[Meritocracy1]

Hello everybody,

I'm a male from the UK, aged 23. I'm not diagnosed with OCD but I suspect that I have it, or that I have a related condition or symptoms of OCD or of a related condition. I mean, I can relate very well to things I've read online by people who describe their OCD. And I've met people who have suggested I have OCD. This is going to be a long post but I would be very grateful to anybody who read it and replied, hopefully you'll enjoy reading it too, haha.

My anxiety is largely encapsulated in the description that I've seen of OCD as "the doubting disease". My anxiety makes me question myself regarding everything. One aspect of this is my sensitivity to philosophical things. I am very interested in philosophy (I have an undergraduate degree in it), and the philosophical concept of external world scepticism has greatly bothered me at times. Like, I will fear that my perception of reality is totally different from how reality actually is, and that the world I perceive might not actually be the real world at all, etc. This sort of thing now actually bothers me less than it used to but I don't think it will ever go away entirely. I am definitely glad that I am interested in philosophy, it's a fascinating subject, and in fact it may perhaps be my having read a lot of philosophy that has made me less anxious regarding external world scepticism than I was when I first discovered external world scepticism; I have a more sophisticated understanding of the concepts of perception and reality than I did when I first got into philosophy. But I don't think philosophically-inspired fear of external world scepticism and that sort of thing will ever leave me 100%. I have read about like, OCD causing fear of solipsism (the belief that nothing exists apart from one’s own mind) and that sort of thing.

A related fear is fear of psychosis (mental illness involving loss of contact with reality). Fear that I may be psychotic bothers me sometimes. That is very similar to fear of external world scepticism; the overriding theme is to do with the questioning of myself and of my perception of things. I have read about like, OCD causing people to fear psychosis. In my rational mind I know there's no reason for me to fear that I'm psychotic (I don't have symptoms such as hearing voices or anything), it's just my OCD-ish anxiety that makes me think this way. A consultant psychiatrist I saw in 2010 told me I did not have a psychotic disorder.

In 2010 I saw a doctor (not the consultant psychiatrist I just mentioned; this doctor was a general practitioner) who I said something to, and he was like "Mmm. Um, have you heard any ... voices?" I immediately recognised what he was doing (i.e., misinterpreting what I had said as a symptom of psychosis and trying to see if I had any other symptoms of it), and replied like "No, I don't think I have schizophrenia", at which point he nodded in acknowledgment and relief. I've read that schizophrenics lack awareness of having anything wrong with themselves, so perhaps the doctor considered the fact that I was able to assess myself in relation to schizophrenia as sufficient evidence that I don't have it.

A similar thing to fear of psychosis that I sometimes experience is fear of having Asperger syndrome or some other autism spectrum disorder. More than one person in my life has suggested to me that I have Asperger's or an autistm spectrum disorder, although I don't personally think that I really meet the criteria for Asperger’s or autism spectrum disorder from what I've read (and the consultant psychiatrist who I saw in 2010 said I don't have Asperger's). I can sometimes get anxious that like, maybe I have Asperger's, and maybe I have a lot of the problems that people with Asperger's have, without realising it. I've read that people on the autistic spectrum often have problems with theory of mind (essentially, the ability to understand other people in terms of mental states), and I sometimes get scared that perhaps I lack theory of mind, and don't really understand what it is for other people to have minds. I know in my rational mind that there is no reason for me to think this. It's my OCD-ish anxiety that causes this sort of fear in me. Again, the overriding theme here is questioning of myself and of my perception of things.

Even fear of OCD itself can do something similar to me at times, although rarely. There have been times when I've like, read descriptions of what people with OCD are generally like, and thought like, well since that is not the way my life has happened, perhaps I am deluded in thinking that my life really happened that way! (Again, the overriding theme here is questioning of myself and of my perception of things.) So if it is OCD causing me to have this sort of anxiety, then this is a sort of self-referential OCD, a sort of meta-OCD!

I am very sensitive to people who have suggested that I am paranoid, etc. I mean, I was bullied throughout my years of schooling, and any suggestion that I am paranoid will sometimes make me anxious that I was just delusional or whatever about all the bullying. But schoolkids did sometimes call me paranoid and that sort of thing.

In my rational mind, I know that being accused of paranoia is not incompatible with having been bullied, and indeed people without my sort of OCD-ish anxiety (i.e. the vast majority of humanity) would probably never even consider the possibility that it's incompatible. When people have called me paranoid and whatnot, I think they have probably been referring to like, my social anxiety or whatever (I'm not suggesting I have social anxiety disorder, I'm just using the term "social anxiety" to describe the sort of fear of people that bullying can cause), my hypervigilance caused by previous experiences of bullying. I've got no reason to doubt that I was bullied – indeed, my memories of it largely dominate my memories of school, and my bullying was commented upon by many others at the time (e.g. if I remember correctly, I overheard two dinner ladies discussing me in first school, and they were saying about me like "he is constantly being bullied"; to give another example, if I remember correctly, I was speaking to a school friend of mine on the Internet when we were in high school, and I asked him to rate out of ten like, how much I got bullied, and he said like, about 9; and the list of examples goes on and on ...). I once posted, on the Internet, a long story describing my history of bullying (it's no longer online), and none of the comments I got about it expressed doubt that it had happened, and more than one commenter commented on the severity of my bullying. I once gave a printed-off copy of the aforementioned bullying story to a counsellor I was seeing in early 2011, and after reading it, she said like "you were seriously bullied". So she saw no reason to doubt the story.

