Story on hocd and how I recovered.

I’ve had depression since I was a teen and it really affected my attraction towards men even if I used to be a hopeless romantic. I just felt really numb and I went on with life not dating or even doing anything with anyone but kinda had it mind I was either straight or asexual at that point . My friends would always wonder if I was attracted to men by which oh well I wasn’t but I knew why. It was so easy for hocd to get me😂 So here’s how hocd got me. I was on a phone call with my friends and we started talking about a particular fashion brand. I was scrolling through their instagram and thought a model was genuinely cool (I wanted to be as cool as her because I wanted to be a model too) so I told my friends I thought she was cool. They laughed and said they knew I was gay. I was confused and tried to tell them it wasn’t anything like that and they kinda brushed it off. The call ended and I started to think about what they said and suddenly I panicked real hard! “WHAT IF I’M GAY??” Now I’m not homophobic but this was a huge identity threat. From then on it was something. I checked and checked. I felt those feelings. I had groinal responses. I thought about an old close friend from highschool and my memory convinced me I liked her and didn’t realize. Everytime I saw a woman I was convinced I was attracted to her. At a point I got scared I was attracted to my mum HOW SILLY IS THAT. My TikTok search was filled with gay couples because I kept checking and feeling and checking. The feelings felt way too real and I spiralled and even got more depressed. I searched on google and somehow It led me to knowing what hocd was. I did everything I could to accept the thoughts and not engage. I tried to reach out to a therapist from my country and he said “if you don’t want to be gay then don’t be?” Huh??. Atp I had to find my way to do erp myself but how real the feelings felt still made me scared. I really tried but I was too weak for ocd. It was too much and It was starting to really convince me so I surrendered. I accepted everything that came with it. Infact I was totally convinced I had a crush on a friend. I got so tired of fighting and went about my day and accepted my reality for a while. If I was gay so damn what? Who’s gonna check me? Until someday I randomly realized I wasn’t actually attracted to women. I didn’t go for any woman or care about them more than friends. I actually thought I was gay until it started to feel like I was lying to myself. I suddenly realized I wasn’t and shrugged it off like it was nothing. I really didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore if I did or didn’t. My actions weren’t really replicating those thoughts and feelings. I thought “I guess I’m not” I wouldn’t say you should go about it the way I did because I realized ocd healing is very different for everyone. And me actually deciding to believe it can cause someone else to spiral badly. What works for everyone might not work for you. For me not engaging those thoughts made it hard to even do things in my day to day life. I couldn’t do anything else. I was rock bottom. Maybe me accepting was some form of long term erp. But I found my way to healing unknowingly. It’s been years and ocd recently focused on some other theme that was really serious because it involved my partner( A man btw) and I’m backing here trying to heal and I understand my feelings better now about the relationship and it wasn’t what I thought it was. I’m sure this also something I’ll overcome. I guess I let fear and panic get the best of me in the most random moment. Also hoping to work on emotional regulation so I don’t panic in ways ocd loves in future. Stay blessed. I hope everyone here finds their way to healing.