#my therapist interrupted me to ask if i was diagnosed with OCD. i said no and she asked if i wanted to go through the assessment to see

[roboraindrop]

I have a part of a song that makes me sad stuck in my head because my brain is Mean (and apparently also officially has OCD- wild thing I found out today!) So I am going to think about soft things with Toshi to comfort myself until I can get some sleep. I start a new job tomorrow tho so I'm procrastinating on that particular thing dkdnskg

[bambi-lesbian-posts]

Idk why I suddenly feel like complaining about this, but it's ridiculous how difficult it is to get any kind of mental health diagnosis as an adult in the southern US. When I was a very small child, I believe I was 4, I got diagnosed with non-typical OCD because I had "peculiar and ritual behavior, with violent outbursts when routine was interrupted", when in actuality I was just a little kid who couldn't handle certain food textures, was sensitive to smells, sights, and sounds, and I wanted to stick to a daily schedule. I got that diagnosis with a few hour-long sessions as a 4 yr old child.

But now? I've seen psychiatrists, visited counselors and therapists, and I had to fight for 2 full years to even get considered for a prescription for antidepressants. And then I had to argue with my doctor to switch my meds because what I initially started on made me 100x worse than before. I've been thinking for the past 6 years that I have autism and not OCD, and I've had my psychiatrist and a few therapists say that they agree I was misdiagnosed. But I'd have to wait for over a year to even get testing done, because there is only one facility that does autism testing and diagnosis in my entire state. Not to mention, it's $6,000 to get tested at all, regardless of the wait list, so I haven't even bothered to sign up.

Self diagnosis is a widely accepted thing in the autistic community for these exact reasons, but it is not met with a lot of opposition in the medical field here. Asking for help and talking about your experiences in general to doctors without an official diagnosis gets you a lot of shitty treatment and sarcastic remarks. They'll treat you like a naive summer child at best and a stupid attention-seeking one at worst. I was treated like a drug addict before I changed doctors last year because I mentioned that I was probably autistic and not obsessive-compulsive like my chart said. That doctor pestered me with questions about my antidepressants, why I switched to a stronger prescription, how often I was taking them, asking me to repeat over and over why exactly I needed them in the first place, etc. for a solid 20 minutes before we moved to the actual topic of my appointment.

And now I just don't feel like claiming my autism at all. I don't feel like telling people in my daily life about my thoughts on the matter, or about my mental health in general anymore. I hear so much about the "autism fad" where "everyone wants to get diagnosed because it's cool and quirky now" which I think is bullshit, by the way, but it makes it hard to feel comfortable talking about autism in front of people irl now.

[andiandyandee]

We Are Going to Be Friends Pt.11

I’m back!!  Sorry this took so long, the baby (She’s 3, but she’s my baby, okay?) has been super sick for like a month so her mother and I have been at out wit’s end trying to make her feel better. Anyway. Here’s the first Chapter Here’s the most recent chapter Here’s the whole series on ao3

Tag List:

@datfearlessfangirl @princemesscharming @illogicalthinking @holliberries

Here’s the Fic!

    “Logan, I don’t know if getting a tattoo from some rando is a great idea.” Remus was hanging upside down from his bed, watching Logan work on his biology homework. Roman was sitting in a bean bag chair, working on his history homework.

    “It’ll be fine, Rem. if it turns out bad I’ll just get it covered up when I’m 18.”

    “What if it gets infected? And then because you won’t go to a hospital ever it’s gonna spread to your hand and arm and heart and they’re gonna have to amputate and then how are you going to become a doctor with only one arm or you’ll boil alive from the fever and we won’t-”

    “Did you know dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors?” Logan remarked without looking up from his book. Remus looked baffled. Roman looked slightly annoyed.

    “Why do you always do that? It’s rude to interrupt someone, you know.”

    “Do what?” Logan glanced at Remus for some clarification, hoping he would understand Roman as his brother better than Logan did as his boyfriend. Remus shrugged.

    “You do it all the time. Rem will be talking about something and then you just like, cut him off with some random fact.” Logan snorted at Roman’s now protective tone.

    “It’s to pull him out of a panic spiral. When someone with OCD starts spiraling, like he just was, you can sometimes confuse them enough to keep them from freaking out. A distraction technique, essentially.” The twins both looked confused. They spoke at the same time,

    “Remus doesn’t have OCD.”

