Does paying attention to the thoughts count as rumination? I used to think that I ruminated and confused myself into thinking Im gay but now I believe It was just a discovery process. Bascially the entirety of 2021 I paid undivided attention to the thoughts and practically lived inside my head 24/7. I probably did also try to figure out the thoughts but I think I was genuinely trying to decode what they meant rather than as a compulsion, not sure and I started saying "Thats it, Im bi, Its over" anytime a proof came in my head, this went on for a while, and there were really specific proofs from earlier in life. I was also in heightened states of anxiety pretty much all day throughout the year. Now im at a stage where I believe/know my attraction to women was never real through these realizations and understanding of sexuality and attraction and that im actually gay. Heres an analogy, say person A does a job for a long time, they never question it and think their way of doing it is fine but then person B comes along taps on their shoulder and says "hey, your actually doing it the incorrect way and this is how its actually done" and then it dawns on A that "Oh shit this B is right, i was doing it all wrong this whole time" A is me, my job=sexuality/wanting a gf, B is hocd who came along to tell me I was doing it wrong this whole time chasing girls thinking I was straight and making me realize i never felt real attraction. There is so much more proof, sorry for typing so goddamn much but this is where I am.

Hey everyone, I’m reaching out because I’ve been going through one of the hardest mental spirals of my life, and I’m hoping someone can relate or shed light on what’s happening to me. About 4 months ago, I accidentally came across a trans porn scene. It didn’t do much at the time, but later it triggered this overwhelming intrusive thought: “What if I’m gay?” Since then, it’s been absolute hell. I’ve always been into women—emotionally, sexually, everything. I’ve been in a long-term relationship with a girl I love deeply. But after that moment, my brain started spiraling into nonstop analysis. I began checking how I felt around men, whether I felt attraction, whether I was in denial, whether I was lying to myself. Literally everything became a test. I got stuck in this loop: • A thought pops in → panic • Try to solve it → brief relief • Another thought → worse panic • Repeat. At times, it got so bad I couldn’t feel anything at all—toward my girlfriend, toward women, toward myself. I started doubting everything. Some days, I feel emotionally flat, like I’ve lost my personality. Other days, I wake up with a full-body jolt of “truth” like “I’m definitely gay”—only for it to fade into numbness again. I’ve also noticed that I get short bursts of peace when I stop reacting, but then the fear comes back louder, like “See? Now you’re accepting it. That means it’s true.” Therapy hasn’t helped much so far—it felt more like general counseling. They told me to sit with the thoughts, but didn’t clarify if this was OCD, identity questioning, or trauma. That just made it worse because now I’m back to thinking “What if I’m just rejecting my truth?” I’m exhausted. I’ve lost connection to everything I used to love. • I want to love my girl again the way I used to • I want to feel desire without overthinking • I want to trust myself again I’m not looking for reassurance—I just want to know if anyone else has gone through something like this, and if this sounds like HOCD or identity OCD. Thanks for reading.