When I was at school, one kid once told me that like, another kid (let's just call him the tall kid) thought I was paranoid, like the tall kid had said to him about me like "Don't you think like, whenever he's in a room and someone laughs, he looks at them like he thinks they're laughing at him?" And the other kid (the one telling me this) had said yes. Not long afterwards, I had an experience with the tall kid when I was walking into school. I saw the tall kid, and he chuckled, and, if I remember correctly, my first thought was to like, reassure myself that there was no reason to think that the chuckle was to do with me, but then he said my name (I think as like an explanation of his chuckle to the people he was with) and I knew it was about me. This was followed by him shouting mockery at me, and a person he was with (who I'd never even seen before in my life) shouting that I was a freak. So in other words, one of the very people who accused me of paranoia was one of the people doing the bullying itself. And he wasn’t unique in that regard – I can think of other people in school who said like, I was paranoid, and who engaged in behaviour towards me that could be described as bullying.

If I remember correctly, in 2008, there was a lesson (a psychology lesson, incidentally) when at one point it seemed to me like, a couple of kids were looking at me, and I asked the teacher if like, she thought I was paranoid or if people looked at me in lessons. I think she said like, she’d observe. At a later date (still in 2008 if I remember correctly), I encountered two girls while I was walking towards school, and one of them made fun of me while the other one laughed, if I remember correctly. Upset about that, I then, in a psychology lesson, asked that psychology teacher if me and her could go into a different room, and she said yes, so we did go into a different room, and then I said to her like, I thought people were laughing at me, and I told her about a violent thought that it made me have, and I asked like, do you think I would benefit from psychiatric help? She said like, it might be advisable. And she said that, with regard to me asking her if people looked at me in lessons or if I was just paranoid, people don't tend to look at me, but I look at them as if I think they're looking at me, and that then gets people looking. I didn't at that point attempt to get psychiatric help like the teacher suggested (if I remember correctly, I told her later that day that I didn't want to get psychiatric help; she didn't try to force me to get it). However, I did later (in 2010 and 2011) attempt to get psychiatric help; what I mainly wanted it for in 2010 and 2011 was to help me cope with anger over having been bullied, but it didn't help me. Anyhow, I sometimes get concerned about what that teacher said and take it as indicating that perhaps I was paranoid at school and was not in fact bullied, but I know in my rational mind that that's just my OCD-ish anxiety; that psychology teacher never expressed the opinion that my experiences of bullying never really happened. (Moreover, my saying to her like, I THOUGHT people were laughing at me was misleading, because there was no ambiguity involved; they WERE laughing at me, or to be more specific, one of them made fun of me and the other one laughed, if I remember correctly. I can still remember the two girls who did it, I can still remember the reason they did it (i.e. what I was made fun of and laughed at for), and I can still remember the approximate location of it too. That is certainly not one of my more severe bullying incidents but it was hardly subtle.)

In 2010 I saw some sort of mental health-related woman who I told about having been bullied, and I said like, people had accused me of paranoia, and if I remember correctly she was like "Well if those were things that really happened, why would people call you paranoid?" And I brought up what that kid had told me about what the tall kid had said to him (which I described two paragraphs ago), and the woman said something along the lines of "Yes, being bullied can often make you afraid that people are mocking you". (I also brought up another kid at school who said the reason I was bullied was because I was so paranoid, and I said to this woman like, "so I don't know what the dynamic was". In other words, I didn't (and still don't) know exactly the causal connection between my bullying and my hypervigilance/social anxiety; perhaps the bullying was what set it off, and then it just made me into an easier target and more likely to get bullied, thus creating a vicious cycle.) Not long afterwards, I saw the consultant psychiatrist I've mentioned – he worked at the same place as this woman – and if I remember correctly, when we were discussing my bullying, the consultant psychiatrist asked me if people bullied me "to your face", and I inquired about what he meant, and he said like "or like, behind your back" and I said like "to my face, yeah". I'm guessing that there is a possibility that what he was trying to do there was see whether there was any chance that my reports of bullying were just paranoid delusion (I mean, perhaps the woman had spoken to him and told him that I'd said people had accused me of paranoia). Having spoken to me at length, the consultant psychiatrist stated that I did not have a psychotic disorder, or Asperger's, or major depressive disorder, or indeed any other mental disorder. And he then like, referred me to the counsellor I mentioned above (the one who I saw in early 2011 and who stated like "you were seriously bullied"), and if I remember correctly the counsellor told me that in the notes she got from the consultant psychiatrist he said like, I'd been bullied at school and had emotional issues regarding that. So the consultant psychiatrist seemed not to doubt that I was bullied.

