- Date posted
- 3d
Why do therapists do this?
Yesterday I was getting an evaluation for autism and ADHD and the therapist doing the screening asked me if I take any medication for my anxiety or OCD. When I said I didn’t, she said “that makes sense. You think it might be autism masking as OCD, so you’re here to check.” She said it like it was matter of fact. Not as a question. She then continued, leaving little room for correction. All I wanted to know was if I have autism and/or ADHD. I mentioned nothing about me theorizing that my autism was masking as OCD. In fact, I was clear that I didn’t want OCD to be included in the screening. Ironically, my NOCD therapist thought that what seemed to me like potentially autism might be OCD. The fact that the therapist at the autism screening thought the opposite leads me to think that it’s another case of specialists being biased toward what their scope is. Either way, I told her I had no intention of taking ADHD medication even if I was diagnosed, so she wrote down that I was open to it. My brain was short circuiting at this point. Making these snap assumptions isn’t limited to just that therapist. It’s something I’ve noticed in other therapists and to be honest it kind of takes me out of the therapy lol. Like when a previous therapist was going over the medication I take and stated that I take multivitamins, which I objectively never said lmao. And yeah yeah, active listening, subconscious and other stuff people normally use to hand wave this when I bring it up. I guess I am subconsciously taking multivitamins without realizing it.