Little vent: I hate when I try and explain my ocd and intrusive thoughts to people and then they say “it’s normal” it feels soooooo invalidating 💀

my mom has been on this adhd kick where she thinks everyone has adhd instead of what they actually have because apparently it can present itself as anxiety. well i told her i was taking prozac because that’s something she needs to know since i still live at home. and she’s fine with it because it’s my choice. however, she comes into my room because she sent me a video about adhd. in the video, at the end, it says “girls with adhd may develop perfectionist or obsessive compulsive tendencies.” THEN, she has the audacity to tell me my compulsions didn’t start to show until after high school when that isn’t true at all. i just never talked about it, but of course she doesn’t believe me. i just feel so invalidated because after all of the hell i’ve been through, to be told i don’t have what i most certainly am positive i do have is atrocious. i would lose my mind if i was told i didn’t have ocd because of the intrusive thoughts i get that make me feel like a terrible person. i feel like being told that sets me back so far and makes me want to thought spiral a bit. i’m so upset.

If you are anything like me (and most of you are, because let’s face it, we are all on this chat), you have OCD. Real OCD, not the organisation, matching colours everyone thinks it is. Real OCD. I’ve always known I was different, known that my brain does some waking things and deep down, I’ve always known I’ve had OCD. But there is just something that changes when you finally get the diagnosis. It makes more sense, you have an explanation for your behaviours. So naturally I told my friends. When they ask why I had to stop and step four times on a tile I said ‘oh, I have OCD’. I finally had a word, a tangible concept that I could explain to people. But nobody warned me about the massive misconceptions about OCD. Instead of support or acceptance, my friends seemed to question the diagnosis saying ‘that’s not ocd, don’t you just like things organised?’. And no matter how much I explain it they don’t seem to get it. And that’s the part that feels so cruel. I go through hell in my head and it can all be reduced to a phrase of ‘oh, aren’t you organised’. So please be careful out there you guys, and if someone try’s to downplay your experience, know that you are valid and that what you are going through is probably something that they could never handle. It’s a lesson that took me time to learn, but it’s important because our experience matters. Our real experience.

Sometimes I feel like nobody really gets me. Nobody knows what’s going on in my head. I try to explain in vivid detail, but my ocd immediately reads the other persons face and registers that they don’t get it. It’s a very isolating experience. Anyone else have something like this?