Diagnosis and labelling 

It may not be useful to label yourself as if you are a sufferer of anxiety or OCD or any kind of psychological problem you may feel you are like a specimen in a petrie dish under a microscope.  In other words the therapist is looking at you as they are sane and you are obviously not.  BUT not my therapist I hasten to add!

It was my experience that a lot of daft questions were asked when in contact with the health professionals of the state funded lottery (it could be you) plus the feeling that you were no 999 on the list of a thousand.  But the matter here is the problems of being diagnosed as being labelled without being bogged down in discussions on pathologising psychological problems, in the way Thomas Szasz perhaps introduced in the 'Myth of Mental Illness'.

Sometimes medicos would opine that you were either one thing or another because it was easy to put a label on something as it makes you easy to treat (or easier).  I also remember suggesting that I was suffering an obsessional neurosis which some medicos/therapist agreed with and some not saying it was an anxiety or GAD (generalised anxiety disorder).

In a previous diagnostic encounter as I believe it was, I remember one of the state medicos who looked like one of the Buggles guys (you know the glasses guy Trevor Horn) asking me whether I had 'encounters with people of the different sexes'.  I am elbowing you as Eric Idle did with Terry Jones in Monty Python pub sketch.  Look it up on You Tube.  And why am I being cagey about a question whether I had sex with men or women?!  You can't look that one up on You Tube.

I had no idea what he was getting at, or trying to determine but I found him unsympathetic to say the least.  And then another joker who disagreed with my self-diagnosis preferring his diagnosis, some of it including the expert view of it being 'a touch of psychosis' like it was the common cold.  They were not good upstairs, downstairs and 'thank you very much Hudson'. (You'll have to know about the 1971 British TV series about this last comment which is also available on You Tube.)  If this is a bit obscure for you, it's a polite way of saying I found them insulting, obnoxious and very unhelpful when I really needed some help.

What I found useful was labelling anxious thoughts as perhaps OCD thoughts so you are detached from them as opposed to paying attention to them or taking them seriously.  You know rather like the aforementioned joker I mentioned.

Now for something sweet to eat and a hot drink.

People want jam today and jam tomorrow. You know - I think, therefore I JAM.