these obsessive tendencies

I have obsessive tendencies. I will looplooploop on the same thoughts for days, weeks, months. A common pattern of these thoughts is ruminating on dating and/or imagined scenarios of which I am with a guy in some capacity similar to dating. These thoughts have gotten significantly more apparent, more obsessive over the past years. I don’t seem to have control sometimes. The imaginings make their way into my mind’s eye; I get so caught up, as if it’s truly happening. It isn’t until something shakes my attention back to reality that I realize I was looping again.

Dating, being physically intimate, being able to let go of the spool of control I have wound so tightly, has been a goal of mine for a long while. This goal was in fact the reason I started the therapy sessions that eventually became my first steps in trauma recovery. I can remember telling my therapist I feel grossed out by guys and I thought that was normal until I asked my friends if they did too and they said no. I don’t want to be grossed out anymore. It has been nearly four years since I spoke those words, and I have yet to be truly vulnerable with anyone. The goal has now been placed on a pedestal. It is a heavy weight to carry. The more unreachable it feels, the more of a tendency I have to loop on thoughts and imaginings that are seeped in the desperation of achieving it.

A new type of loop was introduced in my brain when I was about nine months into trauma recovery. I had just realized what I had been through as a child was abuse, that there was more abuse I had yet to recall. The feelings of this were beginning to surface. I no longer understood the timeline of events of my life. Every memory I had needed to be evaluated, sought through in hopes of trying to understand this new uncovering. That is to say, I no longer knew who I was. I was desperately seeking stable ground.

I would be driving to work, hanging out with my friends, cooking dinner, and my mind would begin this loop: starting from birth until present day, I would go through the events of my life, recounting every memory I had and trying to place them all in a linear timeline. I would hear my voice in my own head narrating the abuse as if I was on a podcast. Obsessively, I was telling myself the story of my life in an effort to understand it. Believe it. Make room for it. I wanted a map that would let me know all the truths my mind had forgotten. I wanted to remember everything. I wanted to know who I was.

These are the loops that I am most commonly stuck on these past few years. Dating loop. Trauma narrative loop. The latter is not as prevalent as it was three years ago, but it still makes an appearance every once in a while.

The loop about dating is still an everyday occurrence. The name makes it seem like I have an obsession with dating, which is not true. “Dating” feels safer to say, but it is a misnomer. What the loop often focuses on is feeling desired in a way that feels both safe and flirty. That is the obsession. Being wanted, feeling wanted, but in a container of tolerability. In a way that I am no longer scanning the landscape for threats. I can relax.

I never tell anyone about the obsession with feeling desired. It would be worse that standing naked in a filled auditorium. I have seen multiple therapists throughout this process of trauma recovery. The goal has always been the same for me: heal my trauma enough that I can have intimacy and vulnerability in my life. I started with a new therapist a couple of weeks ago, and I told her my goal is to be able to date.

Yesterday in session, I was explaining how this past week I have been anxious. Waking up with heart palpitations, butterflies in my stomach, and looping thoughts. As soon as consciousness creeps in, I am mentally running through an arbitrary checklist of things that genuinely cannot be checked off in a day: get a job, rent my own place, date. I told her that I feel behind. I am twenty-five, back living at my moms and lacking the experiences of partnership and intimacy that my peers have. Pathetic would put it lightly.

In the session, she asked me about this goal I have of dating. I was frustrated talking about it because nothing! ever! changes! I so pleadingly wanted her to give me a solution to this problem that causes my brain to spiral. I wanted her to tell me how to date. I wanted her to finally let me know what was wrong with me so I could solve it and go about my life. She did none of those things. The frustration was mounting. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t understand how bad I need to accomplish this goal. We talked about societal pressure. Blah blah blah. And how there’s no such thing as the typical timeline. Blah blah blah. I had heard it all before. None of it ever helped.

Then she asked me a question that shattered the illusion of necessity I had created around this goal. She said, in your opinion, has this goal served you? No. No. No, it has not served me. I have put it on such a high pedestal that it seems unattainable. The pressure of it has gained such strength in my body that I am overwhelmed. I feel that it is my salvation. No, it has not served me, whatsoever. Being able to imagine this obsession as an unhelpful goal post shifted my perspective just enough that I was able to get some distance from it. I could see it rather than be absorbed by it. A new awareness was coming in, one that let me know there was a reality outside of this loop.

The conversation took a turn after she asked me that question. That distance I gained from the goal post made me understand something fundamental: these loops have the same physiological response in my body. Whether I am looping on dating or my trauma timelines, I get the same heart palpitations, my chest and torso always fill with frenetic energy and my mind begins the same race. These two loops are inextricably linked for me. I started therapy with the goal to start dating, and unbeknownst to me, I was led down this path of addressing two decades worth of repressed emotions and memories. The seed of the goal was already planted upon entering therapy, but it grew into an obsession when the trauma started to spill out. If I can date, if I can tolerate physical intimacy, then I will have achieved what I set out to do. I will be done with the trauma. Then recovery can be checked off my to-do list. I will have proved to myself  - and everyone else - that I am no longer marred by these experiences. If I accomplish the goal that began this identity shattering (and rebuilding) journey, then I will have reached the finish line.

That logic is flawed. There is no finish line, not when it comes to healing. I know this by now. I am not saying that I am giving up on the desire to have connection and physical intimacy in my life. What I am saying is that I see my tendency to obsess over it in a new way. It is more of a trauma response than a goal. Yesterday, we finished the session by talking about how the antithesis to a trauma response is often present moment experience. Trust me, I know how impossible this can be. If you would have told me three years ago that when I start looping, it might be helpful to notice the present moment, I would have told you probably have never experienced a trauma response then. Three years ago, I was not able to resource when I was in the throes of my trauma brain, and if I could, I would only be able to hold consciousness of it for one or two seconds before the loop took over again. It has been years of therapy and a lot of skill building since this all was started, and I do have the capacity now to hold an awareness of the looping and the present moment in the same breadth.

For the first time, I feel a sense of hope because this obsession does not have the same grip on me as it did yesterday. I will get there. I will date. I will experience safety and desire in the same space. But I do not have to obsess about it in the meantime. The obsessing does not bring it any closer. And when it does come, it will not be my capstone project of this recovery process. Instead, what I know to be true is that this is a lifelong unfolding of understanding who I am, how my experiences have impacted me and how I choose to move through the world. I know my salvation is not on the line. I know I will be ok.