- Username
- justtryingmybest
- Date posted
- 5y ago
you’re so right. i just don’t get it. one day i was sure of who i was, what i liked, who i wanted to be with, and who i saw my future with but the next day it was completely upside down. i was never afraid of being gay before this,,, i had never even thought of it. i was always so secure and knew what i liked that it didn’t even register in my brain that it could be a possibility. i don’t even know when or how the thought came but i just remember being in a complete panic. “omg what if i’m gay what if i’ve been gay this whole time what if i’ve just been lying to myself” and the most goes on and on as you probably know haha. i would always (and still do) think, “omg what if i’m gay. mom and dad are gonna kill me. everyone’s going to hate me. no one will support me or love me anymore. they’ll just leave me”. my HOCD mainly revolves around other people. i always worry about what if i’m gay? and then... what will mom and dad think? what will grandma and grandpa think? what will happen to me? i’m scared of the aftermath. that’s what this is all about. and it’s so much different than other themes because while other people fear things that seem very irrational and nearly impossible, i KNOW how my family would react to me being gay. if that makes sense. sorry u had to read all that!! i got carried away hahah
That’s exactly how I was I was TERRIFIED of telling my family my thoughts and fears like I might secretly be gay. You’re exactly right though that’s the ocd part of the fear, cause you know you’re really not but you’re ocd makes you continuously doubt yourself and it sucksss! Ocd is egodystonic Whig makes us ruminate on things that are the opposite of what we want, are, etc. I was so embarrassed to tell my family my thoughts I was sobbing uncontrollably when I did and my mom looked at me and laughed and said “youre not gay, got ocd honey!” Luckily for me my mother so has ocd as well so it was easy for her to recognize it in me but when she told me I was like, “what!?!” And then I learned the real truth that ocd wasn’t just neat freak habits and perfectionism, rather our worse fears on steroids. Hope this helps, feel free to share this with your family if you do decide to tell them!
Hi Sophiaa, no problem I get carried away a lot. It's a part of OCD and anxiety, I always end up sending novels to people instead of short messages haha our brains are overactive. Anyway, not all parts of our thoughts are irrational. For example, thinking that people would get hurt if the house was on fire is not irrational, but thinking that you left the stove on when you just checked it 10 seconds ago is. Does that make sense? So, thinking you might be gay when you have never been attracted to the same gender in the past is irrational, but thinking that your family wouldnt like it if you were gay is rational. There is usually a little reality in our thoughts, otherwise we wouldn't get so anxious about them.
that could not make more sense. this helped me so much. everything tends to blend in my brain and i guess i couldn’t really differentiate the two but now i can after reading that. thank you SO much!
My story is also same
I had HOCD for a while when I was in high school...it stopped once I realised that someone's sexuality wasn't so important. After I stopped caring about it, I realised I was heterosexual as I was/am attracted to men and not women. Having bisexual and homosexual friends has also helped me, as I realised being gay/bi isn't something to be scared of at all. My family are not very homophobic though which probably made a big difference in my case as if I had turned out to be gay/bi it would have only been ignorant kids in school I would have had to deal with and honestly I got bullied every day anyway as my school was horrible... Without homophobia HOCD wouldnt exist because no one would be scared about being gay. Unfortunately society still has a long way to go...
Your last sentence is not correct. Even if there wasn't homophobia, HOCD would still be around. I have nothing against gays, what they do is their own business, and not anyone else's. Like me, I always liked girls, always had multiple crushes, but I never asked a girl out bc I have low self esteem. (I'm working in it?) A year ago i created HOCD by over thinking a nightmare (hocd related) and here I am, living the hocd of life. Homophobia has nothing to do with it. OCD makes you think that you're something you don't want to be. I'm 20 years old and I always liked girls, but the last year I have been dealing with Hocd and I hate my life. I just want to date girls and not the other way around.
Maxt32 if there was no stigma around being gay then OCD wouldn't latch onto it. It's subconscious. Just the same as if we lived in a world where people didn't get bullied for being "unattractive" there wouldn't be any body dysmorphia. You don't have to he homophobic to have HOCD, I never said that. Just the same as you don't have to dislike unattractive people to have body dysmorphia.
Sophiaa glad I could help :) Take care!!!
