Dear Lucy:

First, I will re-arrange your story according to timeline:

3rd & 4th grades: “I was bullied in 3rd or 4th grade”.

5th grade: “In 5th grade I dealt with anxiety for the first time and had to be homeschooled for 5 months due to intense panic attacks…During those 5 months, I went to therapy”.

When “little” (age not specified): “I dealt severely with body image issues and low self-esteem…  this was prevalent when I was little”.

Middle School & most of High School: “I went through middle school and most of high school feeling back to myself”.

11th grade (Junior year in High School):  “I dealt severely with body image issues and low self-esteem from Junior Year-On… I ended up obsessively counting calories, constantly considering purging, restricting all day and binging at night, weighing myself three to four times a day, measuring my arms, etc. I became obsessed with being skinnier and my appearance became the only thing that mattered to me”.

12th grade (Senior year in High School, the quarantine of the Spring of 2020): “When quarantine hit, I dealt with the loss of my senior year and seeing any friends… I cried constantly. This continued but got easier through summer”.

First semester in college: “This… returned through the holiday season due to gaining a bit of weight. That’s when I started therapy, in regard to the eating and body image issues but anxiety became the bigger topic”.

Second semester in college: “When second semester came, something changed, and he… wanted friends with benefits and would make physical moves… It took him four 2-hour conversations to say he didn’t want a relationship with me ever. This being after I slept over and he held me in his arms the entire night… Fast forward a month or two and he… called me at 2am to yell at me and hasn’t talked to me since…. I was crying every day and constantly thinking about him”.

This past semester in college, September-December 2021: “I officially got diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder in September of this year due to excessive panic attacks regarding sexuality while I was away from school to the point where my roommate had to force feed me… I was terrified…I ended up going to the hospital and going to classes became really difficult for a bit. I became hyper aware of the girls around me… I still do this and it’s December. I’m on medication now for anxiety so there aren’t panic attacks as much anymore, but I experience depressive moments constantly… I have trouble sleeping and getting up in the morning, I constantly need to stretch because my muscles ache… I constantly ask myself “Are you bi or gay?… I’m in therapy… However, these thoughts keep returning and spiraling and I’m so tired. I’m tired of testing and looking up stuff and analyzing every move I make…  Is this HOCD?”

Second Part of my post: no doubt that you suffer from anxiety (validated by your recent diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, GAD), and have suffered from significant anxiety from at least the 5th grade, if not earlier.

The nature of anxiety is such that it attaches itself to this or that worry or concern and changes attachments over time. This is true to everyone who suffers from anxiety: it’s the same anxiety but different attachments. Anxious people focus and obsess about one specific worry, then on another, then on yet another, they go back to previous worries as well as finding new ones.

It’s the same anxiety, different attachments.

In your case, the anxiety attached itself to the topic of your body image and to lower your anxiety you counted calories, weighed yourself, etc., developing an eating disorder. Later, the same anxiety attached itself to the troubled relationship you had, and later to the topic of your sexual orientation. To lower your anxiety in regard to its latest attachment, you keep testing and checking etc., having developed the symptoms described under the title of HOCD.

The problem is not your body shape or your sexual orientation, the problem is not the attachment. The problem is the anxiety itself. Think of this example: the problem of a person who is very anxious about spiders, an arachnophobe, is not spiders, it’s the anxiety itself. So, the treatment will have to be aimed at lowering and managing the person’s anxiety, not at trying to eliminate the world populations of spiders, an impossibility.

Try to focus on lowering and managing your anxiety, instead of focusing on what your anxiety is attached to. Learn and improve your interpersonal skills such as assertiveness and other communication skills with people (the more skilled you are, the lesser your anxiety). Do so with the help of quality professionals and you will improve by much!

anita