Retroactive Jealousy OCD

First Aid Kit

When people come to me for help, they’re often caught in the middle of a long lasting painful spiral, overwhelmed by obsessive thoughts, stuck in loops of doubt, fear, and mental checking about their partner’s past. In these moments, it’s nearly impossible to start working on long-term goals, values, or personal growth. First, you need relief.

That’s what this kit is for.

Index

Anytime Coach - First Aid Kit - Retroactive Jealousy OCD (RJ OCD)

This First Aid Kit is designed to give you immediate tools to deal with Retroactive Jealousy OCD (RJOCD). You’ll learn how to recognize and name OCD thoughts, let them pass without engaging, and sit with the discomfort (shortly) instead of reacting to it. You’ll also learn about RJOCD itself, where it comes from and what its function is and that knowledge alone can already create space in your mind and shift your focus away from your partner’s past.

Even just working through this free RJOCD First Aid Kit is part of your healing process.

Keep in mind: repetition is key. You are training your brain to respond in a new, healthier way. That takes time and practice. The more often you use these tools, even when it feels boring, useless or hard, the more natural they’ll become. Every attempt is a step away from compulsions and toward clarity. Use it whenever the spiral hits, and come back to it as often as you need.

You don’t have to stay stuck.

Let’s begin.

The Fear Loop: How OCD Keeps You Stuck

Having a relationship and being in love is scary to most people but when you have learned that people close to you that are supposed to love you, can hurt you, harm you or desert you, relationships get even more scary.

When your body is experiencing fear, it doesn't know if that fear is real or imagined. So things start to happen in your body and brain (a fast heartbeat or a warm face) and you get the urge to protect yourself from that fear. Your compulsions are your protection against those fears. You could see them as coping mechanisms, your responses to fear that you developed in difficult times when nobody was protecting you or teaching you how to protect yourself in a healthy way. So you have taught yourself these coping mechanism that don’t really make you feel better.

Acting on your compulsions can give a short moment of relief but the thoughts always come back. And if this goes on for a long time, the thoughts come more and more and your OCD gets worse. Every time you act on a compulsion, you worsen your OCD.

Anytime Coach - RJ OCD - First Aid Kit - The Fear Loop: Why Compulsions Feel So Necessary

Learning to stop acting on your compulsions means you need to learn to be uncomfortable. You need to learn to accept a certain level of not knowing or a certain level of pain. Sometimes something just doesn’t feel good. That doesn’t mean you have to fix it. When someone you love dies it feels terrible but you can’t fix it and you have to learn to live with the loss. The same goes for your partner’s past: they have a past and you don’t like it at all. You can’t fix it though, nothing you say or do will undo the past or make you like it. You can't fix this feeling, but you also don't have to let it ruin all of your days. So what you have to do is stop obsessing about it, by learning to stop acting on your compulsions. You will have to practice this again and again.

Intrusive thoughts

Everybody has intrusive thoughts. But the difference with people like us who have OCD is that we have a hard time letting the thoughts go. Why? Because we don’t want to feel the anxiety, pain or fear those thoughts bring. Feeling insecure or not good enough is hard. And honestly? That is hard for everyone. Nobody enjoys feeling afraid or upset. So we try to solve the thought, get rid of it, make it feel better. But in doing that, we get caught in a loop. We’re the ones who keep spinning it around in our minds because we’re trying to protect ourselves.. But the thoughts are actually harming us and we can learn to not engage with them anymore. And when we stop enganing, the thoughts will come less and less. And they will lose meaning and power. They will become unimportant.

First Aid Exercises

Before we begin with the exercises, I want you to know one thing: this First Aid Kit is not a complete guide to overcome your retroactieve jealousy and it doesn’t introduce you with ERP. ERP is an important part of OCD recovery, but it’s hard, and it usually requires guidance and support. You have to feel ready for it. And it’s totally okay if you’re not there yet.

