- Date posted
- 1y
I’m worried I don’t actually have OCD
I’ve been diagnosed with ocd but sometimes I think I’m faking or I don’t actually, but idk if that’s the ocd tricking me or if it’s true
I’ve been diagnosed with ocd but sometimes I think I’m faking or I don’t actually, but idk if that’s the ocd tricking me or if it’s true
Don't want to give you reassurance but, meta ocd is a common theme
@Hopeful29 What’s that
@lexiiiiiiii - I think its where you have OCD about having OCD and if you're doing ERP you have OCD about if your doing your ERP correctly.
Rule #1 of OCD- it will ALWAYS try to convince you its not OCD. Its almost a hack you can use to KNOW its OCD. When I was early In my recovery I would say that phrase in therapy EVERY WEEK " what if I don't even have OCD and this is all actually real" and my therapist would point out " what if=OCD" and once I was more along the road with recovery I realized why its called " the doubting disease". Dont take the bait, just let that idea pass, its brain junk mail, no need to open it.
It also honestly doesn't matter. OCD isn't a disease and it's not a black and white diagnosis. Intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and compulsive behavior are experienced by pretty much everyone to some degree. OCD is just a label used when someone experiences those things often and intensely enough that it's debilitating to them. Even if you don't fall into the OCD diagnosis, the tools used to treat it are useful. It's kind of like GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), which is basically just a label for people who experience anxiety often enough to "qualify" them for the disorder. For whatever reason, their nervous system is just more easily triggered than others. If you often feel really anxious, it would be kind of silly to worry whether or not you're "faking" having GAD.
I do agree with this, i would add tho that OCD does present with modified brain scan images. For reasons yet to really be nailed down, people with OCDs brain diverts blood flow away from the frontal cortex ( logic brain) to the amegdayla ( reptile brain) and it causes and unnecessary shift into a false need for fight or flight. So I wouldn't call OCD a disease but I would defiantly classify it as a disorder with both physical and behavioral components.
@TexasOCD41 - Yeah I've read into that a bit as well. I personally wonder if it's a chicken-or-the-egg scenario though. Are the differences in brain scans the CAUSE of OCD symptoms, or are they the result of years of falling into that cyclical thought pattern? I think it's debatable, but then again I'm no neuroscientist.
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.
I was diagnosed with OCD around the age of 6, subtype- contamination primarily. It calmed down as I got older and I assumed it had gone away, but also didn’t realize it can show up in other ways, and it still had been effecting me which I know now. I’m not 31 and I’ve been in therapy for a year and it’s helped a lot, although I sometimes get thoughts that what if some of the stuff I’m dealing with isn’t ocd and I’m exaggerating. I feel like thoughts will feel sticky and I’ll do certain compulsions but then the thought eventually vanishes if I do it a few times which makes me think maybe it’s not OCD since other people/friends I know would probably do the exact same thing. Not sure if I’m making sense, but I guess my question is if that thought comes up with anyone else? Just being unsure if something you’re doing actually is ocd or not.
I'll start by saying, I have not been clinically diagnosed, as I do not have the funds to see therapists or psychiatrists in my current situation. Once I'm in a better spot, I very much intend to. That to say; after months and months of having issues with anxiety, specifically health related, my partner was the one that mentioned OCD. I did have some somewhat OCD related behaviors in my youth, though those likely could be explained by potentially undiagnosed ASD (as my mother is on the spectrum as well as a sibling, both diagnosed.) But I never considered OCD taking form in a health sense. I posted earlier about how I've had 4 days of pretty minimal anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and it has led me to doubt the OCD label I've been working at treating? I don't want to be the person that identifies themselves with a disorder they don't have, which is why I hesitate to self diagnose with OCD or ASD or anything else. At the same time, I've read that a lot of even clinically diagnosed people with OCD doubt their diagnosis. It makes me wonder if I will always have this doubt, and if that means it is worth it or not to get tested? I know that if I do, they can actually do ERP (whereas I've been self taught and self guided so far) so that would be worth it...
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