How did you cope with your initial OCD diagnosis and its impact?

@Cisforcaro Thanks for sharing. I can relate to that as well. I felt some relief initially. I also struggle with a lot of dissociation.

@☾ ᴍxɢɪᴄᴀʟᴍᴏᴏɴ ⋆˙⟡ Thanks! I guess it’s because with autism there can be ritual type behaviors, kind of obsessive interests, sensory issues that for me lead to handwashing (but some handwashing for me is also probably a compulsion due to fears of contamination). So it can kind of overlap in a lot of ways I think. I guess what makes the OCD stand out is the distress it causes. For example, I get stuck researching things online for hours and I thought it was just related to my autism special interests, but then I started to notice that there is a stressful, almost frantic quality to how I am searching online about various topics. I keep opening a whole bunch of tabs, trying to get through all of them. I am not really reading them and just sort of skimming. I feel like I almost have to keep going even when I don’t want to anymore. A lot of autistic people will do deep dives on the internet on topics of interest, but it’s a pleasurable thing, unlike a compulsive thing I guess. I am brand new to all of this though and just trying to figure it all out and tease things apart.

@Anonymous78 Thank you for sharing that

@Ellie4 I even made a similar post after my diagnosis. I felt like I was in a fog for a few weeks but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! There’s also meta-OCD where you can doubt that you even have OCD. Getting diagnosed definitely triggered that for me, but I’ve been in ERP for less than a year, and I feel way better already. You can do it!!