Hi Allison,
Love the content you create, it has really helped me through my mental health struggles.
I have an Ask Allison question for you: what's a reasonable way to respond to relating to someone else's description of their mental health problems?
I have been diagnosed with GAD and depression. Recently I've listened to a lot of mental health podcasts which have largely been really helpful. However, a couple of times I've listened to someone with OCD talk about their experiences, and it's gone from "interesting and informative" to "wow I relate to this so much what does this mean".
The thing is, having read some more about OCD, I can identify some of my experiences which seem to fit into the obsession/compulsion pattern, but I don't feel like it's a significant part of my life and so I'm worried that I'm minimizing other people's experiences by thinking "oh, that sounds like me".
I would love to get my therapist's opinion on all of this, but I'm worried I'll sound ridiculous to bring it up because these thoughts/behaviors don't take up a significant proportion of my time and don't get in the way of my life in the same way that some of my other mental health symptoms do.
So I guess I have 2 questions really:
1) Is it wrong to relate to someone else's diagnosis? Is this inappropriately centering myself in a discussion about a condition I think I probably don't have?
2) What does it "mean" to relate to someone else's experiences with a condition? Is there something productive to be done when this happens? Or is it just one of those things?
Hope that makes some sense, I’d love to hear your thoughts (although to be fair I'll enjoy hearing your thoughts on any question haha.)
Anonymous