Did anyone freak out even more when they were diagnosed with OCD? I had some intrusive thoughts but they were bearable. It got 10x worse when I started looking into OCD more and was diagnosed.

It honestly made not difference for me as by the time I was diagnosed I already knew I had it so instead of googling and researching all at once it was kind of a gradual over time thing. It’s definitely not fun to google stuff and feel worse I feel your pain. I just avoid googling now as I see it more of a compulsion

So my story is a little different. I started experiencing intrusive thoughts when I was 8. But OCD was never even on my radar until last month. I never told anyone about what I was experiencing wasn't normal. I thought everyone struggled the way I did. Once I knew what to look for, I saw many different things at various time thorought my life. Once I started to suspect I had OCD, I knew this was something I needed professional help with. I had lingering doubts that I really had OCD. I went into my 90 minute assessment fully expecting to be told that I did not have OCD. I was really caught off guard when my counselor told me I DO meet the criteria for OCD and gave me an official diagnosis. Once I had that, I had a lot of mixed emotions. I felt sad, relieved, and disappointed. I got diagnosed at 45 years old. I jumped into treatment with both feet. I have done 3 sessions of ERP so far. My last exposure was absolutely brutal and it was only a mid level exposure. The thought of doing a high level exposure terrifies me. There is a part of me that thinks I'm not strong enough to finish treatment and should just quit and accept that this is as good as its going to get. I have noticed a major difference. But I really want to reach recovery. I don't know what to do at this point.

I think I freaked out more because I was then giving in heavily to my googling compulsion because I just had to know everything about what was wrong with me. I also though used to have a fear of not wanting anything to be wrong with me mentally even though I’ve known for a while something was fishy lol So for someone to finally say yeah it’s OCD you’re not crazy, was a big relief but also a big stressor since my OCD was like no it’s not OCD you are crazy. It was a big back and forth for a while, but I’ve learned to accept the diagnosis more. I still have good days sometimes where I’m like, “Do I really have OCD, if I did would I feel happy like this right now?” and then my OCD comes in full force with a, “How dare you forget me!” and then I’m like yeah I have OCD lol

Honestly kind of. I feel like it got worse for me too but I was more relieved when I found out that’s what it was

I was pretty relieved when I got the diagnosis because I had just discovered that that was probably what was going on and things started making sense to me. But I did the same thing, googled every single thing about it and all the different subtypes. And I think it either enlightened me to all the OCD things I did, and/or made me overly cautious that I would do other compulsions that I wasn’t doing before. Like reading about them would make them happen to me. So in that case it got worse. It did end up getting a bit better when that initial googling phase ended though. So don’t give up, there’s hope!