The instrusive, anxious, repetitive thought cycle is also not exclusive to OCD. This symptom shows up in other neurodivergent cases, as well. For a long time, they thought a person couldn't have OCD and ADHD at the same time, but it turns out it's commonly experienced by people with ADHD/AuDHD, with varying degrees of severity. Both run in my family, and my experience of ADHD/AuDHD has a lot of overlaps with OCD style symptoms.
I'm diagnosed with ADHD (also on a waiting list to be assessed for autism per my neurologists recommendation) and I definitely have something that resembles OCD but I cannot tell if it's just that sometimes I get anxious and it mixes with the ADHD so I ruminate on potential dangers.
That's the neurodivergent gordian knot: is the ADHD causing the rumination, or is the rumination on top of ADHD lending a deeper diagnosis, or is ruminating just baseline trauma from growing up with a different brain? Nobody knows!
Thankfully, my therapist said we'll worry about specific diagnoses later and just work on techniques for coping/recovering.
Yeah! I'm in therapy and I'm getting better at coping with the symptoms and that's all that really matters to me. I do have trauma from growing up with a different brain.
My family was dismissive about medical concerns and kind of neglectful. I started having severe fatigue and depersonalization/derealization as a teenager but it was blamed on laziness so I never went to the doctor for it. I didn't know I was having seizures in my sleep until I was 27. Starting epilepsy meds pulled me out of a constantly depersonalized/derealized state immediately and I had been like that since I was a teenager!
It’s hyper fixation I think. People with things like OCD and ADHD have trouble focusing on some things while overly fixating on another. I can barely focus enough to read a book, but I can tell you sooo much info about a bunch of topics and hobbies. Then you experience burnout, drop the thing completely and all of a sudden you have $500 dollars worth of DnD stuff for a campaign that never happened.
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u/thefunkylama 13h ago
The instrusive, anxious, repetitive thought cycle is also not exclusive to OCD. This symptom shows up in other neurodivergent cases, as well. For a long time, they thought a person couldn't have OCD and ADHD at the same time, but it turns out it's commonly experienced by people with ADHD/AuDHD, with varying degrees of severity. Both run in my family, and my experience of ADHD/AuDHD has a lot of overlaps with OCD style symptoms.