I agree - thank you so much for this post. Self-diagnosis often the first step towards an official diagnosis, especially when you can recognise your own symptoms, and can use coping skills to try and work round the difficulties if you haven't got access to a diagnosis, whether it's because your GP doesn't listen to you or you'll be on a long waiting list to get care or you live in a country/region without universal health care *cough US cough* and can't afford treatment. Most of our diagnoses are not self-diagnoses but we are fairly sure we've got OCD, even though we haven't got an official diagnosis yet, but we've been struggling with the idea of using the OCD label without an official diagnosis.

You're right; it's about having a framework.

~K.