I have a boyfriend and I love him so much, but HOCD has been driving me insane since the moment we started dating. I can’t every scroll through Instagram without having to touch myself to every fucking girl I see and it makes me nauseous and depressed all at once. I hate it more than I’m able to describe and I like BOYS , but it’s so so hard to maintain a relationship with this constant feeling of guilt . I don’t like girls but since I HAVE to touch myself to them, it’s a natural reaction to have some form of groundless response which only makes matters worse considering the fact that now I have to convince myself that I had that reaction only because I was touching myself and not because I was turned on by girls. Can anyone relate because I’m going insane !!

I see. Well it’s good you’re fully aware of the compulsion. That’s the first step! Next it’s time to resist it. You’re setting yourself up with an impossible and inaccurate test that your body is bound to fail and your mind will never be satisfied with. Go on instagram or something else triggering and resist the compulsion again and again. Sit with whatever anxiety that causes and accept the uncertainty.

If you watched it and liked it you’d simply like watching gay porn. And that’s okay. You could still like guys.

I understand the anxiety. I suffered from HOCD too. But the reason it feels like such a big deal is because you worry about it like it’s a big deal. If you just looked at it like a thing you sometimes enjoy and it’s no big deal, it wouldn’t be such an intrusive and unwanted thought. That’s where ERP and CBT and mindfulness come in. Let your brain know that these thoughts aren’t important. Want to enjoy gay porn? Cool. No big deal. It’s not gonna change your whole world in the way you fear it will. In fact, once it stops being a worry and really isn’t important, you may not even like it at all.

Outside of checking, is it possible that you have a pornography addiction? Often addiction overlaps with feel-good neurotransmitter deficiencies like depression, anxiety, OCD, or ADHD. And certainly orgasms give you plenty of feel-good neurotransmitters. It could also be presenting as a form of self-soothing in this way. Especially if your checking always ends in orgasm. Just a thought.

I think the problem is that you’re using it as a test. A really poorly designed test that you can only fail. There are two approaches to take here: learn to resist the compulsion OR go watch gay porn and masturbate and just try to enjoy it! Not as a test, but as something you actively choose and want to do. Either is valid. Both will help you deal with OCD in the long run. Both will probably create anxiety in the short term, but that’s okay. You have to let your thoughts do what they wanna do AND resist compulsions. Teach the thoughts they aren’t important, that you’re not afraid of them, and that you are ultimately in control of what you do.

@pureolife I get what you’re saying, but the matter of the fact is that I know I’m not gay and if I watched porn and enjoyed it, it would only make things worse by telling me that I’m actually denial and that I don’t like boys

Why do you have to touch yourself?

It’s my compulsion. Like I have to make sure that I’m straight 24/7 so I have to keep touching myself to pics of girls which only makes matters worse since touching yourself is gonna turn you on no matter what you’re looking at

*pornography or sex addiction

@sweetpotato I wonder about this too. I watch same sex porn, and I do get aroused, but never mentally. I don't know if I reach orgasm, though. It was gradual, I'd always think: if you click here, you're bi or lesbian. See, you clicked, then you are. You're going to do these things eventually. You're going to have to tell your parents. And this freaks me out. I feel extremely gross and uncomfortable. And this confuses me so much, because I really don't want to be with a woman. Ocd tells me I'm just in denial, though. It's draining.

@Lavander same exact thing for me and I hate it and during, I’m either crying, banging my head into a wall, or both

Yes, it's the same thing for me. Especially when I'm in pms. Lately I've been doing great in keeping ocd at bay, but when I'm having pms, it attacks me. It's in the week prior to my period that I usually watch same sex porn, filled with anxiety and disgust. It's completely different from what I feel towards men. I always get so worried about this, though. OCD tells me and makes me feel like I'm living a lie, and this just kills me inside.

@Lavandar @pureolife it’s especially bad when you’re in a relationship and while you’re having sex with your partner, all of a sudden his face morphs into random women and you hate yourself for letting your brain trick you during such intimate moments. Naturally ofc I’m already turned on Bc of my boyfriend so when my brain switches faces, I wanna throw up Bc now I’m turned on to women since I’ve already been pre-turned on