Telling parents about OCD when you haven’t had a formal diagnoses, help. So, my mum is such a deeply compassionate person and she is so caring and has helped me in all the ways that she could with my obsessions, but, she absolutely will NOT accept that I have OCD. I cant even use the word in conversation without her getting heated up. She assumes that I have pulled this label out of nowhere to explain my ‘over-thinking’. I have openly suffered with health anxiety (OCD), and a theme that makes me scrutinise all of my thoughts to decide whether they were normal - it’s basically a fear that I’m autistic, despite having 0 of the symptoms (it’s hard to explain), but have privately suffered with SO OCD (sexual orientation), which I managed to basically overcome on my own with self-administered ERP. I don’t feel comfortable opening up to my mum about that, so she is only aware of my two themes. My mum has a habit of minimising everything, and despite suffering with severe-post natal anxiety and depression, she has a hard time grappling with labels. It was only recently that I found out I was likely struggling with OCD, seeing as I had EVERY SINGLE SYMPTOM OF IT. In order for her to even open her eyes up to the idea of it, I have to say “look it’s not that serious, it’s fine I’m fine it’s just a label”. She hates if I try to say that I’ve been really struggling. She hates it. I laugh (A lot) with my friends, and to her that is direct evidence that I haven’t been suffering. But trust me I have been absolutely miserable. I’m almost tearing up writing this. I cant get her to accept that I likely have OCD, she just says I’m on over-thinker and it’s all because of quarantine and I’ll be fine once we’re back in school - yeah, more distractions from the issue, but will I really be fine?? Probably not. Just like the last time. Anyway, any thoughts?

"Pure" OCD

Madison the ...

Date posted: 4y

Show her articles. Show her NOCD articles, they might have one on how to tell your family about OCD. Show her how much you’re suffering. Tell her mental illness is invisible. To her, laughing with your friends means you’re okay but you’re dying inside! If that doesn’t work, reach out to other trusted adults who understand mental illness and could be willing to talk to your mom for you.

Faye June

Date posted: 4y

Thank you so much for responding! And, I’ve shown her a video of someone describing OCD and she jokingly said, ‘I hear you’ and brushed it off with a laugh. She knows I’m anxiety prone, but she thinks of it as just that - being ‘anxiety prone’. She always recites to me what her CBT therapist told her years ago - so, essentially she had been searching online and panicked thinking that she might have a personality disorder or bipolar, when in actual fact she just had anxiety and ADD. She had told her therapist that she felt she might have bipolar or BPD and her therapist had told her ‘if we were all to read the DSM back to front, we’d come out thinking we had every disorder under the sun’, and she tells me that as a way to prove to me that I don’t have OCD. I don’t want to have OCD, and I rarely bring it up in conversation! Just when I’m trying to explain why I’m so stuck on something irrational, it’s understandable why the disorder I suspect that I’m suffering with comes into conversation, but. Yeah. I avoid speaking to her about it, because it pisses her off and I come out feeling like, ‘well maybe I am overthinking this. Maybe I don’t have OCD’, which is already an OCD concern with OCD. Ugh. Sorry for springing that all on you, lmao!

Madison the ...

Date posted: 4y

@Ell Aww no worries! I’m so sorry that’s happening... is there anyway you can go get a diagnosis? Just like ask your mom “ok, once and for all, let’s settle if I really have OCD or not.” Go see an OCD specialist for a diagnosis and maybe once you’re disgnosed, she’ll listen to the experts. If all else fails, you can still apply ERP on your own without a therapist or your mom’s help at all: https://hope4ocd.com/foursteps.php

Faye June

Date posted: 4y

(ADD is attention deficit disorder and can cause intense mood swings

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