Any recovery stories of HOCD/ SO-OCD?

Every time my head would wonder was I gay because I thought an actor was handsome. It would make uncomfortable and make me wonder. Eventually, I was like well I can say a guy was handsome but I didn’t want to do anything with him. It just didn’t feel like what I wanted. I didn’t feel the same like I did when I thought about women. If I saw a pretty woman, it felt different. I was like yeah, I’m straight. That’s why it takes introspection for me because the OCD is this what if, whereas you have these raw emotional feelings. For me at least, I just knew deep down I was straight. Like I said, it worked for me but it might not work for everyone.

My OCD used to make me question my sexuality but not anymore. When I thought about it, I mean REALLY thought about it, I had no desire for the same sex, I was sexually attracted to only women. After, I had confidence in my heterosexuality that that part of my OCD is basically gone.

Thanks so much bro! But whenever you go outside u constantly got false attracted right? During that what did you do?

It wasn’t really attraction. I would notice oh this guy was handsome and then my OCD would start imagining all this stuff that made me feel uncomfortable. And I knew that that was something I didn’t want deep down, but my head would be like what if and it would create this anxious feeling. It became this feeling of unbearable anxiety. One day, I was frustrated and I was just like let me really think about it. I confronted what I was feeling, really thought about, sorted in my head what was OCD and what I really felt about it. I would sit there and think about what my brain was imagining and I tried looking at my own feelings and the only thing there was “no, I don’t like this” whereas when I thought about women, it was different. After, I kind of knew who I was in that regard, and with that confidence, I was able to brush aside random thoughts like that. My mind still imagines things, but I have confidence in my own self so I can brush these aside without agonizing over it.

And what about the thought of "what if I liked them"?

That’s the thing. At least for me, the ocd is like this foreign voice, it doesn’t represent me, it represents doubt, uncertainty. There are people on here who talk about accepting uncertainty, that works well for contamination fears or health fears, but for something like this, you need certainty. I honestly asked myself am I attracted to this, and it took time and a lot of fighting through the anxiety to try and get at what I really felt. And at the end I was like I know I’m not. It’s this epiphany I guess. It’s like trying to cut through a jungle and getting to your core. It very similar to trying to meditate and reach a level of inner clarity. OCD makes you want to run away, but you can’t. For me it was very much about separating my thoughts from the OCD thoughts, and what I used to differentiate is feeling, just honest raw feeling. I mean that’s the best way of describing it. After sorting it out in my own head, I knew I was straight.