MY STORY i’ve grown up in a mostly supportive family and area and we are not homophobic. i grew up knowing what gay people were and i don’t care i grew up not to care. im from nj. my parents are friends with a lesbian couple and we see them once in while. i grew up watching people like joey graceffa whose gay. i also had some school friends that were gay like this kid kevin and this girl elizabeth. i also babysit a little gay boy who likes to dress up as a girl and i always tell him to embrace it and defend him. i wouldn’t care if a friend was gay or anything like i wouldn’t care if my sister was it would just make me rethink things about myself i think. from a young age i liked male attention and had labeled boys as crushes from my mom says. i dont think i liked girls when i was younger and my mom said it was only guys. but idk maybe there was. However i do remeber hairy men when i was younger would gross me out like with black hair and pale. my mom said every since i was a little girl i would tell her i liked boys. as i got older and in middle school i always wanted guys to want me and think i was funny and pretty and i would get awkward around them and nervous around them. but i remeber i didn’t have specific things i found hot or attractive and if someone said something was hot i would just agree and start telling myself it was hot even when i didn’t care i just wanted to be cool. then hocd hit at 13-15 during covid where i was so confused. the first time i had hocd i would like not avoid the thoughts i would do a lot of testing to figure it out for hours and hours in diffrent ways and would feel the same arousal and attraction im feeling now. but i remeber wanting to end up straight and try and rule out gay stuff. but it wasn’t avoidance i didnt have anything against gay people. when the thoughts were still there i still would only act on stuff with boys. when i first had it i remeber crying to my mom for like a month and i was like whatever she’s not helping im gonna figure this out by myself. that’s when i started testing myself for two years. over time it was just there. ofc it was distressing but i don’t remember much. slowly when i went to high school it faded because i loved going to parties and flirting with guys and talking about them and thinking what boy am i gonna kiss tonight it’s gonna be a crazy night. when covid ended and we went back to real like i started going to parties and kissing boys. i started dating one boy and we would talk all the time just not really hangout so we broke up because i wanted more male attention and was kinda bored of the relation shop. i started hu with this one boy and like didn’t really know if i was into it cause i kinda wanted to hoe around and we were kinda like locked in and i didn’t know if i wanted that. so he got the hint i wasn’t into it and stopped talking to me moved on to another girl and got popular in the span of like two weeks. after this i was obsessed with him and got all nervous to see him and i always just wanted to be like can we go back to the way we were. we then started to “hate” eachother and i was so sad all the time he didn’t want me anymore and moved on. we hooked up in and off for two years. then i started hooking up with this one kid cause i always thought he was really funny and chill. we hooked up for a little and then i started to get the ick. i then got with like two other boys at parties. so then we stopped talking and i started talking to the “hate eachother kid” again. we then started dating and he’s my current boyfriend of a little over a year. all these instances made me feel good and i loved the attention and drama. but i struggled with committing with people. i don’t know if this all for validation because i loved when men wanted me it gave me an ego boost and still does even if i didn’t really want them or couldn’t get it to last with a boy. i’m scared it was all for attention and confidence there attention gave me. i liked feeling like a baddie. i liked when the hot funny guys liked me now at 18 it’s back and for six months all i been doing is talking to my mom my sister and my dad about it constantly researching and checking and for those six months i was in a haze of just despair. i was also in erp but it was so bad i couldn’t sit with the distress so i didn’t make much progress and my pyscuatrust told me to stop for a while until we get my brain right with meds. after three weeks no erp and more meds of seretonin and rexulti i finally don’t feel distress or anxious but the feelings of attraction are still there. i thought there supposed to vanish. i’m from nj and from a supportive family and ig supportive environment and friends. i’m 18. and in high school okay so growing up my mo said i only liked guys and would talk about guy crushes and had two celebrity guy crushes. this was all the way up into middle school. then when middle school came around i started liking this guy cause he was funny and popular. then we started dating and everytime he would do something affectionate i would start crying and get so tense and freak out so i broke up with him because he made me so nervous . a year later i still liked him and i got back together with him and the same thing happened so i broke up with him. i think during middle school i liked guys. my mom said i did. i also would get really nervous when any of them would come around to hangout and i wouldn’t talk. but i would also just follow what my friends and sister said. if they said a guy was hot i would just agree. i dont know if i actually found them attractive. i still kinda do this to this day. then covid hit for two years. during those two years i was in my house house and got hocd. so i had hocd sexual intrusive thoughts only and had the groinal really bad. but i would still try and have crushes on guys and think i did. but my hocd also attached itself to one of my pretty friends who was a girl. it made