This kit is here to help you prepare for that next step. To give you some mental space, understanding, and tools you can reach for in the tough moments. The exercises you’ll find here are based on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and mindfulness. They’re not magic, and they won’t make your thoughts disappear. But they can help you find relief when the noise in your head gets loud.

Sometimes these exercises will feel easy. Other times, they’ll feel almost impossible, because resisting compulsions, whether mental or physical, takes real strength. That’s why I want you to know: it’s okay to mess up. That’s part of the process. You’re not doing it wrong if it doesn’t work every time. Some days, it’ll click. Other days, it won’t. Just keep showing up. The more you practice, the more space you’ll create in your mind. It will get easier.

The Cloud Exercise

Sometimes when you're caught in a loop of obsessive thoughts, it can feel like you're completely in them, as if the thought and you are one and the same. The Cloud Exercise is something that’s helped me and many of my clients take a small but powerful step back. This exercise teaches you to not engage with the thoughts and eventually they lose their grip. It’s important that you always do the same exercise because when your brain is flooded by OCD thoughts and you are panicking, it is hard to think of what to do. That’s why you need simple exercises, that you can remember easily, to prevent you from acting on your OCD thoughts.

Here’s how it goes:

When an OCD thought comes into your head, look up at the sky or imagine a bright blue sky if you can’t see the sky where you are. Take slow breaths in through your nose… and out through your mouth. Put both of your feet on the ground and leave your arms hanging loosely.
Now imagine your OCD thought coming in from your left as a dark grey cloud over the blue sky. You don’t have to grab the cloud so you can control it and it’s not going to rain on you so you don’t need to look for protection: you are going let the cloud go by as if you are calmly blowing it away.
Your OCD thought and the dark grey cloud float all the way to your right and finally you blow it out of sight.
You don’t need to follow the cloud. You don’t need to talk about it, analyze it or argue with it. You’re letting the thought and the cloud go by without doing anything with them.

You might feel the urge to pull the thought back, to check it, analyze it, dig into it “just one more time”. You are not going to do that. Instead you are going to do the Labelling exercise.

Anytime Coach - Retroactive Jealousy OCD - First Aid Kit - Cloud Exercise

Labeling Exercise

This exercise is also very simple so that you can always remember it and have it ready in difficult times. After letting the cloud go by from your left to your right you want to get back in the here and now and avoid acting on any compulsion. You can do that by labelling what you see around you. If you can, do it out loud, that is even better.

So you name what you see: “Desk, pen, laptop, phone, my favorite hoodie, window, tv, my dog Donut, sun glasses, etc, etc.

And you keep going until you have calmed down and are able to go back to what you were doing before the thoughts came.

You have calmed down when your heart beat slows down and you don’t feel the need to go back to the OCD thought. Practice breathing slowly to make it easier to calm down. You can breath in for 4 seconds and breathe out for 6 seconds. The OCD thought might still be with you, somewhere in the back of your head. That’s ok, you didn’t engage with it and you can go back to what you were doing.

If this isn’t enough for you, you can add your other senses into the mix:

Name things you can smell.
Name things you can touch.
Name things you can hear.

And when a new thought comes, do both exercises (cloud exercise and labeling) again. In the beginning you will need them often. That will become less frequent over time.

Staying on Track & Moving Forward

Repetition

You will only overcome your OCD if you keep trying. Again and again and again. There will be ups and downs, successes and failures. It is all part of the journey. The most important thing is to not act on your compulsions and to keep doing the exercises that help you. They aren’t miracle solutions, but they do work, if you’re ready to make a change. Your OCD will keep trying to convince you to pay attention to the OCD thoughts. But they are nonsense, they don’t deserve your time.

