For all of the people out there battling hocd- im here for you anytime. For years since I was 14 (im 20 now) I thought that I was gay and I was just lying to myself. It gets better! You can tackle this!

Of course! Its a matter of understanding the disorder and how it targets you and perserverance!

@sorryitsemmy I hope so I feel I only change it to other obsessions and they can be way worst!

@Mimi123 Yes! I feel this. Before I was diagnosed, all thoughout highschool sometimes the hocd obsession would fade unexpectedly and I felt relief hoping it would never come back. It would switch to another obsession or maybe just full on depression. Now that im aware of it and I researched it and talked myself through with my therapist, I began connecting the dots that my thoughts were intrusive and not based on fact at all!

Of course!

@sorryitsemmy Okay hi so I’m sixteen a virgin and have barley any romantic or sexual experience with boys so that doesn’t help my case anyway to start at the beginning from a very young age I watched porn from around the age of 6 I would watch lesbian porn to and show my friends at the time I didn’t know what the duck I was doing and I kissed my friend when I was like seven to the song I kissed a girl which this memory o hate ughh , I would also get aroused by provocative music videos and scenes and yeah when I was like around 11 I started to have a porn addiction which went from heterosexual but I would watch the women like why and which quickly turned to lesbian and then to gay porn I would also which sounds weird masterbate to girls I wished I looked like and due to my porn addiction I would always feel the need to masterbate to even non sexual stuff too there was this one girl and I wanted to look like her so bad I would stalk her insta as well and I’m scared it’s a crush I had crushes on guys and I want a boyfriend but I feel like how can I be straight if I’ve done all this stuff and if this means I’m gay ughh the struggles sorry for the long backstory the question I was gonna ask is can attraction come Back I have lost a lot of attraction to guys and yeah and I hope I’m not bi or lesbian.

@hiiiii I understand where youre coming from. When my obsessions started out of the blue, I hadnt had any experience with guys either and I didnt until I was 17. Even then, I still had obsessions even when I had a boyfriend thinking I was lying to myself and to my boyfriend. I struggled with the stuff in my past similarly to you, I watched porn when I was really young which freaked me out once I got older as well as other things I did when I was younger. The thing is, its completely normal for a young kid to be sexually interested its typically a phase. I also used to look up stuff with my friends when I was younger so I used everything of my past against myself and spun into a spiral of anxiety. If you want to talk more, let me know im always happy to!

@sorryitsemmy Thank you I just want to get better and stop these memories from haunting me and the madtetbation to girls I wish I looked like is that like normal I have terrible self esteem but I feel like I’m lying

@hiiiii A big thing with ocd is that it really loves to dig up events from you past to totally turn against you. Though it feels like the thoughts and the correlations are so real- thats not always true. Infact, with ocd, it never is- we find a way to make it make sense. Something thats really important is that anxiety can often be mistaken for attraction! Thats something that helped me through hocd. If I really was gay, I would know, and it wouldnt bother me to the point where I cant move from my bed or talk to people.

@ta Yes, I had false attraction all girls no matter what they identified as. My anxiety skyrocketed mostly around girls that I knew they were gay or bisexual. Its easy to catch yourself freaking out and pulling together every piece of information to try and confirm your “fear”- yet I kept fighting it- thats how I knew something was up with me. I had responses in my body that I thought were telling me that I am infact gay, I would check whether I was aroused or not, and make scenarios pop into my head involving another woman to monitor how I felt about it. Even though I knew in some part of me that im not gay, I pulled out all of the stops to confirm this lie my brain was feeding me. It took a lot out of me and multiple flare ups of the obsession to recognize that what I was going through wasn’t exactly a question of my sexuality but just a disorder that makes me doubt even the most rudimentary parts of myself

Well, I always was. My intrusive thoughts brought every event I ever experienced into question. I tend to believe my thoughts- before I knew I had ocd. Even after a diagnosis, my thoughts were still overwhelming and I felt unable to move physically and mentally. I was stuck. I began educating myself on the disorder and the subtype of sexual orientation ocd and I understood it. My thoughts make sense. Why they targetted my sexuality, im not sure. Ocs targets some crazy things and makes you doubt even the most rudimentary thing about yourself!

Educating myself really helped me and not even just about hocd, I researched most of the obsessions that I had. I used iocdf.org and they have a lot of articles to help. I also am going to erp and I take prozac which makes the thoughts easier to pass.