This thing gets weirder and weirder I swear. I literally woke up, right. And my mind immediately went “What if you don’t have OCD? You’d just be really bi” and I went along pretending that I didn’t know about OCD and I was just experiencing denial. Then I scrolled on twitter and went on my friend’s page and then my mind went “why don’t you like her? There’s nothing wrong with her. I thought you were supposed to have a crush on her” Here’s the worst part in this: I’m now convinced that HOCD is a huge lie that I made up and it’s homophobic for me to suffer from this theme of OCD and label my “attractions” to the same sex as “bouts of anxiety.” Therefore, I’m not only a bad person, but a liar.

I was wondering if this also happened to anyone. I grew up very open-minded and allowed myself to question my sexuality when I was younger. I explored feelings for both genders and attraction to them from afar, because I didn't have any friends or experiences to guide me through them. When I started dating, I was open to both but slowly and surely naturally phased out women. It always felt performative, like pretending to be upset they didn't respond, choosing who to be attracted to, and while present with them, wanting to back away or feeling a level of discomfort. When my SO-OCD started, these experiences made it very difficult to navigate the anxieties and intrusive thoughts. My thoughts often circled back to the idea that if I wasn't attracted to women, I wouldn't have tried to in the first place. This type of thought is like a Catch-22. On one hand, I am surveying my past actions or memories for any signs of true attraction or trying to pick at moments where I could prove that I was actually uncomfortable. On the other hand, the thought of being uncomfortable with a moment is tainted in my brain because of the idea that I could just be in denial. Any emotion I've ever had gets scrutinized in hindsight, making it feel like any way in which I feel is wrong. SO-OCD has been particularly difficult because of the fact that I've never been pejorative towards being queer or the LGBTQ+ community. It goes against my own values whether or not I am actually queer or actually straight. I remember growing up in an environment (whether school, family, or friends) that was always lined with prejudice towards any type of outsider - OCD makes me feel ashamed for my own want to understand any group or background different from my own. Essentially, I wanted to know if that's also something that plagues others with SO-OCD. For me, no matter what side of the fence I fall on my OCD rewrites it as bad: Either I'm in denial and lying to everyone even though they already secretly know, or I'm a homophobe. Sometimes they even mix. It doesn't make any sense.

A while ago, maybe a month and a half, I started getting thoughts that I am gay and in denial. I have no desire to be with a man and NEVER have, but it feels like I am a liar and I am really gay. It is hard to get out of my head, and I just want to say to anyone struggling with this, you are not alone. I have a hard time feeling like my attraction to women is genuine nowadays and I say to myself “What if I end up dating a guy?” And I get non stop thoughts and a groinal response as well. I also have gender dysphoria on top of that so it’s hard to imagine myself with a woman even though in the past I wanted it, but now I feel like I don’t, and eventually I’m gonna just date a guy. I get these compulsions to try things out with a guy and see if I like it but I don’t think I will act on it. I have had no hope and feel like I am genuinely gay now. I hope that I can recover.

Okay so today after I woke up I had an absolutely unexpected thought about a girl, but I DIDN’T MIND IT. So all I felt that it was unexpected but I didn’t feel shame or guilt or something. I started pacing back and forth my room and it was like my brain accepted that I’m bisexual and I started getting anxious about what my family and friends will think about it then I had the thought “If I’m afraid of coming out, that means I’m actually bisexual” and I started asking ChatGPT about what is happening to me and it wrote the usual answer “That’s typical with OCD, it doesn’t mean anything” but it didn’t calm me down a bit and it was just so confusing because for about twenty minutes it was like having this certainity about being bisexual but it didn’t help I was stressing just like before. I know this means I’m not comfortable with the thought and it’s not ego-syntonic, but I wasn’t necessarily anxious about the thought just anxious in general. Then I started fantasizing about men, and it gave me anxiety too but it felt more right. I tried out how it would make me feel if I fantasized about women but all those fantasies lasted barely 3-4 seconds after that my brain just shifted to other thoughts. I can’t listen to one of my favourite songs because it’s sung by an attractive woman and I’m getting these thoughts about me liking her. I don’t understand what’s going on with me, because whenever I read a story here by someone who's struggling with SO-OCD they always write “I don’t want to be gay, I want to go back when everything was normal” but for me every time I get a similar thought it’s immediatly overshadowed by “Of course you’re bisexual, look at all these evidences, you want to be bisexual, you’re just in denial, look at these people, they are real OCD-sufferers, you don’t, you’re welcoming the thoughts, you want them, you’re not comfortable with your heterosexual identity, you always wanted women” etc. etc. It’s so confusing because all along my journey with OCD I had the certainity in myself that I like men but now I feel like I lost this and it feels like a real sexuality crisis now.