Hi, I had to make a new email address for this and it feels super weird like I'm posting fraudulently, but I think it's just because I've used gmail for as long as gmail has existed...
Oh, and I'm in the UK if that is important for this information.
Anyway. I was finally honest with a therapist, like actually really honest. Well, first I broke down and I was honest with my friends because I was having a really bad day and I couldn't get my awful violent harmful thoughts out of my head, and they told me that they were intrusive thoughts and I wasn't actually a racist or a paedophile or a homicidal maniac waiting to happen. Which I really hope is true because seriously what if one day I stop hating the thoughts and they take over me? And my friends told me that I should tell my therapist (I just started therapy after literally almost a year waiting for a therapist who understands how to treat autistic people) and that he would tell me the same things that they were telling me.
So I kept a journal of my thoughts over the next two weeks and I showed my therapist and he immediately drew what I now know to be the basic OCD diagram on his board and told me that my therapy is going to proceed to treat OCD. I think he also said that I have it, but he skips words sometimes so I don't recall the exact phrasing and now I'm worried he didn't say I have it, but... I guess basically that means I have OCD. I'd never thought I had OCD. I thought I was just a bad person who repressed my badness as much as possible in some kind of exercise in futility. But anyway, does that mean I have an official diagnosis?
The way therapy works in my town is it's a self-referral service, because too many of us are messed up for the actual NHS to handle it. You have to phone or email and they'll send you a quiz out or talk you through it over the phone, and then they'll eventually call you with an appointment. And they have a few offices and this is where the GP sends you if you need mental health help beyond "here's a prescription for some citalopram, get out" so I guess they must be official, but can this man put a thing in my actual medical records and say that I have OCD? He's a trained therapist who is going to give me CBT but does that mean he can actually diagnose? Can anyone but a psychiatrist at the hospitals do it? How do I speak to a psychiatrist without looking like I'm chasing a diagnosis so I can be special? I don't want to ask my therapist this because he might think I'm faking it then. I told my support worker and mentioned a little of my intrusive thoughts and she sort of backed away from me like she thought I really was a racist or something, so I don't think I can ask her.
Full disclosure: I could really do with a diagnosis because I'm heading to a tribunal for a PIP claim sometime in the next year or so. I got an assessor at my review appointment that asked a lot of strange questions (like what I have for breakast and who is treating me for my autism), called me fat and then wrote in her report that I was lying about everything and I don't struggle in my daily life at all. I struggle with everything for multiple reasons (autism, ADHD and other physical and mental health problems) and I am drowning right now. So an official OCD diagnosis would probably help me in my "I'm not lying, please help me so I don't have to kill myself" appeal.
So... yeah. If someone can tell me how diagnoses work that would be amazing. Thanks for reading all this way. At least there's paragraphs?