Symptoms decreased, feel like I never had OCD

Its been around a year now that ive struggled heavily with intrusive thoughts. I haven’t noticed it in my other years, aside from when i was a young kid. I want to get diagnosed with OCD or try to see what my therapist will say. Ive been summing up the courage to speak about this for months now and i have an appointment on the 26th. I feel like im ready to finally talk about it will someone, yet one thing is holding me back. The doubt. I started struggling HEAVILY with OCD symptoms around march of 2024. I mean rumination, compulsions, shame, disgust, etc. It was one of the worsts points of my like and it cared on from January-Late august of 2024. I was literally in distress everyday of my life. I had constant intrusive thoughts that would go away, and unbearable anxiety. Yet around september hit they started getting EASIER to mange. (remember that, they didnt go away, i just wasnt as effected) I was quite happy i could live a little without pain and that carried from Sept-December 2024. But then January hit again, and everything just seems to flow right back to me. I cant stop thinking about how i used to feel, the pain i was in. Everyday my brain wants me to remember the anguish i was put through. I finally decided i will talk about this to my Therapist. My only doubt is that, everything is much easier for me to deal with, and my anxiety isnt as strong. I still have intrusive thoughts and suffer with performing compulsions, but i dont ruminate anymore. That should be a good thing but my brain tells me that means my feelings arent valid, and i dont have OCD cause things are better. Im sorry for this long read, i just need to get this off my chest. How do i talk to my therapist about wanting to get an evaluation, when most of my main hard aspects in OCD are in the past? (AKA the past i suppressed and shut down)Any help is appreciated. 😕

I’ve always had OCD, and for most of my life it was little things that seemed manageable at the time or something that would phase out of my head within a couple days/weeks/months. But, the older I got the more severe it became, I’d find myself collapsing deeper and deeper within my own head trying to out think the thoughts that bothered me. About a year ago I had a thought that rattled me to my core. My brothers and I were watching a movie in our mother’s room when my youngest brother turned to me to say something. His close proximity to me triggered a fleeting sexually explicit image in my head and that thought caused me to spiral. Asking questions like, “are you attracted to your minor brother? Are you attracted to minors? Are you gay? Etc.” a couple days went by and my mental stability continued to crumble until I broke down to my mother, she was understanding and we found a a psychiatrist. I got on medication and for a while everything was slowly but surely trending in a positive direction. The thoughts would still pop into my head but they were becoming more manageable. As we all know OCD and mental illness comes in waves. Currently my OCD has been pretty severe. I feel those intrusive thoughts latching on in my head and it’s been very hard to kick them. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself being uncomfortable being in close proximity with my little brother because I feel as though I am capable of harming him in any way. And the more uncomfortable I become being around him the more I find myself lashing out in anger towards the people I care about the most. Those moments of anger cause me to spiral even farther as my head fills with ideas like “what if you are capable of hurting someone or even murdering them?” There’s times where these thoughts rattle me so much that I feel like it would be better to be in prison where I couldn’t harm someone or that even being dead would be a better solution than possibly running the risk of hurting someone in my life I care about. This is about the jist of it, a majority of the OCD I have is centered around the idea that I am capable of harming my little brother physically, mentally, sexually. It’s been exhausting and it feels like there is no end in sight.

This is kind of a weird question, but I recently increased my SSRI dosage and have experienced tremendous relief. It has quieted my intrusive thoughts so much and my compulsions are no longer as all-consuming. However, I don’t want to be on this high of a dosage forever and know that medication alone shouldn’t be my only fix. I’m seeing a new psychiatrist on Wednesday and am wondering if the recent decrease in frequency of my symptoms will be a bar to my getting ocd treatment? In other words, if in this present moment I’m doing better, but up until a few days ago my compulsions were taking up pretty much every moment of my waking day, will I still be classified as having ocd? I start getting worried when I feel better that I don’t actually have ocd and just use it as a defense mechanism to avoid consequences of my actions/I’m secretly a terrible person