Hey HOCD people. You can get better. After 10 years I'm feeling better. I know we can all recover. Stop doubting and and start doing ERP with someone you trust. I had a bad day earlier this week, but overall, there have been full days where I forget I have it. Start getting treated everyone. It's painful, but not as hard as living with HOCD. Good luck guys!

Thanks. I just know how bad and lonely it feels when there is no one to talk to or understand. Or if you do open up to people and they say you're in denial. I didn't even know this as an issue existed. I just thought I was insane and losing my grip on reality. I'm happy to stop wondering and start fixing it. I hope we can all do it together

Thank you so much for posting this! It's very encouraging and it's great to hear you're better :)

I actually just spent last weekend with a woman who has fully recovered. Knowing that it's possible has really made me motivated for treatment

She and I have very different backgrounds, which is actually a good thing in my opinion. She came from a very loving home with caring and nurturing parents. It seems that her issues just seem to be biological. She has always been a paranoid and depressed person. It had/has nothing to do with her situation. One way that paranoia can manifest is OCD, which is basically a fear of something happening if you don’t do a compulsion. She didn’t realize that PURE O was actually a thing because there was no term for it and no awareness for such an issue. For seven years, she struggled with thinking she was gay. It was very confusing to her because she had/had many gay friends, has no religious objection to being gay, her family would have been accepting, etc. Something about it just felt really off. It didn’t seem like it fit with her understand of herself. She ended a serious relationship that would have ended in marriage likely because of it. She luckily met a good therapist that diagnosed her with HOCD and did ERP therapy and has fully recovered from it. She still deals with depression, but the HOCD is no longer a part of her mental health cocktail. She said something actually very reassuring to me when I told her about myself. She said, “Geez, it’s so weird. I was suicidal because of this. But it has actually been years since I actually even thought about having it. I don’t think about it at all anymore.” I almost felt like crying, because I wish that this will someday be something I barely remember dealing with.   I on the other had come from a very bad upbringing. I was beat almost daily by my mother. She would hit me and berate me all the time until she eventually died when I was 17. This gave me serious depression and anxiety issues. I think my obsession with thinking comes from this, trying to figure out why things are happening. Why are things the way they are? What if I do this, what would happen? I was also sexually abused by an older neighborhood boy that eventually killed himself. He was being abused at home by his stepfather, so this chain of abuse being passed around like a bad chain letter just keeps going. I stayed single for many years because I was afraid of people. After 5 years, I met a girl who I thought was a sweetheart, but turns out was also a freaking sex addict. I was very inexperienced and nervous and shy, and she did the worst thing possible to me. She correlated all of my actions to being gay. The first time I wasn’t in the mood to have sex, she looked very troubled. I asked her why? She said, “Oh my ex boyfriend was like this, and he ended up being gay.” Then when I hung out with my friends, even male, she would become very jealous. “Are you having sex with Chris?” I was like, what the fuck? “Well, my ex was having sex with his friends, so I was just wondering.” So then to prove to her that I wasn’t gay, I tried to please her sexually all the time, but became very nervous about sex and didn’t even enjoy it. She is actually a really nice person, she was just being selfish sexually and didn’t realize how much harm she was actually doing to me. It is hard to wear a condom and have sex so frequently, so we started having lots of unprotected sex. It made me very nervous about getting her pregnant, then I started to orgasm really fast. Then of course she said, “Are you sure you’re not gay? Cause this is exactly what happened to my ex boyfriend who was gay.” I actually went and got a vasectomy because I was so embarrassed and wanted to keep pleasing her. I used to be a hip hop dancer, which I loved a lot. One time I was dancing in front of her, showing my routine for a performance, and she just looked at me like, “Only gay people dance.” At that moment, my mind snapped. Every single movement, thought, word, was then infected with, Oh this means you’re gay. Then it rewrote my entire memory in my head to thinking, ya this proves you were actually gay. The way you used to swing a baseball bat is gay. You only played basketball in high school because you wanted to be around men. You only like martial arts because you like being around men. That one time