    “I don’t have OCD.” Logan gave them a confused smile.

    “I’m sorry, I don’t think I get the joke.”

    “It’s not a joke. My diagnosis is just anxiety, It’s not OCD.”

    “If you don’t have OCD I’ll eat my boot.” Logan gestured at Remus vaguely. “You literally display every single symptom, how has your therapist never tested you?”

    “Picani didn’t diagnose me, he just kept my diagnosis from my old doctor. What do you mean by all the symptoms?”

    “I mean- I could be wrong, but it seems obvious, right? You get stuck in cycles of being completely obsessed with a thought or potential event, you find something that makes you feel better, then you feel compelled to do it any time the thought arises.”

    “I think everyone does that,” Remus mumbled.

    “Where in your closet do your clothes go specifically?”

    “Be more specific,” Remus asked, uneasily.

    “100% cotton shirts, where do they go?”

    “Uh, towards the back. I can’t see them when I open my closet but I know they won’t get eaten by moths because moths don’t eat cotton because it doesn’t have Keratin but I have to keep anything that moths might eat toward the front so I can check on it when I open the closet doors and-”

    “And in what order do your books go on the shelf?”

    “There isn’t a specific order, but the ones I’ve read the most I keep on the middle two shelves so they’re at eye level, while books I’ll never read but still keep or books I’ve read but didn’t like are at the bottom because I probably won’t see them unless I bend down, which I don’t do, and books I want to read but haven’t yet are on the top shelves because I feel better knowing that if I decide to read them all I have to do is reach for them.” Logan nodded.

    “What do you do if you see what you believe is a carpet beetle? Walk me through your usual process.”

    “Uh, I’d probably try to catch it, google carpet beetles, I have a bookmark for them actually, make sure that’s what it is. If I’m unsure I’ll google black beetles and make sure it’s not something else, check to see if I can find any more, if I can’t I’ll put the one outside then go shower and then I’ll clean the room I found it in, wash my hands and then I’ll double-check to see if any more have come out, then shower again.”  Roman looked totally baffled.

    “I mean, those seem a little extreme, but I don’t know if that’s OCD.”

    “Remus, what’s your routine when you walk to your therapist's office?”

    “What day? On Wednesday appointments I leave the school, come home, change into my boots, dad drops me off, I wait outside the office until 3:29, I walk in, Picani says “Remus! Right in time!” and we do our session. I leave, turn right, walk the long way to Starbucks, order my drink-” Logan raised his eyebrows at him as if this was making his point. Which it was.”Oh. Huh.”

    “Have you mentioned this to your therapist?”

    “No, I guess I never realized.” Remus was looking a little put-off. “Does it... bother you?”

    “Don’t be an idiot.” Logan waved a hand vaguely at him. “I knew what I was getting myself into when I decided to talk to you.” He smirked. “Now, had I realized what I was getting myself into when I started dating Roman, maybe I would have made some better choices.” Roman laughed, throwing his pillow at Logan’s face. This action set off what was probably the most aggressive pillow fight known to date, and it only ended when Roman swung his arm around to catch a pillow hurling at Logan, only to miss and essentially punch him in the eye.

    “Fuck! Ow, what the fuck,” Logan held his eye, looking at Roman in complete exasperation. “Roman I think you just broke my face.” Roman was stone-still, horrified, and Remus looked just as panicked, hands up as if to placate to the other teens if they turned to violence. “Woah, okay, why did it get so serious all of the sudden?”

    “Logan I am so sor-”

    “Wait, what? It was an accident, Ro. No big deal. How bad does it look?” When Logan moved his hand, Roman actually flinched back. “Damn, that bad? This is what I get for not wearing my glasses…” He looked in the mirror and snorted. “Oh, that’s gonna be gnarly later. L will kill you if I still have a black eye for prom, you know.” Logan glanced back at the twins who were still pale and nervous.

    “Logan, I am so sorry, it was an accident, I promise I would never- I couldn’t…”

    “Ro?” Logan had a soft smile on his face. “You’re an idiot.” Roman immediately snapped out of his panic to dramatically gasp.

    “How dare you, peasant!” Logan snorted, coming back over and sitting down.

     “I spend time in mosh pits. I think at this point every person I like had given me a black eye. Except for Remus, weirdly enough.”