You can make variations of these exercises and adjust them to what works best for you. I started out with the cloud exercise because that's what the thoughts felt like for me: dark clouds coming over my day and it was easy for me to imagine them floating by and out of sight. You could also choose a wave or something else. When the thoughts started to come less often and felt less dark I changed the exercise. I would say the RJ thoughts were like a TV in the other room where commercials would come on suddenly, because tv commercials are always louder than the show you're watching. And in my mind I would turn the TV off after which I would do the labeling exercise. At the moment the thoughts are more like little tennis table balls and I smash them away with an imaginary tennis table bat.

It might feel weird to use these metaphores but changing your thought patterns can be difficult and these are just ways to make it a little easier for your brain. You need to be consistent in your actions to heal. Even giving into your compulsions just one time can set you back for months so you need simple exercises that you can do again and again.

The Thought Is Not the Problem, the Response Is

You should not suppress or fight your OCD thoughts, but you do have to fight your compulsions. You don't have to punish yourself for your thoughts, and you don’t have to be afraid of your thoughts. The goal is always to recognize and identify the thought and practice to be ok while they come and go, but they do nothing. They have no effect But compulsions (ruminating, worrying, analyzing, etc), that's something else. It feels like you need to do these things to protect yourself, but they actually make your fears grow. You can learn to recognize that tendency and to not automatically respond to it. It's time to start acting like the person you want to become and tell yourself: This no longer works for me. For many years I have tried to solve my pain with my compulsions, and it never worked. I am trying something else now.

When you start acting like the person you want to be, not the person your brain is telling you that you are, your brain will start to recognize that you don't need protection from your old stories anymore and it will stop throwing them at you. It will be a conscious effort and it's not going to be easy. Don't expect that you will some day enjoy thinking about your partner's past, that is not the goal. Most people, also people that don't have RJ, don't love thinking about their partner's romantic or sexual past and that's why you shouldn't be thinking about it at all. Any topic that you put under a magnifying glass and analyze and obsess over every day, will eventually become huge. That means if you have the power to create this fear, you also have the power to end this fear.

Support Online

I love the online support groups. I use support groups on Facebook but they can also be found on other platforms. Without those groups I wouldn’t be where I am today: in recovery from Relationship OCD and Retroactive Jealousy OCD. People from all over the world have chatted with me in my worst moments. They have stood by me, given me advice or shared their own experiences, which pulled me out of the dark hole that I was in. I also help out other group members whenever I can. Group members all know the immense pain RJ sufferers feel and that creates a bond. This is a great power that we need to keep using to help each other achieve freedom from our OCD.

We do also have to be cautious when we are active in these online support groups because posts can be triggering and can bring you down on days where you woke up feeling good.

In many RJOCD support groups, I see a pattern that really worries me. People post about their partner’s sexual past and seem to be mostly looking for confirmation that what their partner did was “wrong.” Often the comments are full of validation like “yes, that’s disgusting” or “no one would be okay with that,” especially when the partner has had many sexual experiences or a high body count. But I find that very problematic. Most of these situations are about past sexual experiences, not betrayals, not abuse, not anything unethical, just consensual experiences between adults that happened before the current relationship.

Anytime Coach - Retroactive Jealousy OCD - Online Support Group

And to label someone as disgusting or damaged for having had many partners? That’s not a mental health issue, that’s moral judgment based on fear, insecurity, and cultural conditioning. I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with having 20 or even a 100 sexual partners. You can enjoy sex in a healthy, respectful way with different people and still be a loving, trustworthy, committed partner today.

When we validate people’s moralistic fears or anger we reinforce their OCD, we’re not helping them heal, we’re just helping the OCD grow stronger. So help yourself and other RJ sufferer’s by not seeking for this sort of validation or giving it to others.

What's Next?

This First Aid Kit offers several exercises and plenty of knowledge on RJOCD. Learning details about your disorder is just as important as repeating the exercises, so come back to this First Aid Kit when you don’t feel great, and reread it. It will help you find back your motivation to not act on your compulsions. This Kit is meant to give you a little breathing space, so you can focus on your recovery and get ready for the next step toward freedom.

