Autism is also classified as a neurodevelopmental disorder, and yet it is a spectrum.

The fact that we, as humans, have to decide who gets the label of 'Has the Disorder' and who doesn't is just an artifact of how we like to label things.

For the same reason that you don't magically go from a child to an adult the minute you turn 18. There is a smooth spectrum of development as people age, but for practical and legal reasons we need a cutoff for officially calling people adults.

Some disorders are also on a smooth spectrum. Some people have a little anxiety, or show a few autistic symptoms without it ruining their lives. That doesn't invalidate the experience of people who have severe anxiety or a more advanced degree of autism. Don't imbue too much meaning to the where the cutoff for the label is.

There's no need to gatekeep mental illness, the goal is helping people. We're not competing for who has the real thing™ and deserves to be taken seriously. Let's just listen to people, let them describe things as they perceive them to be, and try to be helpful.

I agree, I think I was making the distinction between doing X due to reasons you're happy with and that are considered normal and doing X due to anxiety.

Those two X's are not the same, and it isn't useful to compare them even though they appear comparable or similar or the same.

The key bit is the anxiety (however small or large, frequent or infrequent) that makes the distinction.

Okay, I see what you mean with the clean hands analogy now. I've definitely seen people on social media for example using OCD as an exaggeration for completely normal, even positive things.

I agree it's not very useful to use labels for behaviors that are considered normal and don't have any negative cause or impact (whether that's anxiety or something else).

My understanding is that a good part of the diagnosis of many disorders, as per the DSM, is by looking at the impact they have on one's life. If someone is perfectly happy with what they're doing, it's certainly an important distinction that makes labeling them with X disorder somewhat less meaningful.

I think we focus too much on the "what you can see" and "how it impacts others" rather than "how does this feel to the person experiencing it" when we describe these things.

It really muddles the picture and distorts what's really important; the experience of anxiety/stress/irrationality/impulsivity/attention issues/ ... to the person feeling it.