    The evening calmed down significantly once Remus brought Logan and ice-pack. They mostly just went back to homework, Remus occasionally anxiously bringing up Logan’s tattoo, which he was supposed to get the next day. It was mostly Logan with his back to Roman’s chest, only half awake, listening to Remus talk excitedly about sea urchins, which was apparently his new favorite sea creature.    Getting the tattoo was fine, if uneventful. The ‘artist’ seemed a little weird, and possibly drunk, but Logan had never gotten a tattoo, so he assumed this wasn’t too far off from how they usually went. When he made it to the Sander’s house, a trash bag held on with electrical tape around his wrist, he was still grinning like a madman. Remus laughed at him and took a photo on his stupid polaroid camera that was completely ridiculous because they had cellphones with cameras, and when Logan took the bag off, Remus took a picture of that too, even though it was red and a little puffy and the lines didn’t look very good. Logan loved it, and both Remus and Roman couldn’t help but like something that made him so happy.  

    They both liked it a lot less a week later, when Logan showed up to their house pale and a little grey looking, arm tucked up towards his chest.

    “I thought It was healing alright so I left it uncovered, the artist said it was normal for it to be a little red for a while so I didn’t question it. We went to a show, and to a party and it hurts and I don’t know why. ” Logan’s words were a little slurred, he was obviously a little out of it, so they guided him inside and sat him on the couch.

    “Can we see, Lo?”

    “It’s really gross, way worse than it was last night... I don’t think-” Remus pulled Logan’s arm away from his chest and Roman almost gagged. It was significantly worse than it had looked the last time they’d seen it only two nights ago, now yellow and swollen and bleeding again. “I don’t know why it got so infected... I was taking care of it..” From how close they were together, they could tell that Logan had a fever, and he was definitely sweating.

    “Something must have gotten into it while you were out. You need antibiotics.”

    “No doctors,” Logan grumbled, pressing his face into Roman’s shoulder. “Please.”  They agreed, because it was hard to argue with Logan in general, but especially about doctors, but both brothers looked uneasy as they helped Logan clean the tattoo and re-wrap it.

[grief-blogging]

My mother was not the only mentally ill person in our family.

I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder as a young adult. Contrary to pop cultural depictions, it's not organizing your bookshelves by color and washing your hands 50 times a day (although I have met some fellow OCD-sufferers with telltale raw, red, cracked hands). It's also definitely not, "Ohmahgahd I haaaate olives in my martinis, I'm so OCD."

My obsessions were a cycling voice on repeat in my head since puberty telling me, "Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself." My compulsions were biting my nails until they bled and the quicks throbbed in pain with any environmental change (being submerged in water, eating salty french fries, stepping outside on a cold day, et cetera), picking my skin so ruthlessly I looked like a crystal meth addict, and ripping out my hair. For many years I had a bald patch on my head that I obscured with hairstyling. A lifelong atheist and critic of superstition, I became obsessed with ripping out my eyelashes and making wishes on them. "I wish my skin would heal. I wish my mom would get better. I wish my niece would turn out normal." You have eyelashes for a reason, and without them my eyes were constantly irritated and watery.

I've always been adept at putting a pretty facade on things. I was careful to leave my bottom eyelashes alone, and I glued strips of false lashes on the top. I skillfully hid the scabs on my face with makeup. My face held people's attention enough that few people noticed my miserable, ragged fingernails.

In my mid-twenties, I started going to a new therapist. I'd been to many therapists before and didn't find them particularly helpful. I was in the throes of the worst valley I'd ever experienced in terms of my mental health. The constant voice in my head telling me to kill myself was as relentless as ever. It felt like torture, like captors blasting death metal at a prisoner so he couldn't have any peace of mind and eventually caved to their demands. I was very, very close to caving to the demands of the OCD voice in my head.

I made a plan for how I was going to kill myself. It took me a long time to think of a way where Nic wouldn't have to find me or clean anything up, and hopefully I wouldn't be in too much pain before I died. I was not resolute. I didn't want to die. Every time I pictured my plan in my head, I sobbed and begged myself not to. It just felt like the only way to get the voice to shut up. I can't describe the voice. It wasn't my own. I tried to figure out the source of it but I never could. It felt like a taunting whisper rising up to me from a crack in the ground.

I made a compromise with myself: we would try therapy one last time. We would give it a good go, the old college try. We would actually put in the work and make an honest effort. We would do it for three months. If I still needed to kill myself at the end of the three months, then it was okay. I was allowed to do it and not feel guilty.