The next steps toward freedom from OCD look different for everyone. Here is a list of choices that Anytime Coach offers:

Join our Facebook support group to learn from a specialized OCD therapist and other RJ sufferers. Ask questions, get answers from me and other group members and get regular OCD tips from me.

Start unlimited daily chat coaching with Anytime Coach. This step is highly recommended. The burden of OCD is often biggest when you are by yourself or with your partner, not just during that one hour weekly session with a therapist. This is why I offer my clients daily chat coaching. You get support at the moments you need it most. My clients tell me the daily chat coaching has offered them more support and insight than years of weekly therapy sessions. With the one month and three month program you will receive the Retroactive Jealousy Workbook for free. Contact me anytime. I check and respond to messages between 07:00 and 19:00 UTC. If you message me outside of those hours, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can! You can send as many messages as you want.

Some people reach a point where they know: I really want to work through this. They’re ready to do whatever it takes to get better: to use every tool available and finally break the cycle. For those who feel that way, I offer a combination of chat coaching and weekly video sessions. When you choose both, you get a discount on the video sessions. Sometimes, there's real urgency, for example, when your retroactive jealousy is putting serious pressure on your relationship. In that case, weekly sessions + chat coaching can offer the structure and support you need to make progress faster and not feel alone in the process.

Start ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) with Anytime Coach when you are ready. Most people will need ERP to fully recover from OCD. ERP helps break the OCD cycle by teaching your brain: I can handle this thought, I don’t need to do the compulsion, and nothing terrible happens if I don’t react. This is why ERP is the most effective, evidence-based method for recovery. If you’re not ready for ERP yet, that’s okay. Forcing it too soon doesn’t help. You can prepare for ERP by learning to spot your compulsions, practicing acceptance of your thoughts, building mindfulness and grounding skills, and choosing small moments of “response prevention”. Use the tools in this First Aid Kit and the ROCD Workbook to build strength and when you feel ready, can help you take the next big steps toward freedom.

Contact Me

Anytime.Coach Recommendations

Usually, we begin with chat coaching only. It’s a great way to get to know each other, start exploring what’s going on, build some momentum and start practicing to live without the compulsions. From there, we can see together whether video calls would be helpful, and how often. This approach keeps things flexible, while still giving you the depth and clarity you need to really move forward.

Chat coaching with Anytime Coach has proven to be effective thanks to the daily support it provides in the moments you need it most, along with the therapy-based tools shared through chat. It also allows you to revisit past conversations, reflect on what you’ve learned, and track your own progress over time.

Start today. Explore the options available through Anytime Coach, and take that first step. We’ve got this, together.

Recommendations from clients:

M from Germany

Thank you. I wouldn’t be doing so well if you would not have been advising me. You changed my life.

A from Libya

Marloes is a very skilled therapist. She provided me with clear, practical strategies that directly addressed my struggles. Her approach was always well-structured, goal-oriented, and tailored to my needs, which made a significant difference in my recovery.

S from Canada

Your expertise, professionalism, and genuine care for your clients set you apart. I highly recommend Anytime Coach to anyone suffering from Pure OCD.

E from Malaysia

Marloes used a combination of cognitive strategies, trauma-informed techniques, and critical thinking approaches to help me manage depression, and anxiety. She guided me in recognizing and reframing negative thought patterns, which gave me long-term tools to handle stress and emotional challenges more effectively.

L from Brazil

During our conversations, her observations were very accurate. I felt that she truly understood my pain and difficulties. In her therapeutic approach, she introduced practical and engaging strategies that I was able to apply in my routine. She is friendly, attentive, kind and helpful. I am very grateful to have met Marloes.

R from the Netherlands

Marloes is a warm, insightful therapist who helps clients feel truly seen and understood. She combines deep knowledge of anxiety, self-doubt, and relationship issues with practical tools that empower clients to grow. Through her unique blend of online video sessions and daily chat support, she offers guidance that fits into everyday life — making real change possible.