Frustrated and hoping for empathy
Hello,
I’m new to the sub. Not even really looking for advice or anything. Also not self diagnosing. I don’t even know what order to go in here because there are so many details to my story and I literally don’t feel like anyone in my life will be able to understand. I just had a lightbulb moment in reading about someone’s experience with ocpd and read through you guys’ experiences, looked at the dsm, reflected on my experiences. I feel alone and validated and confused.
My story is that I had severe anxiety, ocd, and depression and was undiagnosed audhd as a kid. I felt like I could never do things right, (and things had to be “right”): journals upon journals of lists and categories and descriptions of times and weather and rooms and “bad” feelings. Countless other things that fit your experiences but I won’t bog this down with even more extra details.
I do have a therapist, and a psych, as well as a support system in my husband and in laws, so I do have people, I just can’t describe the cognitive dissonance I’m experiencing to them. Whenever I start with a new therapist, I always bring up my OCD (diagnosed at 17) but they seem confused when I bring up a lot of descriptions of my daily life and thinking process that don’t fit into common ocd themes. (Ex: on the questionnaire I always answer 24/7 and was confused that some people didn’t experience “compulsions” constantly.
I didn’t realize what I might have been describing as compulsions to all my mental health providers may actually have been my whole constant thinking process. I don’t choose to think this way, it feels horrible, it feels like I can’t achieve anything I want to get done or relax for even a minute. I know there are a lot of factors at play but I can’t describe how learning about this has been a sort of epiphany or something.
I have OCD as well, it’s just my compulsions have always been separate from this thing I haven’t been able to explain.
I don’t understand. I know professionals tend to say “labels don’t matter” and also I’m grappling with the fact that using all the therapy tools with fidelity, the medication, the lifestyle changes, the learning, everything Ive done, yet the doubt seems to be a core part of my personality that I can’t let go of. Even dismissing or accepting it doesn’t remove the pervasive “wrongness” of everything.
I’m just so frustrated because I want to feel better and do better and the doubt layers itself and attaches to even the fact that I’m looking into this. “You can’t possibly be audhd with BPD, CPTSD, ocd and now this? You’re just looking for excuses for why you keep failing at being better.” I always feel like there’s a “right thing” to do and I cannot find that thing.
I’ve talked to my current ND affirming therapist (going on 2 years) about my constant doubt and my boxes. I basically explain it as every task I do or topic I want to talk about turns into a nesting doll situation of boxes and each box has more boxes in it, so instead of organizing I create chaos. This actually happens even during sessions where I bring up a topic and it turns into 1728 subtopics and I can never get to the core of the issue or a step by step for my daily routine or goals etc. I just never feel fully understood so I don’t feel like I can make progress. I’ve had at least a dozen therapists at this point so I don’t necessarily think a therapy switch will help.
I don’t know. I just feel frustrated, confused, and I guess validated that I’m not the only one feeling this way, if what I’m experiencing is actually the same thing as what you experience too.