I don't know if it was my own desperation or if she was just that great, but to my immense surprise the therapy actually worked. I feel like my life could be divided into two sections: my life before I met her, and my life after.

Right around the three month mark is when I found out my mom had cancer, and Nic and I decided to move back to my hometown to help take care of her. I talked to my therapist about the upcoming move and she helped prepare me for what I was going to experience. I don't think I would have handled everything as well as I did without her.

For the most part, my life now is not particularly hindered by OCD. I know how to interrupt myself when I feel the urge to pick at my skin or hair, I have long, manicured, well-kept nails, and the voice only makes occasional cameos and I know well enough by now to brush it off.

I have one irrational obsession I haven't been able to shake, and it's a weird one. Much like the fixation with making wishes on my tormented eyelashes, this one doesn't make a lot of sense and will never happen.

I have this scene play in my head at least once a day. I'm home, it's late morning, and I hear a knock at my door. I go to answer it and there is a swaddled baby on my doormat. I recognize her immediately from the photos. I can tell by her giant, blue eyes, the wispy corn silk hair, and delicate mouth. It's my mother. I pick her up and take her inside and I take care of her. She's my baby now. I show her the unconditional love and patience and consistency that she needed as a child and didn't get. I see her grow up well-adjusted, free from the cycle of abuse. If it turns out her problems were more nature than nurture, I don't take the stoic, 1950s Catholic route. I take her to therapy, just like she did for me. She learns how to cope with her mental illness in a healthy way. She finishes college and becomes a nurse, like she always wanted to. She finds a partner who makes her happy. She doesn't have seven children to fill a void in her heart. She faces her problems head on and doesn't die at 66 after an exhausting, ruinous battle with cancer. She has the beautiful home of her dreams. She thrives.

In December of 2017 I had an elective bilateral salpingectomy. I don't want to get pregnant. I don't want to have a baby. There is only one baby I want, and I can't have her, so what's the point?

Nic and I bought a house about a ten minute walk from her childhood home. Sometimes I walk over and take it in. Nearly any time I drive in that direction and I don't have a passenger in my car to ask me why I'm being such a weirdo, I slowly drive past it. I hope the current residents haven't noticed me. I'm not trying to be like, the neighborhood Boo Radley or something. I just like to stop and look and picture little toddler Leslie playing in the grass. I like to imagine her little kid chubby wrists and knees. I imagine how differently her life would have ended if she'd had an easier start.

Like I said, not my most rational obsession. Checking to make sure I locked the front door 37 times would probably be healthier.

[rowena-who]

Story Time

When I got back from spring break this year, my senior and last spring break at this particular college, I went through hell. I was official diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder this past October, which is a lovely mixture of anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and a fear of situations that are out of my control. I didn’t live in the same state as my school so when I got back to school after an almost 4 hour drive I honestly just wanted to take a nap. But, when I entered my room my curtains had been ripped from the wall, my medication was spilt all over the floor, and my alarm clock laid in pieces on the floor. The OCD I deal with is specifically about people touching things, and my room was the only place I could say “okay there’s no reason to panic, I’m the only one who has touched anything in this room”. My room was my safe place, my sanctuary, but that sense of security was utterly crushed. At this point I’m distraught, and I have no idea what to do, my thoughts immediately go to: I should go home this place isn’t clean anymore. Some may say that’s an overreaction, but then again not everyone has compulsions or obsessive thoughts to deal with. My OCD fluctuates from an inconvenience to Mt. Everest, and this situation was climbing the mountain fast. So, I decide to go down to the desk where an RA is on duty because I honestly have no idea what to do. Before I go down I take pictures of the damage, and of what I walked into. The RA, after trying to help, called another RA and he basically told me “Ah well it’s not really a priority so you can leave now,”. No one asked to see the pictures of what had occurred in my room. No one asked me if I wanted to report it, all they said was that because the resident director was out sick I would have to wait. On a good day, I would have been fine with that. But, as I had already told them at this point I have OCD and I had spent more than half my time when I was supposed to be unpacking crying instead.

