on the other side of this

trigger warning!!!!!! I’m really scared right now. I’ve been reading Elle Warren’s articles about her experience with HOCD/SO-OCD, and it feels so similar to mine. She went through the same fears of being a lesbian, felt distressed by her attraction to women, and spent hours ruminating, Googling, and analyzing her feelings. She even experienced groinal responses and revisited old memories, just like I do. Eventually, she had a moment of realization in college when she flirted with a girl, and everything clicked. She now identifies as a lesbian. I’m terrified that the same thing will happen to me. I thought the OCD fears were supposed to never be true and that HOCD thoughts are usually just compulsions that don’t end up being real. But reading her story, it’s like I’m seeing my own experience mirrored. What if it clicks for me, just like it did for her? What if I realize that I am a lesbian? Elle’s story makes me so scared. I thought my feelings of attraction to women were just OCD-driven, and now I’m questioning everything. I thought I was straight, but now, reading her journey, I’m wondering: could my OCD fears actually be real? Elle’s experience was very similar to mine: • She got distressed when she thought she might like women, not relieved. • She spent a lot of time ruminating, Googling, analyzing, and comparing. • Her attraction to women only became intense when her OCD flared up. • She said things like, “I feel peace when I believe I’m straight.” • She had already been diagnosed with OCD and had a history of this pattern. After years of fear and distress, Elle had a moment of calm and realized that it was true. I’m scared that this could happen to me too. Will I have a similar moment of acceptance, where everything clicks and I realize I’m gay? Or will I come to accept that this is all OCD, and that I’m straight, with the possibility that I’m not? I also keep thinking back to when my OCD lessened the first time. Did I go back to men because I wasn’t actually attracted to women, or was it just because the grip of the OCD had loosened? Elle also talked about the shame associated with non-heterosexuality. She mentioned that, like many of us, she had internalized stigma around being gay, and that it made her fear the possibility of being non-heterosexual. I can relate to this so much—growing up, I never saw it as an option to be anything other than straight, and now it’s hard to shake that fear and shame. Elle mentioned that she found reassurance in seeing other people with HOCD who worried that their fears would come true, but eventually realized they were just OCD thoughts. That idea is comforting, but also a little scary, because what if that moment of realization happens for me too? What if I finally accept that I am a lesbian? Or, what if I’m just struggling with OCD and eventually realize I’m straight? I just don’t know. The scariest part is that, just like Elle, I feel like I don’t have any obvious signs. She had no idea she was a lesbian until one day, everything clicked. She was 21, just like me when my OCD fears really flared up, and she had a breakthrough moment in Denver when she made friends with lesbians. That hasn’t happened for me yet, and it’s terrifying to think that it could happen in the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m really scared about where this will lead.

A reflection I never saw myself being able to write✨ One year ago today, I was spiraling for a second time because I wasn’t sure what was happening to me, again. Getting through it once was doable but twice? I truly thought I was losing my mind. OCD wasn’t just a shadow in the background — it was a loud, relentless voice narrating fear, doubt, and compulsions into every corner of my life. I couldn’t trust my thoughts, couldn’t rest in silence. I was questioning everything. I was exhausted coasting through the motions of life trying to survive every minute of every day. But today — I’m here. Still imperfect, still human, but finally free in a way I didn’t think was possible. I got here by learning the hardest, most empowering lesson of my life: I had to stop depending on anyone else to pull me out. I had to stop outsourcing my safety, my certainty, my worth. I had to become the person I could rely on — not in a cold, lonely way, but in the most solid, liberating way possible. You see, healing didn’t come when others gave me reassurance — it came when I stopped needing it. When I realized no one could fight the war in my mind for me. It had to be me. Not because others didn’t care — but because I had to be the one to stop running from fear. I had to choose courage over comfort, again and again. And boy was that rough. But I did. Through therapy, I retrained my brain. (Shout out to Casey Knight🙏🏼) I stopped dancing to OCD’s obsessive rhythm and started rewriting the song. And yeah — the beat dropped a few times. But I kept moving forward. Slowly, I started turning my mind into a place I wanted to live in. I made it beautiful. Not by forcing positive thoughts, but by planting seeds of truth: 🌱 Not every thought deserves attention. 