Any words of hope? My sexual orientation OCD has not let up for like a month straight. Every second of every day I am ruminating and thinking to myself I'm such a fraud, my boyfriend deserves better, I'm ruining everything :/ Makes me wanna cry but I have no tears just feel numb at this point. I honestly can't remember not feeling like this and I'm afraid it's gonna last forever.

Ok... I was doing good until a few weeks ago. I really was making a lot of progress until a few weeks ago. Backdoor spikes turned up and ocd came back with full force. Or at least I think it's ocd... I hope it is. My theme is hocd, by the way. I try to not give the thoughts much attention, but they're making me mad. It feels so real, and when I see coming out stories it just adds up, as if I should come out too. It terrifies me, every day I think about wanting to die, to not wake up, to cease existing. It's been so draining, and so lonely. I don't want to be in the closet, I don't want to have romantic relationships with women. And ocd makes me question why that: because of my morals? What if your sexuality goes deeper than your morals and you're just denying you like women? Maybe you should try it out, you'd like it. This scares me so. much. And the thing is: I watch same sex porn. It turns me on. I've seen on the internet many women actually watch same sex porn, but ocd makes me question if my case isn't different from other women. All the time I'm worried that I'll just lose control and kiss any woman that's by my side. I haven't had any experience with men either, as I'm reserved and a hopeless romantic (high expectations). I've liked men before, though, and I still have many crushes today. Ocd tries to convince me this is just a cover up. This is just destroying my life. This is daily torture, I can't imagine myself living with this forever. What am I supposed to tell my eventual boyfriend, my husband? How am I supposed to have children in this state of mind? What if some day I just snap out of this and actually realize I'm gay? What if this question is actually me already admitting that I am in fact gay? Honestly, it's too much. This was quite hard to write, and I tried to include here as much as possible of my insecurities. If you read till here I'm grateful. Just wanted to say that I DON'T have anything against gay people, even though they're making me very anxious since this all started, which adds up to my endless collection of intrusive thoughts (it makes me think I'm in denial because of some prejudice).

When will it end? I wake up in the morning and my OCD feels so real. It’s hard because I know it’s Ocd because my obsessions rotate but I’ve been stuck with sexual orientation OCD for a few months and I can’t shake it. I’m working with a therapist but it’s to the point now where I don’t have as much fear to the thoughts but they are still intrusive and very real but since there’s no fear due to my progress in ERP, it feels like it might be true but I know it’s not.

Hi, there! I’m going through an IOP program for my sexual orientation OCD, and I feel like I’m failing miserably. My anxiety and sexual arousal are almost indistinguishable, right now. When I first started obsessing over my sexuality I checked, and checked, and checked to see how I felt when looking at the women I’ve always followed on my Instagram. Now I’m at the point where I feel some kind of arousal response to any woman I look at. It’s almost immediate, and it absolutely terrifies me. It makes me feel very sick because I’ve never felt that way about women. I go a million rounds in my head trying to deduce if it’s real arousal or stress or whatever. Then my brain ruminates over whether or not I actually hate these feelings or if I secretly enjoy them. It makes my heart hurt to think I have to break up with my boyfriend because I’m a fraud. He’s the kind of guy I dreamed about being with most of my life. And I haven’t spent time with my female friends in so long. I’ve never felt more not like myself. I feel deeply alone and afraid that the IOP will do nothing for me in the end. Am I alone?