You're listening to The O. C.D. Stories podcast hosted by me, Stuart Ralph.

The O. C. D. Stories is a podcast dedicated to raising awareness and understanding

around obsessive compulsive symptoms. I do this for interviewing inspired therapists,

psychologists and people who have experienced OCD. Welcome to the OCD stories.

And welcome to episode 317 and in this one I had on two guests to talk about relationship OCD and my guests

and my guests are Cheryl Paul and Shiva Rajai.

Cheryl is a counselor informed by young in depth psychology and author of the book The Wisdom of Anxiety.

And Shiva is a psychoph therapist who specializes in the treatment of O. C.

And recently published her book called Relationship O. C.

So I wanted to get them both on because they come from different but also similar perspectives and I thought it would be an interesting episode and I'm trying to cover the integration of therapies more because ERP is great. I use it with all my clients who have

OCD. However, I also bring in other aspects. So I wanted the two of them to come on and kind of pursue this goal with me.

So in it we talk about who they are, we discuss what is romantic love, why settling for a partner is not as bad as we may think. We discuss highly sensitive people in love.

What it means to be in a romantic relationship, ways of dealing with relationship,

O. C.D or anxiety, Learning to listen to the wise mind over the anxious mind.

Explain to friends that it's O. C. D. And not normal relationship concerns.

We discuss sharing relationship O. C. D. With your your partner without hurting their feelings.

We talk about self-esteem and self-love and much more.

I think this is a great episode.

I think obviously it's good for people who have this theme of

relationship OCD but I also think generally it was more than that it was also

an episode just about relationships and to varying degrees we all have trouble with them at

time so hopefully this episode is helpful and thank you to NACD for supporting the

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