yeah you may be right. The more I get out there and find communities of people with various mental healt issues, the more I realize that I relate to a lot of them.

I do have a problem with obsessive thinking, however not the compulsive part (unless you count searching the internet a compulsion. . . which maybe it is) and I don't do things to keep a bad thing from happening, I''m just always searching for an ANSWER and thinking through things in my head, planning out conversations as well as replaying conversations in my head. That's my obsession "stuff" and it keeps me awake at night.

I have a problem with dissociating sometimes. During labor it came in very handy but it doesn't always come in handy at other times when I'm shutting off my feelings and then all the sudden I realize I'm doing it. My husband tells me he can tell when I sort of "check out" and I get really annoyed when I'm in a zone and someone tries to make me come back to the moment. I want to stay alone in my head.

I have a problem with mood swings at times. I get irritable sometimes and I can even be a bit manic at times, and my counselor says I'm doing the manic activity thing as a way of dissociating from my feelings and things going on in my life that I don't want to face.

So there are tons of people like you say that I can relate to, and maybe I am looking at this in the wrong way. Maybe I don't need to be diagnosed.

The truth is I grew up in an alcoholic, abusive home, and I have a bad image of myself as well as assuming everyone else has a bad image of me.

My cousin tells me. . . you don't have to label it, it's just you.

And as for internalizing diagnosises, I am 100% SURE I would do that, so you're probably completely correct that I should avoid that and just work on getting to feeling better.

Thanks for the feedback. You have helped me more than you can know.