🌱 Discomfort doesn’t mean danger. 🌱 Uncertainty is not the enemy — it’s just part of being alive. I started treating my mind like a garden instead of a battlefield. I let go of perfection and started watering what was real, what was kind, what was mine. And let’s be honest — there were still a few weeds. (Hello, OCD — always trying to “check in.” ) Because healing isn’t linear, I still have days where I feel back to square one, but it’s a day, not a week, month, or another year of surrendering. But here’s the “punny” truth: OCD tried to check me, but I checked myself — with compassion, courage, & a whole lot of practice. To anyone still caught in the spiral — I want you to know: you are not broken. You don’t need to wait for someone else to save you. No else will. The strength you’re looking for? It’s already in you. It might be buried under fear, doubt, and rumination, but it’s there — patient and unbreakable. Start small. Start scared. Just start. Because when you stop relying on the world to reassure you, and start trusting your own ability to face uncertainty, you get something even better than comfort — you get freedom, resilience, power & SO much more. You don’t have to control every thought/urge to have a beautiful mind. You just have to stop believing every thought/urge is the truth. You don’t have to be fearless , you just have to act in spite of fear. You are not crazy You are not a monster You are not evil You are human You are capable And if OCD ever tries to take over again, just smile and say, “Nice try. But not today.” — Someone who came back to life, one brave thought at a time 🧡

this is the most i will ever go into depth about my mental health, all in one post; all in one sitting. this will be draining. to start this off, yes, i have OCD—but i also have several other disorders as well. some of my diagnoses that will come to light in this have a strong correlation to comorbidity and so instead of this being a story simply about my OCD, i will cover all areas of my mental health. for readers, i want it to be clear; this is for me. i’m doing this to put my story out. i hope you find some interest in what i have to say, but in the end, my intentions are strictly to make my damage good. symptoms of my mental issues were present frequently in my childhood experience. for years i avoided any truth to how i thought or felt. thinking, feeling, acting—all 3 were never in cohesion. i had a very anti-social attitude towards life for most of my pubescent years. i got use to faking and manipulating to appear a certain way when i knew i was at risk of punishment; it allowed me to get away with a lot of immoral behaviors for a long time before i eventually was forced into counseling from a school fight i had initiated. i was roughly 14 at this time. counseling was my initial therapy for a while. i have since seen 5 therapists. i can’t say any of those therapists knew a single truth about me, really—with a mixture of pathological lying and a bad masking habit, I was stopping myself from getting any real treatment. i don’t know why, but for a long time i was content with this truth. a part of me never really felt the need to address it. my manipulative behaviors were often unintentional and not once had i sought a need to be callous, even when doing the things i was doing. with every new therapist, i had tuned my personality specifically to fit them—a concept that i don’t have a name for but now can dissect in immense detail. i would take parts of my personality and accentuate them to fit the attitudes and interests of particular people. in my head it was always about admiring the story. nobody was real; everyone was a character, everyone was a unique, self-manifested character. i just made my character with greater intents. i was a good listener, i think understanding that made me get more comfortable with my destructive and manipulative tendencies. when someone believes your listening, like really, actively listening—they’ll eventually tell you everything about themselves. now for a slight addressing of the obvious, i want it to be clear, i’m not describing ASPD—aka, the real life equivalence of sociopathy. i do think i show strong signs of it early on in my youth, and i bring these behaviors up because i think the issues that i do have developed from my anti-social behaviors—however, i was a child; i didn’t know the consequences of my behavior like i do now. if anything is needed to be said here, it’s best to address the following events like this: i understand now, i didn’t understand then. turning 15, i had started off 2023 in a relationship that meant a lot to me—a lot more to me than anything in my life leading up to this point. it’s best to address this now as well—i don’t feel a lot, but when i do, it’s usually irrationally intense and feels completely uncontrollable. at this time, i had gotten over a lot of my anti-social tendencies by now and have spent the last year improving myself after the things i had done