Hi, when I was around 12-13 I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder by CAHMS but I was with a therapist who hated diagnoses and often dismissed any concerns I brought up. For context, when I thought I had autism, she dismissed me and actively tried to fight against me getting a diagnosis, only backing down after my mum wrote her a massive, well researched document explaining why she thought I had it. Even then she told me it probably would come back negative and that everyone who she sent for diagnosis never got it and that she didn't even really believe in autism, telling me I would grow out of it. I at one point found out about OCD during the time she was my therapist and told her my concerns, at which point she got annoyed at me, invalidated my concerns and ordered me stop looking up things online. She also was not a fan of diagnosis , making me wonder if my original one was just because I would need one to be able to stay in the service. I felt so humiliated after that I never brought up the concerns again and when it came to the OCD symptoms I display, I hid them and also didn't realise a bunch of them were weird.
Anyway, I get really horrible intrusive thoughts that affect my life a lot and I noticed that intrusive thoughts were always connected to OCD. So I read about it and I fit SO MANY of the symptoms and do many of the compulsions. In fact, what I have been calling my anxiety, actually seems like it could be OCD because it is intrusive thoughts that are obsessive followed by compulsions that just drag me deeper into them. I didn't even realise some of teh stuff was weird nough to point it out. For example, I change my clothes sometimes more than twice a day because I am worried that they are impure and though I'm religious and there is not backing up for this religiously, think that if I don't I will go to hell, sometimes it extends to cleaning everything I have touched because I am worried if I don't my family will become impure and will then go to hell because of me. That is just one example and I basically do a lot of other stuff on the list and have the symptoms.
Anyway, apart from being quite emotional at the idea that I may have been misdiagnosed the whole time, I'm terrified of bringing this up with my therapist and being embarrassed again because I feel really strongly that it might be true. I'm also afraid that she might think I'm lying because I never spoke about that stuff before but that was because I was afraid of being snapped at again and that I was just lying to myself as well as really ashamed and embarrassed about my intrusive thoughts. I think I will tell her but I'm not sure really how to bring it up. I'm not sure she is able to give a diagnosis but she might be able to send me in the right direction. Also for context, I live in the UK but currently am not doing therapy through the NHS as the waiting list is ridiculously long and I have had so many experiences of being booted out of the system when I still was struggling. Do you have any advice on how I could bring this up or how to feel less afraid and stupid for thinking this? Also how do I make it clear that I just didn't mention all this stuff before because I thought either some of it was normal, or was afraid of being dismissed?
14 Jan 2021, 1:58 pm
