Question - how many are diagnosed with OCD on here and how many aren’t diagnosed. Do the diagnosed people think that those who have self diagnosed, need a diagnosis or are yous accepting. (I’m self-diagnosed, done hours worth of research. I spent every night researching OCD in the first lockdown because the things I’d been experiencing for 3years. Some people on here say if your not diagnosed then don’t say you’ve got OCD. But if someone’s not ready to open up about it or are in a situation where getting diagnosed is impossible and have done all the research they can to make sure it is what they’re suffering with then why is it an issue if they say they have OCD if they know for a fact they have it?)

I'm diagnosed, but both myself and my family more or less knew I had OCD five years before my first therapy session. The reason why self-diagnosis is sometimes frowned upon is because not everyone is like you; someone might claim to have a disorder based on only a preliminary understanding of what that disorder looks like. Or they might have a legitimate condition but confuse it for something else. For example, a lot of folks with OCD think that they have generalized anxiety and will say that they have GAD, although this isn't their fault because OCD doesn't have enough visibility. There's also medical student syndrome, which is a psychosomatic condition where the more you study a disease, the more likely you are to think that you have it...basically, there are just a lot of ways that self-diagnosis can go awry. From the way it sounds, though, you've done your due diligence; I would trust your judgement and agree with you that you have OCD.

Yeah I understand all of those things that’s why I’ve done my research and only mention having ocd to my parents. It angers me when people say they have ‘ocd’ because they like things to be clean or in order when in reality it’s a lot more than just that. So I do understand why people will say I don’t have OCD because that’s probably what they think I’m being like when in reality I’ve spent a lot of time crying over the anxiety of the intrusive thoughts I get and even longer carrying out compulsions and rituals since I was 11/12years old. I do also have other mental illnesses which at first I thought were the cause for my rituals but when I dug deeper and researched more I realised they weren’t from my other illnesses they were actually OCD. And with the mental illnesses I have OCD is very common to co-exist. Thank you for trusting my conclusion. Not many people are so understanding.

I'm not OCD diagnosed but got a GAD diagnosis 2 years ago (it's been running maybe since my early teenage). I still don't know if what I have is OCD, but even if it's not it's behaving just like it was : obsessive thoughts, compulsive thoughts and perfectionnism. I personally don't really care being diagnosed or not. I take what can make me understand myself better and go forward.