- Date posted
- 21h
Ive been spiraling for a month
Please note, I am undiagnosed, and I do not take medication. I have been begging my mother to schedule me a doctors appointment. I have done the best research that I can, and I'm led to post here. I'm very embarrassed and scared. Please, be gentle with me. I am a late teen with autism, anxiety, and now possible rOCD/OCD. For about a month now, I have been mentally spiraling. I have been jumping from concern to concern, thinking it's the end of the world. At first, I thought, "maybe this is just my period. A more intense, severely emotional period". It didn't fade after my period ended. For context, I have been in a long distance relationship for about 5 years. I got with this person right after a toxic relationship that I was in (that caused me immense mental episodes) ended. (Messy, I know, and I have learned to accept that.) Due to childhood issues, Ive always seeked comfort in the online world and focused INTENSELY on my hyperfixations. This led to me constantly trying to join communities, get a rush of dopamine, or make friends with similar views and interests. I'd always have different social circles, and different social masks. Those masks caused me to seek attention and crave validation from these friendship circles, albeit sometimes in unhealthy ways. Recently, one of my newer hyperfixations had gotten so bad that I started acting irritable, and avoiding my partner. I was texting my other friends, engaging in solo activities, whatever. (I suspect it was exhaustion from wearing all of these masks? Maybe my hyperfixations taking every thing out of me? Maybe it could have been OCD? I don't know, and I can't prove it, so that's why it keeps me panicking.) With this context, fastforward to last month. A random wave of panic hit me. I don't know why, but I had an intense urge to fix everything all at once. I said to all of my connections that I was leaving the internet to focus on my family and partner. I believed my partner would be angry at me for my activity on the internet and for talking so passionately about my interests with certain people. I felt the panicked urge to confess every single thing to him. The urge wouldn't go away. I ended up doing so, and he wasn't angry with me. He understood. But now, I get the urge to confess every single mistake to him. Currently, my thoughts are accusing me of a thousand things a minute. I spiraled, believing maybe I had a crush on a friend that I was friends with for YEARS and bending over backwards trying to prove otherwise to my own mind. Then, it tried to accuse me of having a crush on a friend I made a few months ago simply because I enjoyed talking about my fixations with them, though I did engage in unhealthy behaviors (or at least I SAID I did) to appeal to them. I literally had TWO private Twitter accounts for different friends that displayed different personalities. In the past, I had passing thoughts about my partner that were like "you probably won't even be together in a few years", "he'll find someone else", "do you really love him?", "you treat him like a dog", "what if the reason you liked talking about fictional ships so much with your friends is because you inserted yourselves into them?", etc. My mind cannot tell if these thoughts were intrusive, if they were what I really thought, or if they're false memories. It's basically like "was it intrusive thoughts? you didn't panic about them at the time, so theres no way they can be. or did they not matter to you because they weren't true?" And I just cant tell. As much as I hate to talk about it again, the autism thing: As I said, I was very hyperfocused on my interests to the point it could stress me out. Looking back, my mind accuses me, saying things like "were you annoyed with him because you didn't really love him?" "Did you want him to break up with you?" "Did you not care about him?" "Were you loosing feelings?" "Because you couldn't listen to him talk about his day or his own interests since you were so focuses on yourself, you probably don't care about him or love him". Anytime he'd talk about the future, or the possibility of finally meeting, or him going to college near me, Id feel deep panic. Why? Do I not want to see him? Do I not want to spend my life with him? That panic has subsided today I hope, but in the past it was frequent, and now it currently eats at me. All of this has been making me cry and panic, trying constantly to relive all of these past memories, feelings, investigate, or try to dissect my past thoughts. Mind you, my boyfriend is autistic as well. We bond so well because of our interests. If I was bonding with other people over them, does that mean our relationship was a lie? Of course, we are capable of bonding and talking about other things and doing other activities, but our fixations and interests have always been our core bonding point. I just seriously can't tell if me getting too deep in the hyperfixations and communities was what was going on, or if I was falling out of love with him. My mind is killing me. And now, it's driving me mad because I can't tell if its OCD. my mind goes "what if you're saying that as a cover up?" "What if you're just hiding behind that label?" "What if it's not OCD at all?" I just need to know, was it possible for me to just not care about these past intrusive thoughts? Did I have them, and now they're coming to bite me in the ass now instead of then? Note I forgot to add: I suspect I have been using Google as a compulsion. I ask questions to the Google ai, I frequently search things, etc. Yes, this has happened in the past as well, just not to this extent. Yes, I have had 'break up thoughts' or sobbed and cried at the thought that my partner could break up with me. When I start to calm down, I start to believe I NEED the OCD or else I won't improve, or I'll fall back into a harmful cycle.