My Fun Little List

I have been looking into healing my brain and body from all the damage ocd/stress has caused. I have discovered that I have a mild form of ptsd, which is to be expected since I had religious ocd. I have nightmares, anxiety attacks, frequent digestive problems (lack of appetite/overeating), and depressive episodes. I'm starting back at school in August and I can barely leave the house. I don't see how I can have a normal life. I feel alone and stupid, and like all the opportunities given me were wasted *and blessings. I feel like a disappointment to my parents. The one thing I want in life is to love God with all my heart mind and soul but OCD is attacking my mind 24/7 to the point where it takes away my intimacy with Christ Jesus, and I can't hear Him. I feel like crying and screaming at God just to make it stop, why would He leave me to suffer when I know He loves me and I know what He has done for me? I can't live like this much longer.

Some background: I’m a woman in my 30s who’s been struggling to find the right diagnosis for years. Since 2022, I’ve had multiple psych hospital stays, and with each stay came a different diagnosis and different sets of medications: Bipolar II, CPTSD, MDD with psychotic features, “high functioning BPD,” and most recently, Schizoaffective Disorder (depressive type). Before all of that happened, I had been seeing a therapist for CPTSD and AuDHD traits for 2 years, but after they left the practice, I struggled to find someone I trusted again. Most of my breakdowns happened during my last relationship. Looking back, I was in survival mode with them, leaving who *I* am behind. I got to the point where I started doubting my own reality from the abuse. This eventually added up and landed me in my first episode of psychosis. That combined with my attempts is what got me my schizoaffective diagnosis. After finally leaving that relationship 1.5 years ago, I’ve slowly rebuilt my life: new town, new job, new friends. Many of my old symptoms (major ones) haven’t returned, which makes me believe I may have been misdiagnosed due to reliving past childhood trauma and stress responses from the abuse. Through all of this, I’ve felt like nothing ever truly fit. I journal, I reflect, I replay the recordings and I’ve even watched old vlogs –the puzzle pieces still don’t come together. It’s left me feeling like I’ll never really know what’s going on, and I’ve started to fear that my diagnoses will just keep stacking up without ever leading to effective treatment. Recently, I opened up to a friend about this. She mentioned that her neighbor went through something similar not exactly like me but she thought it would give me a starting point—multiple diagnoses that never felt right—until a new doctor finally identified it as OCD. That one diagnosis changed everything for her. It made me realize I really don’t know much about OCD beyond the stereotypes. I didn’t know OCD could involve intrusive thoughts, rumination, or mental compulsions. My friend encouraged me to look into it, especially as I start searching for a new therapist. Facebook and Google lead me here… So now I’m wondering: could OCD be a better explanation for what I’ve been experiencing all these years? Questions for the community: 1. What steps did you take to find out if OCD was what you were dealing with? 2. If you had a long history of misdiagnoses, how did you finally find a clinician who got it right? 3. How did you advocate for yourself when people dismissed your concerns? 4. Is there anything you wish you had done earlier in your OCD journey? Thank you so much if you made it this far. I’m really grateful for this space and just want to start finding answers and the right kind of help.

My current obsession is around mental health, specifically that I have undiagnosed Bipolar 2. Any changes in my mood are triggering and in my compulsive googling to make myself feel better (never works lol) I discovered that ocd and bipolar are linked in like 10-20% of cases?! So now I feel worse. Anyone else experience mental health fears?