Hi, first time here, first post here.

I don't know what to expect, I don't think I was even expecting to find this community in the first place.And I haven't been diagnosed with OCD, so I'm not even sure I'm "allowed" here so to speak, but based on recent… self-diagnoses, I think it's a little more serious than when people joke about it.

Mostly because I already know what my obsessions and my compulsions *are*, I guess, which maybe I shouldn't be so open about here…But why not, this is a support group, right?My obsessions are religion (and this is a really big one, that probably predates a spiritually complicated relationship I was in but definitely got a huge push from), geneaology (also long and complicated, but any time I start I literally can't stop, for whole weekends/months), and occasionally, relationships (including friendships) and the past. My compulsions are Facebook (I'm very literally serious…), drawing (which I do pretty much any time I need to not be stressed out about stuff and it is the most helpful), the routine "purging" of my electronic devices (backed up on e-mail after e-mail with the subject line "Contact") and consolidation of paperwork, rearranging and redecorating of my room, and making excessive lists on post its.

My mom made comments my whole life about her own OCD as a kid, which apparently involved tics and sounded positively miserable, if I have to say myself. (By the time she was raising me), She also had to drink from straws in restaurants because other people had drank from those cups (didn't take the wine at communion for the same reason), she kept baby wipes in the backseat of her car for use all the time, we washed our hands every single time we came home from anywhere, and she didn't like the idea of getting AIDS from dentists or toilet seats (so before the seat covers were regular, we were putting down paper to protect ourselves).

To be honest, as a kid I wanted to be nothing like that.I sought solace in my dad's side of the family, which wound up being maybe not the best idea, since it's quite tangled and sometimes I wish I didn't know those people, just so I could feel like I know who I am.

Anyway, very recently I met a coworker who wound up becoming my friend outside of work, and he is exactly like my mom. I mean to a T. We are chemists, and in the middle of mixing chemicals, he'll get some on his arm or something and absolutely have to leave to wash it off. I've learned to "function" in society so to speak so this frustrated me for the longest. He was acting exactly like my mother! And anyway, this *is* chemistry, it's not like it was a big secret when you studied it that this was going to be something you'd have to deal with.But the more I got to know him, other things popped up.And, because of my own obsession with geneaology, it so happened that he shares some geographic origins with my mom. So at first, my thought was not "OCD" my thought was "my God, there are other people out there like this!? This is a culture?"… The closest I'd ever felt to that before had been my very Indian friends in high school, who, since I looked Indian had deemed me as such, and who claimed that because of the restrictions on my life, my mother was "more Indian" than theirs.

I had felt shamed my whole life because of my mom. I mean, I never even had these friends over, ever, because the place had to be absolutely perfect, so life was pretty lonely (and also simultaneously and consequently my social life was pretty limited to-her).It had never occured to me that other people might be like her. And to me, meeting him sort of gave me a sense of identity (and still does because I can't separate the two).

But recently, I've retreated from all friends. I've walled myself up in my room and don't want to talk to people, and it is alarmingly reminiscent of 2007, when I was really suicidal and had unconscious thoughts of turning left into oncoming traffic and how I somehow wound up walking into the middle of a usually busy street that was mercifully empty. At that time, I knew I needed help, and my university had a depression screening, which I got up the guts to take (aforementioned ex boyfriend with the spiritual issues came with me), and they told me I had anxiety induced depression, which I didn't want to treat with drugs because I don't tend to trust doctors, despite the fact that I'm a hypochondriac.Anyway, they sent me to a school therapist, but since I graduated soon after, our time together was limited, and she wasn't able to help much because most of all I did in our sessions together was cry.

My current boss also often intentionally tries to make me uncomfortable and I have no idea why but I'm getting to the point I don't care so it's stopped working as effectively but still does sometimes. Like stands over my shoulder and makes constant disparaging (and untrue) comments about my character (so I am consequently miserable, but I'm starting to think that changing jobs would not help, that maybe the problem *is* me)… my AP Biology teacher in high school signed my yearbook "I scared you to death. Ha. Life is a lot scarier"… because she was clearly a frigging sadist.

And speaking of high school (which was socially probably the best time of my life), I loved English class and writing, but reading scared the living daylights out of me. There was a lot of anxiety associated with it. The day a book was assigned I felt like I had to have already read it and know what it was about, so that was just stressful.

That sort of thing goes back to elementary school, and I guess adolescence and puberty (which my body decided to go through early, when I was 8-10, and just after we had moved). When I was ten there was an instance when my male teacher told my mom I needed psych help because I couldn't find my glasses case (and therefore my glasses) in class and therefore couldn't read the board and other kids said – something- and I burst out crying. That was not the last time it was suggested that I needed help, but I never really got any. My mom thought (and I kind of do, too), that doctors over medicate and that it was just going to be another thing on the health insurance they could make a "pre-existing condition" and a mental one, to boot.

I can't remember ever wanting to have kids for a sort of related reason, which is that my male cousin has muscular dystrophy, an X-linked disability that has him now confined to a wheelchair until he dies, and I look a lot like his mother, my aunt, and I can't get tested to see if I'm a carrier because "pre-existing condition" and… something.

SO yeah. That's hardly everything but this introduction is LONG and has left me feeling better but more in the sense that I'm not carrying all of it (otoh, it feels like it's falling ON me so I'm not sure which is better).

Feel free to comment…If you've made it this far I am amazed by your interest and ability to weed through my loopy logic and I thank you.

** Two more things: If you haven't heard The Lonely Island's "YOLO" I recommend it, I hope it will make you laugh

And also, I knew this was the right place for me when I found myself clicking on (and reading) the terms and conditions when I signed up 😉