I haven’t been on this app in about a year because it turned into a compulsion. But my OCD hasn’t been as bad for like 3 months but I am still looking to be diagnosed (i couldn’t when it was bad due to my age and COVID). However, I feel like if they assess me my answers wouldn’t be as severe because my intrusive thoughts aren’t as frequent right now. Would I Answer the questions as if i was bad? Or do i just not get the diagnosis until i’m bad again? I know that OCD comes and goes in waves but i’m worried my GP will just say it’s my anxiety that caused these thoughts…

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

I haven’t done a Q&A in over a year (my bad) but I used to do these at least once a month. Work is slow today, so please send me any questions you have about OCD and I’ll answer them as best as I can. A little about me: I’ve been subclinical/recovered for going on 5 years and I’ve been on this app volunteering since 2019 in an unofficial capacity—I’m not connected to the NOCD team, so I don’t have any badges. I did ERP treatment with my therapist in-person while I was also being treated for PTSD. I have OCD, PTSD, ADHD, depression, GAD, social anxiety, driving anxiety, and a few speech impediments.

Ok, so first of all, I’m undiagnosed. However, I’ve been pretty certain for a while now that what I’ve been struggling with is OCD. My problem though is that it’s not easy to get diagnosed, and in some cases, it would require me to pay money. It frustrates me that I have to pay to deal with my mental health. Is it worth it for me to get diagnosed? I know I don’t need a diagnosis to start healing and working on these things, but I also don’t want to be “self diagnosing” the problem, because that makes me feel like a liar and an imposter. My other problem is that I fear my family doctor won’t properly diagnose me. I came to him about mental health related issues once before, and he read off a very generic list of mental health symptoms. when he got to what sounded like the ‘OCD’ section, we asked one or two very generic questions that had nothing to do with my themes, and since I couldn’t relate, I just answered no to them. He then told me I was fine, that I was just a “type A personality”, and that I was just being too hard on myself. I fear that my doctor might not be very knowledgeable or up to date on current information regarding OCD, and this might make it increasingly difficult for me to get diagnosed. Another problem is my symptoms seem to come and go. I often have an obsessive cycle that can last months at a time, and then it just goes away. Sometimes I won’t experience any symptoms for years. This makes me feel like I don’t actually have OCD or that it’s not ‘bad’ enough to be diagnosable.