Hi, so I haven't been properly diagnosed I have tapping and touching compulsions since I was young but never thought it was ocd and have had different topics of obsessions specially health and hocd. I went to therapy because of intrusive thoughts about hocd and they told me I had to seek treatment somewhere else. I'm not able to do it financially right now so I started getting informed an doing ERP and practicing uncertainty and I don't quite struggle anymore with thoughts but I can't stop thinking about if I really have OCD or not and my mind keeps telling me that maybe I just made it up to be interesting or for attention or to manipulate people around me but I haven't even told anyone but 2 friends and I just need to know. And I'm really confused and scared that maybe I just made it up and started convincing myself that I had it and lying so I could be interesting or to play the victim or something. And I'm also scared that If I get diagnosed I will start telling everyone and live my life around it and just use it so people would feel bad for me or something. But I also want to know if I have it so I can look for the right help and feel okay, but I don't know what to do. Please don't think I'm crazy.

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.

I'll start by saying, I have not been clinically diagnosed, as I do not have the funds to see therapists or psychiatrists in my current situation. Once I'm in a better spot, I very much intend to. That to say; after months and months of having issues with anxiety, specifically health related, my partner was the one that mentioned OCD. I did have some somewhat OCD related behaviors in my youth, though those likely could be explained by potentially undiagnosed ASD (as my mother is on the spectrum as well as a sibling, both diagnosed.) But I never considered OCD taking form in a health sense. I posted earlier about how I've had 4 days of pretty minimal anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and it has led me to doubt the OCD label I've been working at treating? I don't want to be the person that identifies themselves with a disorder they don't have, which is why I hesitate to self diagnose with OCD or ASD or anything else. At the same time, I've read that a lot of even clinically diagnosed people with OCD doubt their diagnosis. It makes me wonder if I will always have this doubt, and if that means it is worth it or not to get tested? I know that if I do, they can actually do ERP (whereas I've been self taught and self guided so far) so that would be worth it...

Ok basically I’ve had OCD symptoms since I can remember but now that I’m thinking about it maybe I don’t have OCD what if I believe it so much I have the symptoms I’m not sure and I’m so confused I guess. And I wanna get tested or therapy but I don’t even know if I have it so I’m scared to and I have to remind myself of the time I had a symptom before finding out about it so I can confirm it I don’t know how to explain what I mean I wanna get help but don’t know if I have it