began hurting the people i valued most. from a long list of lying, manipulating, preying, harassing, even stabbing people with whatever sharp thing was at my disposal—i had come a long way in creating a character that i actually liked. an important thing to keep in mind during this time was the early development of my OCD that had initially come in the form of suicidal ideation. most of the people in here i’m assuming are people that personally have OCD and understand that it’s not a disorder based in the stigmatized-lens of perfectionism but rather an irrational need for certainty. death quickly became my “ultimate form of certainty” in my teenage years as i turned to the concept like a comfort place—a hand on my shoulder saying “it’s okay, you can fuck up however you might, there’s always a way out.” i had not been truthful about that in therapy either, nor did the several medications prescribed in my lifetime ever do something of benefit to what my issues actually were. of course, i blame no one but myself for not benefiting from outside sources. skipping over a lot of meaningless detail—the gist of the year went like this: Jan-April relationship breaks up badly—in my irrational state, i attempted to take my life and was hospitalized, and eventually, institutionalized. i stayed there for 11 days. at the time the only diagnoses they could make of me was MDD and ASD with slight signs of generalized anxiety. May-August i get extremely medicated and start taking 150+ pills a month to maintain what at the time was being treated for bipolar and schizophrenia. i was too young to see my clinical record, and i assume they wouldn’t tell this to a minor, but it seems they believed whatever my issues really were—i was simply too young to get an accurate assessment. September-December the medication makes me completely apathetic and my loss of care for life brought back my irrational gimmicks and self-destructive tendencies. i, in a 4 month period, ruined every single relationship i had kept close to me. 2024. i was alone. i stopped taking my pills due to a loss of interest and excessive weight gaining but it made my intense emotions start to bite me again. this was the year my OCD had fully developed and by April, i was diagnosed after failing a risk-assessment. for a long period of time, i lived a meaningless, uneventful, isolated life. that year, i let my mental health take over all acts of my being. i got deep into philosophy, psychology, pathology, a lot of tv shows built around psychological dynamics—i was desperate to understand this parasite that seemed to destroy my life without any awareness. i never wanted it to take the years it did since i was initially that 13 year old boy, but i write this now with a simple truth—a truth i refused to let myself believe until recently. i can’t fix this. the more i feed into it, obsess over it—the more these issues are going to worsen. for years i wasted my days thinking i was trying everything i could and it just wasn’t working. i couldn’t accept the fact that i don’t control this, and despite being told that again and again—it never got through to me until i spent the last week not feeding into the OCD and emotional dysregulation, and for the first time, i didn’t find myself counting the seconds that passed me by. it might not mean that much for an outsider looking in, but since my OCD had fully developed—i would always be counting the seconds in the back of my head, not like 1231, 1232, 1233… but as a tick of a metronome that made me always aware of the time. the days where this wasn’t annoying, it was boring, which i ultimately hated more. i’m seeing a light i haven’t seen in years, and with it i keep reaching the same notion—i wish i didn’t waste so much of my life being miserable. i’m getting a psychological evaluation within the next month. i’ve been out of therapy for about a year now but i’m going in now looking to help myself. this is specifically for my emotional dysregulation. my current theories revolve around cluster B personality types, 1 of 4 including ASPD as i had mentioned earlier, albeit my bet is actually on BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder.) I crossed off Borderline for a long time because the symptoms list always felt too broad, but the more i understand the disorder—the more i feel connected to it. my theory comes from several factors—my rapidly changing self image, my impulsive/erratic behaviors, my irrational emotions, my long history of unconventional relationships, my fear of abandonment, my chronic emptiness, my history of self harm, etc. this is not confirmed however, and i wish to get an evaluation specifically for the disorder. getting a personality disorder diagnosed in a minor isn’t easy, but i’m doing it half for the certainty of just knowing—and half for potentionally getting a medication that can help me live a healthy-adjacent life. i never thought i would see a life free of obsession since being diagnosed with OCD. now i can enjoy the silence. thanks for reading. any commentary appreciated.