you did that silly dance like a girl, its because you’re actually gay. EVERY single part of my life was no lived through the lens. I doubted everything about myself. I knew there was just something wrong about it, but it was slowly eating its way into reality of, What if it’s true? I tried to grind through, it but I also just wanted to die. I eventually met another woman and we fell in love, but this was always in the back of my head. I got married and tried to be a responsible and loving husband and just ignore this. I gained 80kg / 170lbs in less than 3 years. I just wanted to die but felt I wasn’t allowed to. 8 years later, we eventually got divorced because she became very religious randomly, and I am not. Plus, I think I was holding her back from a better like than some mental health loser who is happy just having peace of mind for a few hours, and the social enjoyment that others seek was just not important to me. I just kept existing like this. Not being able to sleep, but then when I do, sleep for like 13 hours. Or have it broken up because I still have to go to work. All I did was grind through being awake, then have disturbing dreams when asleep. A couple years ago, I came across a Chrissie Hodges video about something called HOCD. When I watched her video, I realized this is what I have!!! And she was telling me there is a way to deal with it! So I bought her book, which is more of a biography of her ordeal, with not much treatment advice. So I voraciously started reading about OCD in general. I looked at what foods might actually exacerbate the condition of OCD. What very small things can I do to help myself. Where can I find a therapist who will help me with my OCD instead of trying to accept my gayness and come out of the closet. I watched all of Chrissie Hodges videos, and then also found Ali Greymond on youtube. Both have been very helpful with my self treatment. I have been using OCD and ERP workbooks to treat myself. I live in China now, and there are few mental health services, and the ones that exist are not covered with insurance, so I have been doing it on my own. I have been saving money and will do a consult with Chrissie Hodges soon to pair me with an online therapist that will guide me through ERP. In conclusion, I hit a wall. I said to myself, if you really want to die, you need to try and face this once and for all first. Its been over 10 years. Accept this scenario: Maybe you are gay. Maybe you have HOCD. All you do is sexualize your whole existence. Are you attracted to him? What about him? What about her? What does this mean? Do you do this activity because you’re gay? Do you not do this because you’re gay? Look at the way you bend your wrist when you brush your teeth, seems pretty gay. So every time I have these thoughts I just remind myself. Look, this is HOCD. 10 years is enough. Stop it. I say, I am going to assume this is HOCD. I am going to do HOCD treatment by using ERP. If in a year I do not feel any different, that probably means I am actually gay, and I will deal with that then. By doing the therapy, I have become loads better! I actually went on a date last night and had a wonderful time and barely had any thoughts. That’s what they are… thoughts. I still don’t talk to others about it. It is a waste of time. They have no idea what this is like, in the same way I have no idea what its like to have phobia of plush pink rugs. Most would hear someone talking dreadfully about these pink rugs and think… Get over it. Geez. Its just a rug! Finding this community, along with Chrissie Hodges and Ali Greymond has at least let me know there are others with a similar condition, and it can be helped. Knowing it can be done is all the motivation I needed. Now doing the exposures is done with determination instead of hopelessness. I am getting better.

That was a long comment, but insanely inspiring! I've had a very similar experience to that woman - but I also have something in common with you, @icandothis, because I also was repeatedly made uncertain about my sexuality by someone close to me. I had a very close friend who was gay (I had an unhealthy obsession with him, which really didn't help... Obviously he could have never liked me back, which made it tough for me in a way). He didn't really have any gay friends, so he would make attempts to see if any of his other friends - myself included - could turn out to be gay. It was funny at first, but quickly got sinister. He really messed up a couple of people, and it became a new OCD theme for me. This was about 4 years ago, I've barely been able to bring myself to see him since! I have also been helped by Chrissie Hodges' videos. She was the first person to bring a face to the name of 'H-OCD' and it was a relief to me to know I wasn't alone. I appreciate you sharing the recovered woman's story here, as well as your own. It's nice to see that there are other people struggling under similar circumstances to me, or in similar ways. It's great that you're getting better. So am I! I hope we'll both recover fully in time ❤