In my rational mind I know that there's no reason to doubt that I was bullied. It's just my OCD-ish anxiety that makes me think this way. Again, the overriding theme here is questioning of myself and of my perception of things. It's hard enough to cope with the anger (and, I sometimes suspect, symptoms of PTSD) that has resulted from the abuse I got from my bullies, but I also have all this sort of OCD-ish anxiety **** to be dealing with!!

The consultant psychiatrist I saw in 2010, who I’ve discussed above, didn't diagnose me with OCD (or with PTSD, which I mentioned above that I sometimes suspect I have symptoms of). If I remember correctly, he said like, I have some obsessional symptoms. But he didn't diagnose me with OCD. But perhaps he overlooked it, or perhaps it's something which I didn't have in 2010, but have developed since.

I'm posting this here so that I can get feedback from other people – I don't know if it's true that a problem shared is a problem halved as they say, but if I bring this stuff out into the public and people can relate to it, I'll hopefully feel validated, and not so trapped in my own private mind, so to speak. In other words, talking would help (probably). And I’m open to the possibility of exchanging private messages and that sort of thing with people about this stuff if anybody wants to talk about it in depth.

Please note: I don't want people to suggest that I go to the medical profession for help with these issues. My experiences (many of which I've described in this post) with mental health professionals have not helped me in my life, in fact I would say they have made things worse. In 2010 I made an online friend, and talking to her was significantly more helpful than talking to anybody in the medical profession, if I remember correctly. (Sadly she doesn’t speak to me anymore.) Perhaps by posting this here I'll be helped (by the feedback I get from people) more than the medical profession can help me. Moreover, my life isn't at an especially low ebb right now, 2015 has been a pretty good year for me so far. I'm not posting this out of desperation, I just feel like perhaps the time has come to discuss these issues with people on forums. I feel better now that I've written this, hopefully if I get responses they won't make me feel worse, haha.

I’m posting this on multiple websites today, not just this one. This way I'll hopefully get more responses than I would if I only posted it on one website.

This my first post on PsychCentral, I've not posted in the New Member Introductions forum. Hopefully that is acceptable.

[Meritocracy1]

The word that has posted above as '****' was a word beginning spelt with 's' followed by 'hit'.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Meritocracy1: Welcome to PsychCentral! I did read your lengthy post. I'm an older person at this point. But I was severely bullied throughout junior & senior high school many years ago. In one particular incident a kid broke my nose while beating me up. But, when questioned, he claimed I called him a name. So in the end, I got blamed for it. Everyone knew what was going on, including my parents & school officials. But no one cared. I was just a punching bag & that was the way it was.

I have read about some research that suggests that the effects of bullying last long into adulthood, causing increased levels of depression, anxiety, & other conditions. This has certainly been the case with me. I don't know if the years of bullying I endured ruined my life... but it certainly didn't help. And even worse than the bullying itself was, I believe, the fact that no one, including my parents cared.

I don't have any suggestions for you here. I just thought I would share my bullying story with you. I wish you all the best.

[Meritocracy1]

Originally Posted by Skeezyks

Hello Meritocracy1: Welcome to PsychCentral! I did read your lengthy post. I'm an older person at this point. But I was severely bullied throughout junior & senior high school many years ago. In one particular incident a kid broke my nose while beating me up. But, when questioned, he claimed I called him a name. So in the end, I got blamed for it. Everyone knew what was going on, including my parents & school officials. But no one cared. I was just a punching bag & that was the way it was.

I have read about some research that suggests that the effects of bullying last long into adulthood, causing increased levels of depression, anxiety, & other conditions. This has certainly been the case with me. I don't know if the years of bullying I endured ruined my life... but it certainly didn't help. And even worse than the bullying itself was, I believe, the fact that no one, including my parents cared.

I don't have any suggestions for you here. I just thought I would share my bullying story with you. I wish you all the best.

Thanks for replying!

[Daphnelover]

I read all of your post. I can kinda relate to some of it. I, too have a lot of ocd ish thought patterns, but feel like I don't really fit in there. It's a scary thing to wonder what is reality verses my perception of it. It can make you feel crazy for sure... I hope you find your answers!

[Meritocracy1]

Originally Posted by Meritocracy1

The word that has posted above as '****' was a word beginning spelt with 's' followed by 'hit'.

There's a typo in that: It would make sense without the word 'beginning'.

My feeling the need to clarify that is itself arguably pretty OCD-ish.