerful than the individual change, which is also the community change that happens, the change that happens when we take a relationship OCD and we decide to evolve from it we decide to become better mothers, better fathers, better sisters, better friends and we start to be able to be there for our friends deeper. Be there for our children to work on the generational trauma that was coming up and relationship OCD was saying “Hey these thoughts, the suffering I'm going to push you to look at it, I'm going to push you to see this generational trauma. This trauma that you've picked up from your family because I know you don't want to push that down and put that down constantly on your child.” We're not perfect, I'm a mother, I know that and that's part of also the generational trauma right that part of that perfection that can come up.  But this is the cue, this is the message that relationship OCD can bring, it can change us on an individual level if we choose to which is all the things I expressed before that so many of my members constantly tell me and then it changes us on a communal level, it changes us in our family, it changes us with our friends, it changes us as a teacher, it changes us as a musician and that's also really another cool thing about relationship OCD which is we can start to use relationship OCD in a way to move more into our values. 

So for me, I value being a compassionate loving person and I believe that I have decided to use relationship OCD to get there. I have become more compassionate, I've become more understanding of myself in the world by understanding my feelings by healing parts of myself I've been able to do that. 

 If you're an artist you can use relationship OCD as the same if a value of yours is to create art using your challenges to do so. If you're an entrepreneur how can you use this to be a better CEO a better manager, a better entrepreneur in your business how can this propel you, how can relationship OCD give you courage, give you confidence, give you strength if you're a mother how can relationship OCD make you more present with yourself because when we're more present with ourselves and our emotions we're more present with our children. We're more present with our family by you doing this work, by stepping in and using relationship OCD to unravel the specific wounding and the trauma that you've brought on within your family, you are more able to help your child, and in that way, they can help their children. You're helping the world if you are a lover which you are usually when you're watching this video then you can be a better lover through relationship OCD it will teach you compassion, it'll teach you courage, it'll teach you loyalty, it will teach you resilience, it will teach you what it means to move from codependency to interdependence if you choose the initiation whatever your value is in life. Whatever your career, you can use the challenges and relationship OCD to put you there to have trust we need to have doubt and where does doubt come from Doubts come from relationship OCD, doubt comes from anxiety, doubt comes from the obsessions. For us to gain self-trust and courage we need to have doubt and that's the blessing of relationship OCD.

So my invitation for you is to start to move away from this idea of being wrong if you have relationship OCD maybe just maybe instead what it's asking from you is to step into something greater, step into something that will unfold for you moment by moment.  You only just have to take one step in day by day. Moment by moment, second by second, if day by day feels too much. 

Start small, start small, and take continual steps to step into this initiation. There's a uniqueness in people who have it, there's a uniqueness because that uniqueness is that calling to step into something greater to your future self, to this greater expansive version of yourself, not better but a greater more expansive version, because what we're moving from is we're moving from a place of survival to a place of expansion, to a place of ease, to a place where a nervous system can feel that love that we are so desperately wanting, to feel that feels scary we deserve it, you deserve it, so maybe just maybe there's something greater that's unfolding for you and this greatness even though it's masked in the form of relationship OCD is asking you to step in. 

As I explained before I always believed in a greater reason I trusted I tried to trust even though at times I constantly doubted of course through that doubt I learned how to trust something that I ended in with KIC many times in my inner circle this idea that by stepping in and doing this work by healing and integrating these parts within us not only are we changing our life individually not only are we changing our life in a community in our family in our partnership and our friends but we're also changing the world and so when we make change within ourself that ripples out into our family, which ripples out into our Collective, which ripples out into the world and in that way, we are changing the world we are shifting the world. 

So maybe just maybe, this could be the real reason why you have relationship OCD, it all depends on your perspective and the perspective that I have chosen to live by that has helped me every single day not only without with ROCD but everything else in my life I've chosen to believe that maybe there is a greater purpose. Here we don't have to believe in God, and we don't have to believe in something grandiose unless we choose to but maybe just maybe there's a part within you that is asking for you to step in that is not saying to you this is wrong about you and this is why you need to be punished and this is why you have relationship OCD but a way for you to be a better ever not only to yourself, not only to your partner, not only to your family but to this world.