It’s ridiculous how much people discussing HOCD bothers me. I know it’s a form of OCD, which I understand is out of the person’s control. I know mental illness is not a choice. I have OCD, so I get it. I get invasive thoughts about being hetero, so it makes sense that it works the other way too. I know the people who have HOCD aren’t necessarily homophobic. It does kind of make me feel like my sexuality is a worst case scenario, though. I can’t help but think “people are as afraid of being like me, as I am of heart attacks”. Idk. It just almost feels like people are saying “oh no what if I’m gay” “don’t worry, you’re straight. You’re okay because you’re straight” (which I know isn’t the case). It could just be because of the lack of positivity I’ve seen surrounding the queer community lately, though. I’m not trying to call out or invalidate people with HOCD though, I know it’s something that they don’t enjoy, and it’s something they suffer with just as much as I suffer with my OCD. Sorry, just needed to get that off my chest
A little clarification on my (and many others’) experience with HOCD. Yes, “I don’t care what my sexuality is, I just wanna know for sure” makes the case for HOCD stronger and more ‘qualified’ sounding- however that is not the only HOCD can manifest. Saying that, can trigger some HOCD sufferers who are simply weary of identifying as lgbtq (an understandable fear). Do NOT get me wrong however. I would do ANYTHING for my friends who are bi and gay. I love them SO dearly and will fight for them for forever. Lgbtq folk who struggle with their identities, and not being loved by the people who are supposed to love them no matter what- INSPIRE me with their resilience. Their strength. Their confidence to live out who they are to the fullest extent. I watched the movie Love, Simon and cried like a baby, and am incredibly excited that Pete Buttigieg is the USA’s first openly gay presidential candidate. However this does not discount the struggles that many lgbtq people face. So many are not accepted by their families, have extremely difficult life transitions, and agonize over coming out. These are not things that people willingly want to go through. Is is completely unreasonable for someone suffering with HOCD to also fear these things? As an example (I’m black)- there is a difference in saying that you wouldn’t want to be black because you believe we are less than, versus saying that you wouldn’t want to struggle with the same things that we do. Just because you understand the trials and tribulations that black people go through in this country and would not want that for yourself, does NOT mean you are racist. It simply means you understand that there is pain. And no human willingly wants pain. Although these are exact things lgbtq people have to deal with (making HOCD distinctly different from most other pure o themes because it becomes impossible to differentiate us from people actually struggling with their identity) it shouldn’t be ignored that HOCD sufferers fear them too! Why wouldn’t we? This is such a deep rooted issue for sufferers because, where you could say someone who is suffering with POCD would never hurt a child simply because their thoughts horrify them (and a real pedophile wouldn’t be scared of their thoughts) you can’t say the same for HOCD. For some of us HOCD people who have these specific fears, it’s even more difficult to trust that what we have is ocd and it’s even more difficult to explain to someone else that what we have is ocd. I’ve had different themes of OCD throughout my life and the obsessive and compulsive behaviors have been the same, but this one makes me feel like I don’t even get to qualify. What a mind-fuck for us, huh? Also understand, this definitely isn’t my only fear. I have been attracted to, day-dreamed about, and desperately wanted to be with one gender my entire life. Having a husband was something I’ve wanted for so very long. It IS a part of who I am and what I want. It’s distressing to think this could all be lost one day. To have these ‘dreams’ stolen by obsessive thoughts, and be made to believe that it was all a lie- is just as hard to deal with as any other form of ocd. When I envision the life that ocd is telling me I “actually” want- I’m filled with sadness. How do any of the rest of you deal with your ocd telling you that you want (or want to do) something- that you actually don’t? I know this can be controversial, and truly truly hope I do not offend anyone- lgbtq friends, I truly do love you. I just want everyone to know that what we can struggle with within each theme, can be very different- but none are any less important or qualified than the others. If you truly disagree and want to share, please be kind. I am just as fragile as a lot of us on here. I’m suffering too.
Ok... I was doing good until a few weeks ago. I really was making a lot of progress until a few weeks ago. Backdoor spikes turned up and ocd came back with full force. Or at least I think it's ocd... I hope it is. My theme is hocd, by the way. I try to not give the thoughts much attention, but they're making me mad. It feels so real, and when I see coming out stories it just adds up, as if I should come out too. It terrifies me, every day I think about wanting to die, to not wake up, to cease existing. It's been so draining, and so lonely. I don't want to be in the closet, I don't want to have romantic relationships with women. And ocd makes me question why that: because of my morals? What if your sexuality goes deeper than your morals and you're just denying you like women? Maybe you should try it out, you'd like it. This scares me so. much. And the thing is: I watch same sex porn. It turns me on. I've seen on the internet many women actually watch same sex porn, but ocd makes me question if my case isn't different from other women. All the time I'm worried that I'll just lose control and kiss any woman that's by my side. I haven't had any experience with men either, as I'm reserved and a hopeless romantic (high expectations). I've liked men before, though, and I still have many crushes today. Ocd tries to convince me this is just a cover up. This is just destroying my life. This is daily torture, I can't imagine myself living with this forever. What am I supposed to tell my eventual boyfriend, my husband? How am I supposed to have children in this state of mind? What if some day I just snap out of this and actually realize I'm gay? What if this question is actually me already admitting that I am in fact gay? Honestly, it's too much. This was quite hard to write, and I tried to include here as much as possible of my insecurities. If you read till here I'm grateful. Just wanted to say that I DON'T have anything against gay people, even though they're making me very anxious since this all started, which adds up to my endless collection of intrusive thoughts (it makes me think I'm in denial because of some prejudice).
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