me have a lot of sexual thoughts that i would masturbate to about her. it was about her waist and stuff and it made me loose myself. before hocd me and her were bestfriends and really close and im not sure if i had feelings for her. i mean i was always jealous cause all the guys always wanted her and thought she was pretty. then we got out of covid and i was now in high school. the hocd slowly faded my freshman year. in the begining of freshman year there was this tall brunette guy who i started talking too for months and started dating and i would get all nervous when he came around. i really liked him and enjoyed talking to him. then we broke up cause we never hung out. after that for the next two years i developed what i thought two be two genuine crushes. i would make out with cute guys at parties for the experience and to add cute guys to my kids list. basically hocd was gone but i did this one thing sometimes i did is i would always try to prove i was straight to my mom. like if we were watching tv i would say a guy was hot. i didn’t want her to think i was gay even though she wouldn’t care at all but i would do this because she was the only one i would talk to about my sexual intrusive thoughts and feelings. i was hooking up with my guy best friend but then started to looses interest but he was still obsessed. one day he caught on i wasn’t into it started hanging out with older people and going to there parties and started hooking up with this older girl. i got super jealous and heartbroken cause he didn’t care about me. i don’t know if this heartbreak and crying was because he got popular, he wasn’t giving me attention, we weren’t friends anymore or because i actually liked him. i always had a thing for him after this. i started going to the older people parties and i always wanted to see him there and make him jealous. one and half years later we started talking again and we started dating. once we started dating we started having sex. almost every time or most of the time i finish when he eats me out, we have actual sex or if we’re just humping. we say i love you and stuff. ths first six months we would do everything together like just little shopping trips or whatever. we were always hanging out. then it started to dial down and i started getting annoyed with him sometimes which my mom and sister said was normal. but i still said love you and we would hangout and have sex but idk. i would have thoughts like we aren’t going to last because he’s not smart enough, and sometimes my mom would say this too. but she would also say how much he loved me and how he was such a sweet guy and how he would do anything for me. but idk i just wouldn’t feel it. like i still showed pda and did like him. would a lesbian who didn’t know it yet likely date a guy for a year and a half at 18, have sex like once a week, have orgasmed during penetration, creamed, squirted finished by his hands and mouth then hocd hit again. this time much worse. it was even stronger it felt like with the feelings. the first three months i was in this haze and was crying everyday that i might be gay and how i really really really didn’t want to be. i still have hocd and im in therapy and on medication. i cant tell if my attraction to men is real. my mom says it is and she knows me and im not gay and ive shown genuine excitement about guys. my sister says the same thing. but it feel like ive convinced myself ive been doing it to fit in. the thoughts got bad and ive told my mom my sister my dad and ive told three friends. my mom and sister ive told the details too or the intrusive thoughts and false attraction. i’ve always found women attractive and i find it easier to find them attractive like physically but never felt this way can i conclude im not lesbian? or like is it likely my attraction to men hasn’t been genuine

So I’m afraid that I have HOCD, but at the same time that I might also be homosexual. Is that possible? I have all the typical compulsions… checking for attraction, analyzing thoughts, analyzing the past, analyzing emotions, searching the internet. Is it really HOCD? When I see anything related to LGBT, I get strongly triggered. Sometimes I observe how my body reacts around people, but most often I check with ChatGPT to calm myself down, although it doesn’t last long—it depends. I also compare myself to other straight women who look like lesbians, or to lesbians who look like they’re straight. I had a phase where I was analyzing my body… whether I have too much hair, whether I have an Adam’s apple, whether I act like a lesbian without realizing it. I also have the typical intrusive thoughts like “did something from the past actually mean something, or is it a sign?” “am I just lying to myself?” “what if I’m in denial?” “what if I’ve ignored signs my whole life and lied to myself?” “what if I’ll never be able to fall in love with a guy?” “what if there are too many signs and proofs and it’s true?” “what if it’s not HOCD at all?” And much more. But now I’m scared that it’s both—that I have HOCD and that I’m homosexual. I’ve cried multiple times because of this and it’s been going on for 7 months. Some days are better, some are worse. And there’s so much ‘evidence’ that I won’t even list now—over these seven months I’ve found so many things from my past and dreams that I feel like there has to be something to it. I’ve also had around four panic attacks because of this. And I truly believe I have HOCD and that I’m also homosexual, which is killing me and it feels horrible. I just want to be sure that im straight and be at peace. When im doubting and thinking that im a lesbian i feel like im not at peace and i hate it. But u feel like i just need to accept it but i don’t want to and i just want to have a boyfriend, kids but im scared that it’s not possible for me because im lesbian and i actually just think that i want a boyfriend but in reality i don’t. Ughhhh help me.