Help

Thx for the advice. At the moment we really think about every other possibility.. but not ocd.

@Rafahel So true!!

Everything you said makes so much sense! Thank you for answering me. I have watched Heartstopper and I made all my friends watch it too! They're so cute. And about that boy idk to even explain this LOL, just by thinking about the stuff I like about him and him in general I start smilling and kinda blushing. He's just so gorgeus and caring about his friendships, he's funny and he also likes to draw! Which is something that I also love to do. Idk this moments with him are just so nice and relaxing. This whole thing with OCD jsut doesn't matter around him you know?

@Anonymous Hi! I appreciate your comment, however I feel like it’s slightly triggering as with my intrusive thoughts, I don’t know what’s real or not anymore. I do go to therapy about it, and I’m not comfortable with being anything but straight if that makes sense. If I try to imagine it, I get extremely anxious and I don’t want any part of it. I hope that makes sense!

@Stuckinmyheadwaves You are free to disregard! My questions are meant for the op specifically. It is factual that human sexuality can be very blurry. If someone is feeling a lot of anxiety wondering if they are experiencing feelings that don’t seem to match up with the label they identify with, then it makes sense that reading about sexuality being a spectrum could be triggering. There’s lots of room for uncertainty there. Nonetheless, reading about the idea of sexuality being a spectrum rather than a binary can be extremely helpful for many people, so I wanted to offer it up.

Hey, I do think it's OCD because like, that whole trigger and crisis didn't come from like looking at someone from the opposite gender, it was more in a way of like, being scared that I'm not actually gay and that means that I'm living a lie and stuff. I'm on therapy but my therapist/psychologist said she don't think I have OCD because ""OCD is only physical stuff like cleaning and organizing"" so I think I'm kinda stuck here.

@Rafahel I’m so sorry that your therapist said that — it’s absolutely not true. They are misinformed :-( Have you thought about seeking out additional therapy support through NOCD?

@Rafahel That feeling of worry that you’re living a lie sounds really distressing. I’m sorry that’s coming up for you!!

@Rafahel I want to gently point out that it’s possible for someone to be experiencing ocd anxiety loops that involve thinking about the possibility of being bisexual *and* to actually experience attraction to people of both sexes. Those can be two separate things. For example, I grew up believing I was straight and trying to convince myself that attraction I felt to other girls was just intrusive thoughts popping into my head. I felt guilt, shame, and confusion. This became a big challenge as I found myself falling in love with my best friend (who is the same sex as me). It was really distressing! There were definitely ocd type thought patterns involved. But that love and attraction were genuine. And today we’ve been married for almost ten years. One thing that helped me was learning more about how attraction works. Because I have ovaries and a menstrual cycle I have the opportunity to notice how my experience of attraction to other people fluctuates as my hormones fluctuate. There are some months where I find myself feeling very attracted to certain men while I’m ovulating! It helps me a lot to zoom out and see how that makes sense biologically. I know I love my wife and want to be with her. I know that I am very sexually attracted to many women. I know I am sometimes sexually attracted to men. I don’t really consider myself to be bisexual. I don’t consider myself to be a lesbian either. I personally don’t feel the need to label myself. That’s part of what I love about the Kinsey scale!! I can just say that I’m a 4 or a 5 on the Kinsey scale. It also helps me to think about how I can’t know the gender identities of every person I’ve found myself attracted to. For example I had a boyfriend in high school who I really, truly had strong romantic affection for. But when I think back to how it felt to be with him romantically, i realize that I just loved him for who he was. In the same way that I love my wife for who she is. And he had a soft, sweet, gentle personality. He was religious and pretty conservative. I doubt he felt free to explore his gender identity. If he had how might he have identified? Maybe as gender queer? Maybe as trans? Who knows? Gender is just a social construct. Does what I’m saying make sense? It feels so wonderful to feel safe exploring and accepting whatever comes up when it comes to sexual attraction I might experience (to other adults). It feels wonderful to see all of this as a gentle, fluctuating spectrum and not to judge where I might find myself on that spectrum at any given moment. It feels wonderful to expect that to change with time and to not be scared of it. It feels a million times better than the anxiety loops I found myself stuck in when I was young and trying to repress homosexual urges I was feeling. If I began to feel OCD type anxiety about my sexuality now, at this point in my life, I would be working to *both* give myself the freedom to explore whatever thoughts might come up and to remember everything I said above (about fluctuation being normal and sexuality being a spectrum), *and* I would be working with a therapist to help me better understand and cope with the OCD thought patterns around all of it.

@Anonymous What you said makes a lot of sense, and you're right. Both sexuality and gender are dictated by society. Sexuality is a spectrum and gender is a social construct. I've been there when I was trying to figure my sexuality out. For years I was fighting my feelings for men and forcing myself to be straight although I never felt romanticly or sexually attracted to women. I think my fear right now is more of being scared of not having feelings for guys like, living a lie you know? Like, there's a guy at my class at school that I think he is really attractive and cute and sweet and funny, and I think he *might* feel the same way, idk. But this fear keeps pulling me away thinking like "but what if I actually don't feel attracted to guys? What if I am living a lie and I actually don't feel attracted to him??". And that really sucks because I do have a crush on him, we've been hanging out a lot recently because of our friend group and I actually think things could work out. The NOCD part, I tried before to use that part of the app but I don't think I can. I don't live in america so like I don't have insurance or anything like it. Right now I'm pretty much by myself, I think.