Why does the HOCD make me feel things that I know are ridiculous. I’ve never been aroused by the same sex but now every time I even just see a guy I feel like I will, but I never have. I’ve been in tons of situations, before I had this ocd, where I would’ve been aroused if I was homosexual. I keep trying to analyze my past and it’s stressing me out. Does anybody have any good coping mechanisms?

To stop analyzing, you have to stop yourself whenever you notice you are doing it. The analyzing is probably a compulsion so when you stop doing it, your anxiety may spike which could cause your OCD to create more worries and thoughts, but stick with it! When you are worried about stuff from the past within your OCD theme, it’s almost always OCD tricking you. Just tell yourself, I don’t know and I don’t care because here i am right now in this moment and nothing is happening except some random OCD thoughts. If it feels really urgent and hard to stop, try saying I’ll analyze this thought later at like 7 pm for one hour. When 7 comes around and you start analyzing, you may not even fill the whole hour and it will show you that you can wait, this is not urgent, and that it ultimately doesn’t truly matter.

Yes! It basically retrains your brain to react to the thoughts differently, showing it that there is no real fear so there’s no reason to keep thinking up the thoughts. It will be hard at first, so you could try waiting for as long as you feel you can and then bumping up the time you wait after each trigger. You’ll see your anxiety really does go down on its own! It’s ERP and I read once that ERP is a simple concept, but hard to do. It definitely gets easier though.

PS, I know it’s ridiculous only when I get moments of clarity

It sounds hard but definitely worth while. Is it normal for OCD to tell you that you don’t even have OCD? Like sometimes I’ll get the thought “it’s all a lie” and that’ll make me more anxious

So just try to sit with the anxiety without carrying out the compulsions basically?

Yes I get that all the time. I’ve been told it’s ocd by a therapist yet I doubt whether it is.