Help (therapy)

Doesn’t sound like anything changed “midsession” since he said it’s basically OCD. If you want him to outright tell you the diagnosis, then you need to say that. Sometimes therapists won’t tell you the diagnosis.

Ok. I had the impression he discarded it being ocd. Now I cant remember exactly if he said so or not, but I think he did. I'm afraid he's thinking this is something I'm suppressing. I just wanted a diagnosis, as I think I'm currently managing OCD just fine. I don't want to feed the monster. I think I'll message him later.

If you are having trouble with your OCD just make sure he does ERP therapy. If he doesn’t, he could just make your OCD worse.

I decided I'll go to one more session and ask him what kind of treatment he's considering. I'm not deep into a spiral rn and I kind of just wanted an official diagnosis. I could also ask him that through messaging. I don't know.

I agree with the comments written before, ask him to give you the diagnosis. Also, if he doesn't do erp I don't know if he will be helpful. I tried to go to a therapist not specialized in ocd and she told me something like that (she believed I just had compulsions, when actually I have mental compulsions😑)

*just had obsessions ups

It's frustrating. I feel like OCD is deeply, deeply misunderstood by everyone but people who have it and specialists. My reassurance right now is that there are many people with OCD that are also wrongly diagnosed. I've had obssessive intrusive thoughts with high anxiety throughout my life and I know what I'm aware of what I'm going through. Also, thoughts arent meant to be probed, analyzed and engaged with when it comes to OCD. If he does that then I'm afraid I'll relapse. I left his clinic feeling pretty anxious. About you, what did you do when your therapist told you that?

@Lavander I feel the same way, it really is frustrating. I insisted saying that I really recognized myself in ocd syntoms and thought I had it. She made me answer to a questionary, all the questions were like "do you wash your hands often" and other stereotypes. I don't have this type of compulsions, so of course the result was negative. She told me that to be defined ocd, it must really interfear with your life. Sooo... I started to cry LOL. I've had this since I was 11 y.o. (I'm 20 y.o. now), when I went to her I was really struggling, and hearing her basically saying that I wasn't suffering enough was horrible. I still tried to go on others sessions (I probably shouldn't have🙄), but I felt like I knew more of ocd than her and it wasn't helpful, so I stopped going. I don't even really blame her, I live in Italy and I think here ocd is even more misunderstood than in other countries! I hope the situation will change in the future

@gre-gre She also kinda tried to make me analyze my thoughts, I felt it was wrong too! Another example, one of my obessions was the fear of having a crush on my female best friend: my therapist gave me the advice of looking at her photograph and repeat "she is just my friend"... that really sounds like a compulsion, doesn't it?💀 Sorry if I wrote so much ahahah, I hope your therapist will not be like that, but if it turns out to be, don't be like me and wait, just leave as soon as possible😂🥲

@gre-gre Girl even our age is the same lol My therapist said the same thing about compulsions interfering with daily life, as if I wasn't having intrusive thoughts the entire day and dreaming about them at night. He also talked about hand washing and similar compulsions as a way to relieve the thoughts. The only reason I'm not totally panicking right now is because I'm simply not having a bad episode of anxiety lately. I live in Brazil and OCD resources here aren't good neither, they're super limited. I'm lucky that I speak English and can access the much richer resources in this language. Are you attending any kind of therapy now and managed to get a diagnosis? Like here on NOCD?

@gre-gre Oh my God that's the worst thing she could've told you to do lol it's awful that we gather all our courage to open up about our most distressing thoughts and they handle it this badly.. we just leave feeling like trash, maybe even worse than when we walked in.

@Lavander Ahahha so funny for the same age!! I'm glad I understand English as well and I'm sorry in Brazil you have the same situation🥲. At the moment I'm not in therapy, I found a therapist who uses erp but she can't arrange new appointments at the moment. I asked the prices of therapy on Nocd but it costs too much for me, besides idk if I would be able to do therapy in a foreign language. So unfortunately I don't have an official diagnosis. It shouldn't be so hard to get treatment :|

@Lavander Yes it's so sad when you finally open up about your thoughts and you are not understood. Luckily I had already found Nocd and I knew it was wrong. In the previous message, I forgot to say that I want to do erp on my own for the moment. I should have started before but I had a lot to study and I was afraid of doing it in the wrong way, but now I've decided it's better to try than do nothing, so I'm planning my exposures and I'll start in the next days :)

@gre-gre Yeah same thing for me. No insurance coverage makes nocd therapy expensive. Imma think about what to do next... And best of luck on your erp journey! I hope it works well for you. Thanks for responding! :)