I’ve seen a lot of hocd posts on here recently like more than half are abt sexuality and it’s got me wondering if the growing acceptance of the lgbt community and popularized gay culture like on twitter has something to do with it. In my case I still suffer from it and am still working on it but i prefer to fight it by trying my best in accepting it and embracing the diversity of sexuality and in some weird way it helps ground me into understanding that the uncertainty doesn’t have any control over me and it’s helped me lose anxiety abt losing interest in guys or focus on being attracted to them while not avoiding girls or thoughts abt being with girls by just acknowledging them as thoughts and going back to how I used to see girls. Just wanted to let anyone out there know it is possible and you can do it! It can’t be like this forever it’s all about putting in effort and accepting that it’s still a process

You are actually unto something - Our brains are wired for survival. Since we "need" society to survive, social rejection is seen as a major threat by our brains. The hot or taboo topics in society will always be a "hot topic" for our OCD brains. That is, we want to make sure we are safe and have never done anything or will never do anything of the sort. So - If media says: "Being in denial of your sexuality is unacceptable" then off we go looking for certainty about it, even though we never questioned it before. The search for that type of certainty, however, is futile since human sexuality is way more complex than that. Same thing with pedophilia - the truth is that many people do have those preference and they didn't choose it and they can be nice people and never harm anybody but media tells us otherwise.

I don't think there is much to do - even people without OCD are paranoid about it. However, it can help us be more lenient with ourselves and have more self-compassion.

Hello, i red it from the following link, i think it can be interesting: https://medium.com/@samanthaengelbrecht/self-diagnosis-of-ocd-needs-to-stop-ca966beb0db4 Over the years I feel the media — with it’s uniformed opinions of what OCD actually is — has made it ‘fashionable’ or ‘trendy’ to be diagnosed with this condition. Which in turn minimalizes the severity of what it means to suffer from OCD. We are living in an age where the internet has a massive influence on society’s perceptions and ideologies. With that in mind the media should be a bit more responsible about the information it distributes — but then again this is the media we’re talking about — anything for sensationalist story right?

Unfortunately the link sends me to a mailbox but yes I agree and the mixture of it all is triggering for people with ocd and sexuality ocd I for one in a way thank social media bc tahts how I was able to realize that I had ocd through self diagnosing and while that may not be the best option it led me to getting better even if I haven’t been formally diagnosed

Yes exactly thank you you worded perfectly what I was trying to say. We understand that society standards and constructs gave a huge effect on our triggers and idk if there’s something we can do abt it to change or that’ll help ever change that I mean we can try but it certainly helps knowing and understanding that the pressure of society has much to do with what we’re dealing with