Metacognition (CW: Mental health)

I recently found out that I have metacognitive OCD. Or, rather, I found out that that’s the term for what I have. See, I’ve always had some OCD, but not necessarily much worse than the amount of OCD the average person experiences. Plus, ever since I was 11 or so I’ve intermittently struggled with mild anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. It’s gotten better over the past year or so as I’ve been going to the gym consistently for months, hit my stride socially, gotten out on my own more, and just generally been more satisfied with myself and my life.

However, throughout all of this, I’ve never gone to a mental health professional or gotten an actual diagnosis about any of these issues (not that I’ve necessarily needed to, I’ve dealt with them myself on my own). The reason for that is going all the way back to the start of this, any time I’ve thought about my mental state, my brain enters into an overanalytical thought process where I examine my own thoughts and criticize them. It results in a cycle of meta analysis apparently known as “metacognitive rumination,” something that is common in people with highly analytical brains as well as OCD and/or ADHD (I may have ADHD too, my mom has it but I haven’t been diagnosed).

The thought process is essentially this:

“Man, I feel so crappy about myself all the time. Do I have depression? Why am I so awful?”

Then:

“No, I don’t have depression. I just like to feel crappy about myself because then I get to think I have a mental disorder and that makes me special or something. I’m actually fine, I’m just an attention-seeking prick.”

Then:

“But if I know that, then why do I still feel so awful about myself? Do I have depression? What is this? Why am I picking apart my thoughts like this? Is there actually something wrong with me?”

This cycle of meta analysis continues basically unbroken until my brain gets distracted. Feeling like you’re “faking” a mental problem is actually very common among people who experience metacognitive rumination.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten any better ever since I learned what metacognition is, either, because the problem with realizing you’re in a meta loop is that knowing that doesn’t actually get you out of that, it’s just another layer. Meta goes on forever and that’s what’s so maddening about it. It’s frustrating, but at least I actually now have a term for what I experience and I can go see a professional about it to get some advice that hopefully helps me deal with it. And that’s what I’m going to do! I’m hoping to make an appointment with a psychologist soon. It’s almost exciting, but it does still kinda suck.

Anybody else deal with this?