I just spent the whole last two hours watching YouTube videos like „how to know you‘re lesbian“, „signs you’re lesbian“ and I‘m panicking right now so much like I can barely breath. HOCD, what did you do with my life ?

The research is a compulsion. If possible try not to act on that or you're going to work yourself up big time. Try to limit your time researching and see if you can go a whole day with out it. If you can't. Try to do 8 hours or 5 hours. Start where you can and keep increasing your time away from research. YouTube is full of bs people trying to make money, and most of those people don't have proper training. It's not the place to treat your ocd. You're in the right place on this app. Vent it out here.

Im so sorry to hear youre feeling so horrible! Looking up videos like that is a compulsion, but as we all know, compulsions never truly make us feel better or make the intrusive thoughts go away. In fact, they can make it much worse. In the future Id recommend fighting the urge to look up those videos, avoid doing the compulsion (which is EXTREMELY HARD but the more you try, the closer you come to winning against OCD). To handle the anxiety, I like to use the app called “Clear Fear”. It has great exercises on there to immediately calm anxiety, even anxiety caused by OCD. Hope this helps!!

One mentality I take is that if I can avoid my compulsions I'll feel better. Avoid doesn't mean eliminate. Don't look at is one big mountain, that makes things harder on your mind and can crate anxiety. Look at it as small hills you'll climb one by one. Right now just remmebr to avoid your compulsions. Even if you do act on them, dont beat yourself up. You're not going compulsion free. Just reducing them for now. Trying not acting on them. I acted on a compulsion I had this morning once. It's been almost 3 hours and I'm still fighting the urge. Am I going to give in? I could. Am I going to forget before I act again? I could. Accept uncertainty the best you can. I'm doing it right now and it's hard. My mind is racing. I can't control my thoughts. Nobody can. We all can control our actions though. I'm trying to focus on controlling those right now. Uncertainty is the worst feeling when my ocd kicks in. I'm trying to learn to live with it and it's helping me slowly reverse this. Im still not anywhere near where I want to be but I'm doing better because of this.

Thank you very much for your realistic and logical answer, these kinds of answers help me the most. I know exactly how you feel because OCD is like hell. The fear of just finding out about the “true” own sexuality much later in life, the fear of lying all time to myself, the fear of being in denial... the fear of thinking “I must be gay” when a date with a boy doesn’t work as I expected it... the internet is like hell for HOCD, everything just really everything can be a sign if being gay when you google it...

Thank you so much I downloaded it right now and it seems to be really good

And my huge respect for you trying!!

I absolutely understand, I also got off all social media accounts and I feel better without social media, as you said it, too much uninformed people, too much opinions and not facts and too much people who think they‘re experts... same with forums... uncertainty is also my biggest problem and fear... I don‘t know why I have HOCD...or why I have OCD... it’s just making me sick

Thank you very much ...

The internet is bad for my ocd and bad for my anxiety. I got off all social media because it was giving me anxiety. I'm not recommending this to everyone, but for me it helped. Seeing all the politics, sexual things, nudity, debates, even seeing people hate on movies and other stuff I like, all that made me take a break and now that I'm off it I don't think I'll ever go back. Too many opinions on the internet for me. I like facts. Yes and no. Uncertainty is the worst for me. The internet, especially social media, brought more uncertainty into my life so I eliminated it.