Doing the "RP"

I have just recently realized that I had SO OCD. This began whenever I was watching porn and had an intrusive thought about the guy in the porn. It was more minor at first, it was a majority of what I was thinking about throughout the day but it didn’t feel as distressing at first. If I had downtime to think about it, it would affect me but if I was just going about my day I wouldn’t notice it. I began going through the compulsions of checking myself. This lasted for a while until another obsession occurred. Then it seemed as if my SO OCD took a step back. I would have flare ups but they would seem to pass. Recently, I had a very bad night of constant compulsions and looking at pictures and imagining things to check myself. After that night it was very distressing, it affected me to the point where people around me began to notice and ask me if I was okay. One of the big reasons I was so upset was my girlfriend, we have been together for over 3 years and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I was thinking “Oh my god, if I am gay I can never be with her.” I would sit and cry about it thinking I would lose her and that might life would change because I was gay. I finally had enough and talked to her and my parents. We did some research and I was so shocked to find out that I had a form of OCD, it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders just knowing that other people have been where I am and that I’m not gay. However, I may have naively expected the compulsions and obsessive thoughts to go away now that I knew I had an actual problem. But I found that the compulsions and thoughts were still there and I was going to put some effort into getting better. I have researched and now know what to do when experiencing intrusive thoughts, yet I still have been performing the compulsions which is just feeding into the OCD. I find myself having intrusive thoughts and then start performing compulsions to see if they are true. What really bothers me is when I have an intrusive thought that tells me that I do like something. But when I think about it I have no desire to pursue those thoughts. However when I feed into the compulsions they just seem to feed into each other. It is like my OCD ignores all the things that I know I like and goes straight to panic mode. I am also trying to do ERP and am going to start doing my best to get better. Does anyone have any tips for not performing the compulsions no matter how anxious you are feeling and no matter how real the intrusive thoughts seem to feel?

So I've been working to address my OCD for about a month now. So far, I haven't been working on it with a therapist and have instead been trying to create my own exposure exercises. The primary obsession I'm working on is the fear that I'm somehow flawed or invalid on a fundamental level. The best way I can describe it it is that its similar to the feeling you get when you have germ OCD and you feel contaminated, except my whole existence and being feels contaminated, so to speak. I've identified a list of triggers, and a list of compulsions (pretty much all mental) that I've noticed myself performing. I started out by doing imaginal exposures and scripts where I'd write out triggering fictional scenarios and read them over and over, combined with mindfulness techniques to focus on my breath and bring myself back to the present when I noticed myself performing compulsions mentally. At first it worked to some extent, but eventually I started to feel like the stories I was writing about this obsession weren't triggering any anxiety anymore or a very low level. So I stopped reading them and focused solely on improving my ability to stay present and identifying compulsions as I perform them, and disengaging. Now, I'm at the point where it seems like my general anxiety levels throughout the day are lower, and the triggers I've identified are producing noticeably less anxiety. But that makes me wonder if somehow I'm just secretly doing mental compulsions without knowing it? Is only a month of rather disorganized and unstructured ERP enough to produce this much improvement? To avoid giving me re-assurance, I'd appreciate if you guys don't directly answer those questions, maybe just provide some possibilities or your own experiences so I can get a better idea of where I'm at. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

When I catch myself doing compulsions mentally during exposure sessions, it seems alot of the time like the realization that I was just doing a compulsion is more distressing than the actual trigger I'm trying to expose myself to. It feels defeating having to admit the prompt at the end that I performed a compulsion yet again. I still think I've made progress overall, and generally speaking I don't think I'm performing compulsions as much as I used to, and my distress has also gone down noticeably (not completely) but exposure sessions have been kinda tricky for me from the beginning since its all mental. Additionally, I am a bit concerned that I could start using exposures to rid myself of anxiety rather than expose myself to it properly.