Can someone please just talk to me and try and interpret what I’m about to say? I don’t have a therapist, and it’s hard to talk to my parents without irritating them. Okay, hi. I’ve been really good with my OCD recently, feeling genuinely happy after a long time of being completely overwhelmed. I’ve had this OCD theme for a while now, it’s basically obsessions with the idea that I could be autistic, but just not being aware of it. Despite not aligning with most if not all of the criteria for autism in females, I can’t help but obsess over whether I’m autistic without knowing, and this terrifies me. I’m not even sure why it scares me so much, I think it’s because I value my ability to communicate and I actually like blending in with crowd.. I guess, and OCD loves to attack what we value most. I understand that someone reading this will probably be confused and unsure about why I even have this theme, but I’m asking myself the same question. It has terrified me. I think it stems primarily from the fact that I heard somewhere that female autism goes undetected or the individual is usually unaware that they have it, and a billion other things that could possibly relate to me (such as the OCD-autism relation) This sent me spinning. I’ve been panicking and searching endlessly for certainty for a long time at this point. It ebbs and flows, when I’m in a period of low anxiety, the OCD obsession seems absurd and I can finally sit with myself and hang out with my friends. I’ve known people (girls) in the past who I suspect had autism, and having been friends with them, it’s just a crutch for my anxiety to latch onto - “well if you hanged out with them, that MUST say something about you”. Ugh. And my grandad had aspergers. Both my parents clearly don’t have it though, and none of my other immediate relatives do. But still, the chance I could have gotten the gene is just eating away at me. I had a bit of a breakdown recently where I scraped the internet reading EVERY single female autism article I could, X’ing off the checklist in my head, but of course, with OCD if you look, you tend to find. Deep into my OCD fuelled research I found an article. It was a personal account of a female with aspergers, where she listed about 50 traits that she finds females tend to have. Of course, out of a list of 50 different traits, it’s not outlandish to assume that you’ll identify with a few and still not be autistic. So, that happened. I can’t remember what traits exactly, but I’m fairly sure they weren’t particularly unusual things, and I remember thinking that I knew of others who did these things, but this woman still listed them. I panicked. And started to get that familiar feeling of dread, and here I am. Writing an essay in the hopes that someone will say “I’ve had that theme too!!”, even though I’m aware that thats unlikely. If you read up to this point, (wow you have patience) thank you. Genuinely.

I’m an OCD newbie & I’m having a lot of difficulty being able to distinguish what are OCD symptoms that may be atypical or if it’s due to another diagnosis/not something to be worried about. For context, I also have PTSD & suspected Autism- so excuse any excessively literal interpretations. All of my knowledge of OCD is watching Monk when I was child, so give me some grace. 1. “Harm OCD”- I have for as long as I can remember summed up my life purpose as “least amount of harm, most amount of good”. I am constantly thinking about how my actions & inaction may be impacting others. My career is in psych & public health because of that. I noticed I personalized things bc I assumed people thought about this just as much as me- only to find out they don’t. But I only hear examples of harm OCD as being thoughts of like personal persecution or images of hurting others. This is more of a mental analysis of the potential impacts. 2. “Contamination OCD”- Does this need to be literal with germs? I have what I call “emotional contamination”, where if something bad/negative happens, I worry that it’s “ruined”. Like if my partner & I have an argument in bed, I feel like I need to replace the sheets because our argument is “on” the sheets. I’m aware that that is illogical, but I’ll still do it. Every time I’ve had a major trauma, I’ve redecorated my home because I felt like all the negative is “stuck” on my old stuff & it needs to be replaced or I won’t feel better. I’ve ended relationships bc “there’s no getting this off”. 3. “Magical thinking OCD” I like to say that I think a lot of things I don’t believe. I have lots of random thoughts about needing to do something or something bad will happen. The things I need to do are usually really silly- like moving a large rock that’s by itself to a spot with another large rock so it isn’t alone & doesn’t feel lonely. I don’t have the thought that something specifically bad will happen or think I have magical powers. I know it’s nonsense, but I usually do it to stop thinking about it unless it’ll cause harm. Sometimes I also will come up with “tests”, like telling myself if I say XYZ to my partner & they respond in ABC way, then that means they love me. But the thing I’m asking them about could be literally anything. I am frequently *afraid* to ask because they might respond wrong and “ruin” it. 4. “Order & Symmetry OCD” & “Perfection OCD” & “Just Right OCD”- these terms seem to be used kind of interchangeably? I am VERY specific about my stuff. My home is color-coded by room & I won’t buy things that don’t match. I am intensely uncomfortable & can’t stop thinking about it if something doesn’t match. I am STILL thinking about the pink version of my laptop that I didn’t buy 7 years ago & it bothers me that I bought the silver one. I hate when people buy me stuff bc my style is very specific & hard to understand the nuance. There’s a “correct” image in my head & it’s really upsetting when it’s wrong. I flipped out a lot as a child when my stuff was moved and when my parents made design choices for me. I group things in weird ways- there’s an order, but it might be ordered based on how much I like them, how much they remind me of someone, or even more abstract like “if these objects were to run for president, this is the order I think they would be in from liberal to conservative on their view of defunding the police”. I have weird things with numbers, and will buy things based on how “cute” the price is. I would rather pay $440 for something than $399 because it’s a “better” number. I couldn’t tell you anything beyond “vibe”. I’m not sure if these are actually symptoms or just tangentially related & I’m conflating. I may have mis-grouped something. It’s hard to know where to start when nothing seems to have the direct examples of what I experience. Thanks in advance!

