Anyone with HOCD struggling to open up to family members in fear that it means you are “coming out,” even though you don’t not want to have these thoughts? I have kept all of my intrusive thoughts in and want to open up to my family but I know it will make them look at me differently because these thoughts go against our values and have never been something I have had before. My biggest fear is that by sharing this with them and beginning my ERP that these thoughts will become true, which is the last thing I want.

Yes , they can make me really doubt my past relationships as well , everything around them can be a trigger , just watching movies or even looking at girls on TikTok became a trigger for me , because I think they are attractive but then my brain start questioning if I’m faking or whatever , but I know I found them attractive

I had the same thoughts a few months ago before my ocd got worse and now i feel like everything that i think is real and that did I imagine a life with the same sex?! What if i did ?!! What then?! How do i tell myself I don’t want to pursue anything with a girl?! I was so sure i never wanted to but in the last 2 months i question that too which makes me think as if this is my process if coming out?!? And that the thoughts are true and that all that past stuff was fake?!! Idk what to do?!? Is this even ocd anymore…

Thank you for sharing that. My biggest problem right now is that if my thoughts are true, I would not be able to accept that, so I am trying to use that as a reminder that these thoughts are just thoughts. However, this just seems to be drowned out by the fact that my thoughts keep telling me that I am something that I don’t want to be.

@cf05 I talked to a gay friend of mine about this and he calmed me down a lot in this situation , said that the most I could be was bi , he told me that with 10 years old he could tell that he was gay already , and his anxiety would be if people would accept him , he told that he never really questioned if he was gay or not , he just knew since he was born , he also told me that he doesn’t know much gay people who “ found out “ they were gay later in life , they just knew or had a curiosity and then they were happy , if these thoughts give you anxiety , make you feel bad , it’s just an OCD thought , I know what it’s like to be in love with a girl and it’s not what I’m feeling right now that means to be in love

@cf05 And also he said that he never had a crush on a girl and that the gay thoughts on his head were pleasurable and that when he thought about living a life with a man , it made him happy

@cf05 He never got an erection towards a woman for example , I’ve only got erections towards woman , another thing that could be good to understand is that is normal to be straight and find people of the same sex attractive , I think that girls have a better understanding of that than boys , let me try to give you and advise , go on the streets and rate the girls you see in how attractive they are from 1 to 10 , you’ll see how normal that is , I know it sounds complicated to do it , but try it and trust yourself if you ever had crush on a man or fell in love with one and never had that with a girl , then you are straight

Hi there. Thank you for your kind and informational response. The past couple days I actually felt a sense of relief from my symptoms and was starting to get a glimpse of my old self back it felt like. It was much easier for me to interact normally with my family and friends and it was seriously the greatest weight lifted off of my shoulders to feel like, for the first time in a month, I was not replaying intrusive thoughts over and over in my head. However, last night and this morning I have gone down hill again. My mind is endlessly ruminating over past experiences and encounters and trying to convince me that I felt a certain way, while at the same time it is completely ignoring the past experiences and relationships I actually have been in the prove my thoughts wrong. I am just feeling anxious about not ever being able to be in a healthy relationship again like I was before because these thoughts are all consuming. It doesn’t make sense to me that two days ago I had no problem at all saying “these are just thoughts, they are not reality and are therefore nothing to stress about” because these thoughts are not me. But like I said, they are starting to feel incredibly real again. Any tips on how to keep feeling Berger?