TOCD

I used to have transgender OCD. It can manifest very differently in different people. For many, their OCD latches onto their *fear* of being trans and makes them doubt their gender. In my case, I actually *wanted* to be the opposite sex because my actual sex felt contaminated. My compulsions centered around constantly checking how I felt about my chosen name, the identity label I had chosen for myself, the clothes I wanted to wear, and various other things. Spoiler alert: after four years of identifying as transmasculine non-binary, it turns out I am in fact a cis woman with OCD. Your mileage may vary.

For me (cis guy) I think it started because I’m aware of how painful gender dysphoria can be for those who live with it, what a big undertaking transition is, and how much discrimination trans people face in this day and age, and I’ve always felt lucky that I don’t have to deal with any of that (in the same way that I’m glad that I wasn’t born into generational poverty). I think OCD just grabbed onto that awareness. One morning I just randomly woke up with my brain shouting at me “BUT WHAT IF YOU DO HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT? WHAT IF YOU ARE TRANS? WHAT IF YOU HAVE TO TRANSITION? WHAT IF YOUR DEPRESSION/ANXIETY/DISCOMFORT IN YOUR OWN SKIN HAS BEEN DYSPHORIA ALL ALONG?” The only way I could find to make those thoughts stop temporarily was to constantly check to make sure I’m the cis guy I’ve always thought I am. It’s made me repeatedly: ruminate on memories to see if I’ve ever felt uncomfortable being a boy (closest thing I can think of is that I didn’t want to go through puberty because I didn’t feel ready to grow up) or that I was supposed to be a girl (nope); stand in front of the mirror naked to see if I feel dysphoria (I don’t love my weight but having male characteristics isn’t the problem); try to imagine myself with female characteristics (feels disgusting); imagine how I would feel if I were treated/seen as a woman (very weird and not right); and Google “gender OCD vs gender dysphoria” to make sure that I related to the former more than the latter (always did). But that voice would always come back and make me doubt all of that with “What if I’m just in hardcore denial and I’ve really deeply repressed my desire to transition?” And the cycle would start again, especially because it’s really good at making me doubt my own experience, for instance by making me look back at memories of being happy as a boy with a lens of “But what if you were lying to yourself or were repressing how you really feel?” This spiral of it is finally calming down. I saw a YouTube comment on the OCD and Anxiety video about TOCD that really helped me: ask yourself if your questioning your gender started from a thought or a true feeling. If it started from a thought it’s most likely TOCD.