I tried to express that this was...upsetting? I don’t know how to convey what I was feeling but I was utterly miserable. No one seemed to care I was having panic attack after panic attack. I had never had so many panic attacks in a single day, the record being seven. The next day the resident director was out sick again, which I understand but someone should have been able to help me as he is not the highest on the totem pole nor supreme ruler of the school. I was told, again, to basically go away and suffer in silence...again. No one took my pain seriously, no one seemed to care, and I was reaching my limit. For three full days I was in pure hell, drowning silently as everyone else decided to look the other way. The next day after having the other resident director in my dorm “mansplain” what happened to me, which actually didn’t happen and couldn’t have possibly fucking happened. When I tried to explain this he interrupted me, talking over what I was trying to explain. I went to housing and basically broke. I had reacted my limit...the only person who seemed to take into account how severely traumatizing this experience was, and that I was being tormented by the idea someone had defiled and desecrated my safe space was my therapist. My therapist explained to both my resident director and the housing director why this was not an over action but a traumatizing situation that I was made to endure. He told them they couldn’t have picked a worse person for this to happen to.

After this I got a replaced alarm clock that half the time I wanted to chuck at a wall, because every time I looked at the damn thing I couldn’t help the powerful rage I felt as I was reminded yet again what these people put me through. A few weeks after my therapist and I met with the housing director, as my therapist thought it was a good idea for me to have a chance at moving forward. The director agreed that what most likely happened was that an RA was so impatient to leave for break they rushed to get the pre-break checks done, and thus decided to leave my broken clock on the floor. I was never told who did it, no one apologized for what they put me through over those three days, and no one was held responsible. Do I think anything will change...I don’t know. But what I do know is that NO one should have to go through what I had to. OCD is very aggravating and can, for some people, be debilitating. At the end of this I walked away fucking traumatized. No one should ever do this, Period. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at my school the same way again.

[ancient-string]

Hi! Congratulations on your diagnosis? Is that what people say? Idk, what I mean is I’m happy you know more about yourself ^_^” anyway, what I wanted to ask is- I’m going for an autistic spectrum disorder assessment in a few months, but wondered how you got diagnosed with 3 things at once? Because I 100% know I have other issues (my therapist can confirm), but I have no official diagnosis for them... how did you get yours, unless you don’t want to share in which case feel free to ignore this?

Hello kind anon! Thank you for your congratulations. It feels liberating to finally know that yes, this is real.

Before I answer your question, I should point out that I am coming from a place of relative privilege. I’m white, I live in a country with socialised medicine (Australia), and I am financially able to pay for multiple appointments without stressing out.

With that in mind, I’ll answer as best I can, and hopefully at least some of it will be useful to you :) Beware, its long!

When I first started this process, I went online to find a psychologist that did adult diagnosis. Before I even saw him he sent me two questionnaires to fill out. Basically if the scores were high enough, it would warrant a consult. One of these was a comprehensive psychological profile which tested for pretty much everything you can think of: PTSD, addiction, eating disorder, OCD etc.

After he got the results of those, I had two (long) sessions with him. He took down my history, my family history, medications I’d been on, what I was currently on, everything. I had been previously diagnosed with depression and anxiety, but this was almost like starting from scratch. In fact, I no longer have a diagnosis of depression, as that can be better explained by autism.

We did an interview, and I did some more tests. He noted down things like me interrupting the test to talk about X-Men (it was a question with Scott and Jean as the people!), as well as me tidying up his desk and sorting the waiting room. He did things like make me wait, or write out inaccurate stuff, just to see what I would do.

After that, he said it was very likely, but I needed a psychiatrist to rubber stamp. I got a referral from a GP and the psych sent the results to some people he knew to see if anyone was taking on new clients. One was, so I went to see her.

She was lovely. She asked lots of questions, made observations, stuff like that. She’s on the spectrum herself and has OCD so that went a long way to me trusting her. She gave me some questionnaires too, including one for ADHD, since the two are concurrent often and my scores on the huge profile from earlier indicated a possibility. Sure enough, lots of those boxes for ticked also.

After that it was a matter of waiting for her to write a full report to send to the psych, my GP, and me.

So, as to having multiple things diagnosed, I think it is because of previous diagnosis (anxiety) as well as the extent to which the psych profile covered. It was enough to indicate that there was definitely things happening. It also helps that the psychiatrist doing the assessment was well versed in adult diagnosis of things thought of as children’s disorders. She specialises in Autism and ADHD, and is knowledgable about many other things too.

I hope this is useful. Feel free to ask more questions, on or off anon :)