@oliwia1212 For context, I’ve had OCD symptoms my entire life with many different themes, only recently diagnosed. SOOCD and ROCD have been most recently challenging over the past few years.
How I see it, the OCD cycle is
1. Trying to protect you from some kind of threat. (If your relationship is important to you, it makes it a target for OCD.)
2. Searching for absolute certainty (black & white thinking)
3. A cycle fueled by compulsions. (Trying to make the anxiety go away, which in turn makes even more thoughts/feelings appear, which makes you more anxious, and so on.)
As far as sexuality goes, as human beings, we are very complex. It is my belief that sexuality is more often in the gray area than black and white for most people. Being in the gray area is SO HARD for someone with OCD.
Maybe you’ve had thoughts like these: “If I had <this feeling>, then that means <this other feeling> must be wrong.” Or “Oh no! I can’t let myself feel <this feeling>! Because that would mean <X>!” Or “I need to check if I feel <this> OR <this>.” These are all very black and white questions that force our gray feelings into a box they don’t fit in.
I know ERP is helpful for SOOCD, it certainly has been for me. But, because of my sexuality, the scary feelings that come up (attractions/longing for same-sex people) are NOT as easily brushed off as “untrue” or “false”. Instead of forcing those thoughts into the “just OCD” category, I’ve had to do some deeper work. It’s a very common experience for bisexual folks to feel grief or sadness around what “could have been” or “the other side”. For me, I think my brain is trying to get me to process these feelings, while my OCD sees the feelings as a threat. The key to working through this for me has been to actually turn towards those scary thoughts with curiosity and compassion. I know this might sound EXTREMELY scary and would have sent me into a full blown panic attack. As I’ve peeled back the layers, I had to let myself feel some sadness and grieve the other version of myself or my life that COULD have been if I fell in love with a different partner. I have found that moving through the sadness and letting myself honor that alternate version of me has made the OCD thoughts WAY less threatening.
Based on what we know scientifically about OCD, we understand that the more you try NOT to think about something, the more your brain will treat it as a threat. So, it can amplify the intensity of a thought or feeling, thus making you more anxious, thus causing your brain to learn that the thought or feeling is definitely a threat, thus causing your brain to amplify the anxiety you feel around that trigger. This is essentially the OCD cycle, no matter how what theme.
What I’m trying to say is that the feelings of desire, if there is even a tiny part of them that are true, do NOT take away from your very real present feelings for your partner, or your queerness. You are allowed to let yourself feel both of them at the same time without trying to shut it down. If you can get a good ERP therapist to help you surf the anxiety that comes with those thoughts, then over time they won’t scare you as much anymore, and you might find they don’t come up as often, or perhaps they are not relevant at all anymore. Either way, it doesn’t even matter if they are real burning desires or completely fake signals that your brain is sending. Allowing them to exist without threatening this other part of you is what has given me the most peace. And you don’t even need to discover whether they’re real or not to start working on the ERP.
Now…an unpopular opinion about comphet. I think this concept has been taken way out of control and doesn’t always capture the nuance of the human experience. It again is a very black and white concept. It has been helpful for understanding why we make assumptions about ourselves and how social programming can influence our choices. It has made a lot of queer people feel a sense of empowerment in owning their identity and leaving the traditional roles behind. However…queerness is also a social construct. All of these labels we’re creating are useful, don’t get me wrong. But, at a certain point, they just become more black and white boxes for us to try to force ourselves into. This creates material to plug into the OCD cycle. Bringing it back to my earlier point, perhaps if you identify with one label and then have an intrusive feeling (again, it doesn’t matter whether the feelings are “real” or just a false signal), it can feel like your identity is under threat, or perhaps that this feeling “cancels out” another. Or that this feeling suddenly defines you and places you in a different category based on a socially constructed idea.
The point in trying to make is that queerness, just like heteronormativity, is also a social construct. We form our relationships and identities based on the world around us no matter what. Perhaps there is still some part of you that feels sad that you didn’t fit into the black and white box that heteronormativity presented you with since you were a child, even though you’re happy in a queer relationship. Perhaps part of you feels limited by some of the labels and constructs that queer theory presents and your brain sees heterosexual feelings as a threat. Perhaps your brain is trying to sabotage something you really care about because it feels like safety is dangerous and the best excuse it can come up with is making you feel like maybe your identity is different that what you “know”.
Who knows! But the best way through is by learning to see those thoughts as less of a threat. ERP therapy is so helpful for that. Perhaps there is some grieving to do, AKA letting yourself feel sad about some piece of you that is going un realized. But that doesn’t mean you have to become that piece of you, or let it drive your decisions. At the end of the day, recovering from OCD requires us to accept the gray areas, put down the black and white glasses, and tolerate uncertainty. It’s a wonderful life skill too :)
I hope some of this made sense and if you have more questions or need clarification, I’m happy to chat more!
