as someone who has not gotten a diagnosis, i’m wondering how everyone else went about their evaluations? what were the signs that made you question if you had ocd and how did you manage to get the courage to get diagnosed?? i always wonder what’s wrong with me and feel like whenever i try to put a label on it, i’m a bad person for even trying to think i have something and that maybe this is all just a normal experience.
you’re not a bad person for trying to help YOURSELF. I personally just stared putting what I felt on the internet & why I felt that way & everything led to OCD.. I have the symptoms.. so then I stared talking to my grandma about it & she got me an appointment with a psychiatrist, I then stared writing down on the notes app what I was comfortable sharing to the psychiatrist for a diagnosis. So when I showed her some of my intrusive thoughts she immediately said it was OCD & prescribed me zoloft.. I recommend writing it down & share what you’re comfortable sharing <3
@username ☮️ thank you for the encouragement, it means a lot! i’m still getting used to sharing these sort of thoughts with people (and admitting myself that i have them) but i will try my best!! i hope things are going well for you.
I googled what I was experiencing and Scrupulosity OCD came up. I was like that's me!! It was still a couple of years before I started doing anything about it.
@Rhonda Byrd thank you for sharing!
I noticed myself checking and rechecking things at work.
@Anonymous thank you!
howdy, hope this helps but to start you’re not a bad person and nothing is wrong with you, you just like everyone else here just has to work a little harder than some people. anyways, for me i knew someone with ocd and mentioned very similar but less severe symptoms at the time until it got worse and i had to courage to go to a program was properly diagnosed at a php program, but any therapist/psychiatrist at least at a program facility can “properly” diagnose you. (i say quotations due to im not someone who knows how diagnosis’ work)
@j_haydn2 this did help, thank you for the information and reassurance :’)
I went through a psychosis episode, that dwindled away slowly, then I started having intrusive images of terrible things then my thoughts were in a repetitive circle of the last things on earth I want to think about. I thought I was turning in to a monster and was almost certain I had to off myself before I harmed someone I loved or a child. After going through that I had not a fear of any judgment of anybody but God's so I decided to seek professional advice and soon found out that I have OCD. I wish you the best and hope you get your "you" back.
@struggles your experience sounds very similar to mine—i hope things have been going okay for you, and i hope you get your “you” back too!
i’m terrified to get a diagnosis. What if it’s not actually OCD??? I made a list of reasons why i think so and then i think what if im lying and i actually don’t do this stuff and am just dramatic and i just want to have OCD so then my thoughts are justified?? I have struggled in the past year with Pocd & Rocd and then also some bits of thinking im constantly in danger or being watched? I’m scared.
Ok, so first of all, I’m undiagnosed. However, I’ve been pretty certain for a while now that what I’ve been struggling with is OCD. My problem though is that it’s not easy to get diagnosed, and in some cases, it would require me to pay money. It frustrates me that I have to pay to deal with my mental health. Is it worth it for me to get diagnosed? I know I don’t need a diagnosis to start healing and working on these things, but I also don’t want to be “self diagnosing” the problem, because that makes me feel like a liar and an imposter. My other problem is that I fear my family doctor won’t properly diagnose me. I came to him about mental health related issues once before, and he read off a very generic list of mental health symptoms. when he got to what sounded like the ‘OCD’ section, we asked one or two very generic questions that had nothing to do with my themes, and since I couldn’t relate, I just answered no to them. He then told me I was fine, that I was just a “type A personality”, and that I was just being too hard on myself. I fear that my doctor might not be very knowledgeable or up to date on current information regarding OCD, and this might make it increasingly difficult for me to get diagnosed. Another problem is my symptoms seem to come and go. I often have an obsessive cycle that can last months at a time, and then it just goes away. Sometimes I won’t experience any symptoms for years. This makes me feel like I don’t actually have OCD or that it’s not ‘bad’ enough to be diagnosable.
Some background: I’m a woman in my 30s who’s been struggling to find the right diagnosis for years. Since 2022, I’ve had multiple psych hospital stays, and with each stay came a different diagnosis and different sets of medications: Bipolar II, CPTSD, MDD with psychotic features, “high functioning BPD,” and most recently, Schizoaffective Disorder (depressive type). Before all of that happened, I had been seeing a therapist for CPTSD and AuDHD traits for 2 years, but after they left the practice, I struggled to find someone I trusted again. Most of my breakdowns happened during my last relationship. Looking back, I was in survival mode with them, leaving who *I* am behind. I got to the point where I started doubting my own reality from the abuse. This eventually added up and landed me in my first episode of psychosis. That combined with my attempts is what got me my schizoaffective diagnosis. After finally leaving that relationship 1.5 years ago, I’ve slowly rebuilt my life: new town, new job, new friends. Many of my old symptoms (major ones) haven’t returned, which makes me believe I may have been misdiagnosed due to reliving past childhood trauma and stress responses from the abuse. Through all of this, I’ve felt like nothing ever truly fit. I journal, I reflect, I replay the recordings and I’ve even watched old vlogs –the puzzle pieces still don’t come together. It’s left me feeling like I’ll never really know what’s going on, and I’ve started to fear that my diagnoses will just keep stacking up without ever leading to effective treatment. Recently, I opened up to a friend about this. She mentioned that her neighbor went through something similar not exactly like me but she thought it would give me a starting point—multiple diagnoses that never felt right—until a new doctor finally identified it as OCD. That one diagnosis changed everything for her. It made me realize I really don’t know much about OCD beyond the stereotypes. I didn’t know OCD could involve intrusive thoughts, rumination, or mental compulsions. My friend encouraged me to look into it, especially as I start searching for a new therapist. Facebook and Google lead me here… So now I’m wondering: could OCD be a better explanation for what I’ve been experiencing all these years? Questions for the community: 1. What steps did you take to find out if OCD was what you were dealing with? 2. If you had a long history of misdiagnoses, how did you finally find a clinician who got it right? 3. How did you advocate for yourself when people dismissed your concerns? 4. Is there anything you wish you had done earlier in your OCD journey? Thank you so much if you made it this far. I’m really grateful for this space and just want to start finding answers and the right kind of help.
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