Second guessing myself

Prior to coming to college, I knew that I was having thoughts that other people weren’t having and that it controlled my actions or feelings of guilt in a way that I just couldn’t see in my friends but I ignored it. Since coming to college, my compulsions and stressful thoughts have gotten a lot harder to handle and my new friends have started pointing out that they think I have OCD. I’ll try to explain some of the reasons people have pointed out or I’ve noticed but at the end of the day I always question if I’m just doing these things for some sort of attention or something. I have this strong belief that when I’m walking on pavement, the amount of times that I start stepping on a tile with either my right or left foot have to match. And people always ask me if I’m just superstitious about stepping on the cracks but I don’t mind that as long as I make it match with my other foot. The problem is that whenever I’m unable to “make the tiles or cracks match” I feel like I’ve left some universal channel open and something extremely bad will happen to me in the next 24 hours (after that it resets). Sometimes it makes me look weird when I’m walking and it’s really embarrassing when people ask me about it and I can’t fully explain the concept to them. People generally just get confused and I feel like they just regret asking and think I’m weird. Once, when I was walking down the street with some of my friends, i ran out of tiles to make my steps even and totally FREAKED OUT. I got really anxious and I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg. One of the people I was with made me feel terrible about it when he said “wait that’s actually real?” So now my fears of faking OCD just because has become a bit more real to me since my friends don’t understand the full extent of how it makes me feel, even when they’re actively seeing me break down. Besides this, which is really the most inconvenient part of my potential OCD, there’s a multitude of other things I’ve noticed that show signs of it. Whenever I take a test, I have to be wearing at least 2 hairbands on my wrist and be wearing a sweater in order to do well. Numbers really matter a lot to me because they each have a different meaning and I’m scared of some of them. When I was little, and even now in other instances besides sleeping, I used to count how many times I rolled over before I fell asleep in fear that I would land on one of the bad numbers. For example, 1 would mean a serial killer was in my room, 3 would mean something would come out of the mirror, 4 would mean a doll came to life and was trying to murder me with a knife, etc. They all sound like stupid fears and are highly improbable but it used to feel very real to me. Now I still associate those numbers with the bad things but I’ve worked on trying to expose myself to certain numbers some nights and find some safe ones. Now the number 4 has changed in meaning and evolved into my worst fear, the zombie apocalypse. This all ties back to my tile crack issue because when I “leave the channel open” by making my steps uneven, the number I mess up at (ex: 4 tiles started on the right means I need to start the next four with my left) is the chaos that the channel will bring. Also, I constantly feel like a terrible person because I’m scared that I’m faking my sexuality even though I only like girls. I’ve been closeted for so long throughout high school that sometimes I feel like my current shame and fear of telling important people in my life (ie. parents, family friends, people who I feel are slightly homophobic) is a sign that I’m not like devoted enough to my sexuality – making me scared of calling myself a lesbian. I’ve also never been with a girl because I only recently came out at college and it fuels my rumination that I subconsciously must just be asexual or once again doing it for attention. I’ve tried dating guys to make my mom believe I wasn’t lesbian but kissing them or the thought of spending the rest of my life with a man always makes me literally cry. I go to Virginia Tech and the lack of an LGBTQ+ community here is making my coming out process and search for a true relationship extremely difficult and bleak. Whenever I see a girl I don’t find attractive (even though I see a bunch that I do) it scares me and makes me think I might not actually be lesbian even though I like girls. Idk what to even say about this it just sucks. There’s so much more that I can relate to based on the discussion board such as fears of accidentally having pdophelia and cheating on people I’m not even dating. But at this point I feel like I’ve already written an essay and I don’t even know where to start with the different types of OCD and where to seek a diagnosis. The hardest part about asking for help or guidance is the fact that I never attempted to get diagnosed, making it feel like I can’t even claim that I have it. Thanks for reading this, please write back if you can relate at all :)

I had like a really bad argument with my mom basically about her complaining about my “attitude” and “constant arrogance” like okay firstly 😭 yes i do have an attitude and am irritable but im not THAT bad 😭🙏 she was saying that im a “pest” and that “its not enjoyable to live with someone who makes other people miserable” like 😅🧍‍♀️ oh ☺️ and then i tell her that i know im struggling and that im going to therapy to try to get better and trying to possibly get a diagnosis and she says “your generation just wants something to deal with. You want something to be wrong with you. ‘Trying to get better’ isn’t good enough… would you be able to stand someone like yourself? You’re just choosing this antisocial, narcissistic behaviour and harass everyone… You need to pull yourself together. No matter how much effort we put into you, you will never be happy. You want some medicine? Some diagnosis? Because that will solve everything?” 😭😭😭 and the way she said “some medication”- she sounded so disgusted and appalled and now i feel ashamed… i mean im not officially diagnosed with ocd and it is never my intention to self diagnose- but im sorry its VERY obvious when you have ocd and know of ocd- its so distinct. Everything- the compulsions, reassurance, intrusive thoughts, themes, patterns, perfectionism- but she has me overthinking- what if i dont have ocd 😭 and ive just been lying to myself and everyone maybe its not ocd and im just sick in the head or trying to self sabotage- and especially when my supposed ocd is calm or not as loud i get so anxious “what if i dont have ocd…”

I've been struggling with ocd since I was 7. I'm 18 now and it feels like the older I've gotten the worse it's gotten. I don't know how to deal with it and i feel so lost and alone. Its hard for me to even say what my intrusive thoughts are or to even fully acknowledge it to myself in my head because im scared that if i put it out in the world itll be true or if i acknowledge the thought it solidifies it and makes it true. i feel like im just over exaggerating what im feeling and im turning something that isnt there into something bigger which makes it hard to talk about it with other people. Especially because im not diagnosed but I know it's ocd but what if it isnt? What if im lying to myself or I'm just doing it to get attention and I don't realize it? I just try to deal with it on my own but it's so hard and feels impossible. I feel like ocd has contaminated every part of my life that I enjoy. The things that used to bring me comfort are now filled with things that trigger my ocd and bring me anxiety.