If you guys follow me on social media, you’ll know that this week, I posted about going back to therapy and being rediagnosed with OCD…

So, that basically explains what’s been going on with therapy (I’ll update you on all of that as I continue with therapy) but I wanted to talk a bit more about the OCD diagnosis because that’s kind of a big deal.

Back in 2016, I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, social anxiety, OCD, and BPD. And then I was diagnosed with ASD. But in the last year, my psychiatrist reorganised my diagnoses and decided that the symptoms he’d originally seen as OCD fell under some of the other diagnoses, particularly the ASD. But recently, it’s become very clear that it really is OCD.

If you remember this post, I talked about having a massive meltdown, which triggered daily, multiple meltdowns. It was awful and one of the most difficult periods of my life, mental health wise and otherwise: dealing with that and trying to manage the beginning of a Masters. It was pretty hellish. I’m not sure when it stopped but it slowly faded and I’m now only having a meltdown every couple of weeks or so – still a bit more than usual but much more manageable.

But that really triggered something in my obsessive diary writing. My diary writing has been pretty compulsive for years: I NEED to write everything down. It’s like, if I don’t record everything that happens to me, I’ll forget who I am. It’s a constant battle, but it suddenly went from manageable to completely overwhelming. It takes up all my time or it would if I didn’t have all this research to do for my Masters. So these two things are  constantly pushing up against each other, which causes me a lot of anxiety. But the diary writing usually wins, which only causes me more anxiety, anxiety that I’m going to do badly in my Masters. And even though I know all of this, I still can’t stop writing. And because there’s more life than there is time to write, I’m just getting more and more behind. More anxiety. So I’m just a big ball of anxiety. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger and going faster and faster.

It took forever to get an appointment with my psychiatrist (so the anxiety has gone on a lot longer than was necessary or fair, in my opinion), but eventually I got an appointment. And of course, the time was then changed last minute, the sudden change of plan sent me spiralling into a meltdown. So it took a long time but I finally saw him and we talked about all of this in great detail and he decided to re-diagnose me with OCD. I’m so relieved because now it has edges; it’s not some vague, amorphous cloud of stress hanging over me. A diagnosis gives me something to work with.

We talked about the treatment options, medication and therapy. Medication wise, I’m already taking the things he would recommend so that’s that avenue covered. I don’t know much about the therapy route yet. As far as I know, I’ll have to reduce the writing bit by bit, which – in itself – is going to create more anxiety. Hurray. Not. It’s the whole ‘it’s gotta get worse before it gets better.’ But now I’m back in therapy and I have an amazing therapist so although I’m terrified of even more anxiety, I know I’ll have thoughtful, compassionate guidance. I don’t know when we’ll start because, as my psychiatrist pointed out, right before a set of assessments isn’t necessarily the most productive or helpful time to do this sort of stuff. But even though I’m scared, I need to start working on this soon or every semester is going to be like this one: a daily battle of OCD versus real life. And I really, really don’t want that.