#today's emotion is ybocs fuckor :/

[astriiformes]

I'm starting with a new therapist who I think may finally be a good fit for me, and at my intake appointment yesterday she agreed that we should do an OCD screening next week.

I took a quick look at the test she wants to go over with me and had more than a few ".....oh" moments, so while I'm not about to diagnose myself on the spot, it really is starting to feel more and more like a reasonable suspicion that might be about to get validated. Which I am having... complicated feelings about. It might be a really helpful lens to apply to some of my more persistent mental health issues, but also, it's kind of an intimidating diagnosis.

In any case, a while back when I was first grappling with all this, I decided to take a leaf out of some of my friends/mutuals' book and have a go at personifying my probable-OCD in a way that feels a little less pathologizing by thinking about it as a frustrating entity I have to put up with. In my case, an annoying little demon I've decided to call "Dys" -- short for "Dyscrasia," or the term for a humoral imbalance, because as a history of science guy I think it's funny.

Dys makes things hard for me, whatever brain issue they represent. But I'm grateful to the people who have shown me how to think about them with humor (pun at least a little bit intended) while I prod at figuring out what exactly is going on inside my head. If nothing else, it makes me feel less alone.

(Well. Less alone in a human way. The demon companion isn't exactly helping matters.)