Hey, I’ve been doing some research on OCD and think I may have it. I’m not 100% sure, but I have a lot of the symptoms. I want to get myself diagnosed, but my parents won’t let me. They agree that it’s very likely that I have OCD, but they think that if I try hard enough, I can get over it. I don’t know what to do anymore or if what I have even is OCD, and I want to be somewhat sure before a I do anything. Right now, I’m a junior in high school, but freshman year was when my “OCD” was the most severe. I think I had (and still do) the symmetry/order subtype and “just right” subtype. I was obsessed with writing things neatly to a point in which I kept forcing myself to erase and rewrite things until all the letters were straight and all the graphs were neatly drawn (typing wasn’t safe either because I use Notability and felt the need to align every text box and make them all the same length). Handwriting was especially a problem in calculus A, and it got to a point in which I couldn’t keep up with the notes, and the homework was taking hours a night because I was obsessed with making my work perfect. Needless to say, I didn’t get a good grade in calculus A and didn’t build a good foundation for future math classes. This makes me really sad because I was previously really good at math and had a bright future in the subject. Eventually, I just stopped trying in calculus A, but by then, I felt burnt out, couldn’t concentrate on anything, kept putting things off, and lost the ability to properly manage my time. I think it may have escalated to executive dysfunction at that point, and it carried over to all my other classes. As someone who was previously pretty productive and good at planning, this was a huge hit on my self-esteem. I was also obsessed with symmetry. If I touched one side of my body, I had to touch the other side in the exact same place. If I was coding something, I would have to evenly distribute touch across each key on the keyboard. It felt like everything was a heatmap, and the colors had to be kept in balance at all times. I also avoided odd numbers because they were considered “asymmetrical”. I was obsessed with routine and had to complete tasks in a certain way, a certain order, and a certain amount of time. Even something as small as combing my hair for five minutes instead of six caused me extreme distress. Writing one word that “sounded off” on an English paper left me unable to keep writing until I fixed it. I had to keep the sound of my phone at a certain volume (6 normally, 10 when exercising, and 12 when cleaning, divide everything by 2 when using a computer) and had to walk a round number (any number that ends in 0) of steps a day. I kid you not when I say that some days I woke up and didn’t want to live anymore. Sophomore year, my mental health improved and I probably seemed overly perfectionistic but not to a point of concern. However, this year, the handwriting issue relapsed in all its glory during physics, and I’m not able to keep up with notes or homework. I feel the same way that I did in calculus A, and I don’t want history to repeat itself. I want to ask my teacher to let me do my homework on paper rather than the iPad (it’s easier for me to write on paper due to increased friction), but I’m scared to ask because I don’t have a formal diagnosis. I don’t know what causes my behavior. I feel like if I can’t do things perfectly, no one will like me. I’ll lose all my friends, and no boy will ever want to go out with me. I know it’s irrational. Literally no one cares what my notes look like or how long I spend on each step of my morning routine or whatever, but I constantly feel like people are judging me and will hate me the second I mess up. There are two more times in my life that I can think of when I displayed symptoms of OCD, contamination OCD when I was 9 and pure/religious/magical thinking/health concern OCD (they all just kind morphed together) when I was 11. I can go into more detail if you wish. As of now, I just want to know my behavior sounds like OCD, and if so, how to more forward. If not, I would love to know what I do have and how to treat it. Thank you so much.

can someone with this theme help me i’m so scared and i can’t stop having panic attacks is this OCD??? So i always have struggled most with sucicidal ocd and harm ocd. i never really had any other themes. but recently ive struggled with SOOCD. My whole life i have never EVER been into girls ever and i could never even think of ever being with a girl in my entire life. i’m having extreme amounts of anxiety and i have compulsions to make sure i look at a girl and don’t feel anything towards them or anything. My mind is literally going “what if your just in denial” or “what if you’ve just been hiding it all these years” When i know i haven’t. i have all of the symptoms of SOOCD and i still know that im not gay,but these thoughts are extremely distressing and have been the worse to deal with. I’m constantly panicking and doing compulsions to get these thoughts to leave and they won’t. i’m scared and these thoughts are making my mind scared. What if i’m going against my morals and i’m lying to myself like and i just went through a tough breakup too so that is shooting these thoughts and anxiety. Please help omg!!!