OCD and Anxiety Symptoms
OCD stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and is classified as a type of Anxiety Disorder. Now, OCD goes far beyond being meticulous or fastidious. Thoughts about the object(s) of your obsession end up barging in on you at odd moments, and you may perform certain tasks over and over again in order to calm yourself down. There is a wide range of anxiety symptoms for this particular disorder, depending on the ostensible object of your obsession. You might wash your hand all the time, or open and close doors a particular amount of times as you pass through them. Furthermore, you might end up checking and re-checking rooms in order to ensure that you have switched off all devices. These anxiety symptoms may seem trivial, but they can take up a lot of time and energy, especially in very serious cases.
Dating can be quite the challenge for people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder anxiety. They may worry about the impression their behaviors might give to their dating partners. Heavy-duty medication might seem like a good quick fix, but studies suggest that support groups and individual therapy work a lot better. Adding medication on top of these treatments does not seem to improve their effectiveness much. Slowly but surely, people with OCD can learn to manage their anxiety and cut back on the anxiety symptoms or ritual behaviors stemming from their stress.
If, on the other hand, you are dating someone with OCD, do not condescend to them. Your dating partner most likely already knows about his/her odd, ritualistic behavior. Instead, try to help motivate them to overcome their anxiety symptoms. They may not get over them overnight, but do be encouraging whenever they show progress. The very same energy that goes into maintaining ritual behaviors might be put into overcoming these behaviors. If you play your cards right, you can reduce their anxiety, instead of adding to it and feeding further OCD-like behavior.
