When I got my gender-dysphoria diagnosis, one part was to look into any other disorders I might have and OCD did come up. The problem is that a lot of these disorders have descriptions that are so relatable that you can feel genuinely insecure.
Even OCD sounded so relatable at that point, that what really ended the discussion there was when my psych asked in the end after I was saying that I wasn’t sure, whether my symptoms were clinically relevant, to which I immediately responded with “no”.
So yeah, it’s probably relevant to remember that most things come on a spectrum and that people can be OCD-adjacent without crossing into the boundary of where it is enough of a problem to be a disorder, but rather a mere personality quirk.
This! A lot of people seem to forget that in order to get a diagnose it has to cause a disturbance in normal life. Myself included, as a late diagnosed autistic person.
Coping mechanisms are like adding cotton around the spikes (aka. struggles) of the diagnose / disorder. They do not remove the struggles but instead make them less visible. But if you push enough on a spike it will eventually push the cotton away and the spike with be more prominent.
Most people have small spikes that don’t cause a lot of trouble but may make the person say they have a bit of [disorder]. But it is not a disorder as they don’t have loads of comping mechanism and a disturbance in normal life. It’s just a normal human variation.
When I got my gender-dysphoria diagnosis, one part was to look into any other disorders I might have and OCD did come up. The problem is that a lot of these disorders have descriptions that are so relatable that you can feel genuinely insecure.
Even OCD sounded so relatable at that point, that what really ended the discussion there was when my psych asked in the end after I was saying that I wasn’t sure, whether my symptoms were clinically relevant, to which I immediately responded with “no”.
So yeah, it’s probably relevant to remember that most things come on a spectrum and that people can be OCD-adjacent without crossing into the boundary of where it is enough of a problem to be a disorder, but rather a mere personality quirk.
And that’s okay! In both directions!
This! A lot of people seem to forget that in order to get a diagnose it has to cause a disturbance in normal life. Myself included, as a late diagnosed autistic person.
Coping mechanisms are like adding cotton around the spikes (aka. struggles) of the diagnose / disorder. They do not remove the struggles but instead make them less visible. But if you push enough on a spike it will eventually push the cotton away and the spike with be more prominent.
Most people have small spikes that don’t cause a lot of trouble but may make the person say they have a bit of [disorder]. But it is not a disorder as they don’t have loads of comping mechanism and a disturbance in normal life. It’s just a normal human variation.