- Date posted
- 3y
Feeling immobilized
My OCD themes have centered mostly around health and identity stuff. For several years I’ve been afraid I’m Autistic. I’ve been in group OCD treatment for a bit and didn’t see too much improvement/ at least around my main obsession. I was seeing a NOCD therapist for a few months. One session he asked me some questions during an exposure and after I answered “yes” to most if not all the questions he told me that he googled questions to see if you’re Autistic. It was really uncomfortable, but part of me shrugged it off because I know that screening for Autism is much more comprehensive in the school system, so what happened didn’t feel that “validating” that I’m really Autistic. Although I still continued to obsess about the theme, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about that event. The other night for some reason it dawned on me that as an adult, I can likely go and get diagnosed Autistic and the screening process would probably, if not definitely, be less comprehensive than if I was a kid and in the school system. That realization made me feel that the series of 3-4 questions my therapist asked me can be effective screening for Autism and I answered yes to I think all the questions. Honestly I don’t know what to do, I know part of me really wants to research the process for being diagnosed Autistic as an adult in different type of medical, resource oriented, or psychiatric conditions to prove that my “screening” wasn’t comprehensive enough. I feel extremely defeated. I don’t know how to sit with this. It feels like it’s game over for me. I don’t know how I can EVER accept uncertainty around this theme now and just claim “I don’t know” if I’m Autistic and be able to just live my life and enjoy it without spending almost all day everyday obsessing about this and just never feeling “okay.” It’s like I can’t enjoy my life and ever feel “okay” for more than several minutes because my mind will just go back to “well, you’re for sure Autistic now” and it causes me so much despair and distress and I just NEVER want to think about it. I want so badly to show my mind that there are other explanations or even that the questions I answered yes to can probably be attributed to being diagnosed ADD and OCD, but it doesn’t help. My mind just wants to then see the criteria for ADD and if they don’t ask the same exact question then I know it’s Autism for sure. I just feel like now that I had this realization of the adult screening for Autism process being shorter that I have sealed my fate. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last 4 days and I’m afraid I’ll never just have this reality of answering yes to those questions in my mind and I feel I can’t handle it.