alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
You cannot/will not figure out your sexuality based on how you react to saying “I am straight” or “I am not straight.” That’s a testing compulsion and it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Stop testing your physical and emotional reactions to these statements. They will never “prove” your sexual orientation either way. When you’re feeling unsure and anxious, double down in uncertainty: “maybe I’m straight. Or maybe I’m not. I don’t know and I don’t need to know.” Let the anxiety and intrusive thoughts that pop up just be there and leave on their own.
alex.123alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
Cheers for the advice much appreciated
MosharrrMosharrr
- Date posted
- 5y
Look at it this way, if you said "I am a pony." 10 times without anxiety would it make you a pony? It wouldn't. Being a pony makes you a pony. Remember this when you're worried that you're not worried. These are just words. They don't change anything. If they did,lies wouldn't exist
alex.123alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
I am really confused because there is evidence going against me being not straight but it doesn’t work and this thoughts hits me differently as if it were true and as if I’m going through a sexuality crisis and that fucks me up. Because that makes me feel as if it’s not ocd. Also when I say it’s not true it doesn’t feel right and it’s stupid because the thought came out of knowhere and if the thought keeps saying I’m not straight, then why isn’t it telling me the sexuality I am. It’s mad confusing and mad scary for me. I have also tried today to expose myself but it just feels as if it is me.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
The more you try to “figure this out” and search for evidence, the more false evidence your OCD will give you. How do I know it’s false/OCD? Because you’re obsessing about it and doing mental compulsions to prove/disprove it. Intrusions are not just thoughts. They are also feelings, urges, images, etc. When you test yourself by saying this, your OCD sends you an intrusion it knows will upset you (ie either making it “feel right” in the case of saying you’re not straight or “feel wrong” in the case of saying you are.) Again: you will not figure out your sexuality based on how you react to these sentences or through any other testing compulsions. You aren’t going to get past this OCD theme by finally being able to say “I’m straight” and having it feel right. You’re going to get past this by loosening the grip of this obsession through ERP until it no longer matters. You said you tried to expose yourself today, but I can tell you right now that you’re doing a bunch of mental compulsions so it’s not going to work. ERP means exposure and response prevention. Without response prevention, ie not doing compulsions, you’re not actually committing to the therapy and you won’t see results. Stop ruminating. Stop trying to figure this out. Accept uncertainty. Maybe you’re straight, but maybe you’re not. You don’t know and you don’t need to know.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
@pure093 I try to answer questions when I can here but trying to keep it in the app.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
@pureolife I can try to answer questions if you have them though. And if you post or here others may answer too.
alex.123alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
The main thing that I worry about is that it doesn’t feel like ocd because I have had ocd for a 1 year and I kinda know what o d is what it’s not and I feel like this is true which is very scary.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
Doubting whether your fears are actually OCD or “real” is incredibly common. And if you didn’t have that fear/doubt, this obsession couldn’t hold on this strongly. Once I finally got diagnosed with OCD and started learning about it, aspects of my life I never thought of as related to OCD suddenly started making a lot more sense. This theme may “feel” different to you, but from an outsiders perspective, your behavior is typical of OCD.
alex.123alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
@pureolife Do you feel when you accept a thought it’s like accepting that it’s true or real
MosharrrMosharrr
- Date posted
- 5y
@alex.123 I do feel this way but I'm at a point where I let my body do what it wants now. There's no use resisting to me
alex.123alex.123
- Date posted
- 5y
@Mosharrr Ye I did this because I was trying erp on my own which I don not recommend because I had a wierd and confusing time now and I’ve taken like 100 steps back and I’m fighting thoughts that I haven’t even heard before and ocd is telling me it’s true.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 5y
@alex.123 It can feel like that at first, when you’re not used to it. When I first started OCD treatment, it felt like that sometimes. But the more I recovered, the less it did. you don’t have to accept that the thoughts are true or false. You just have to accept that you’re having them and that they may be true or may be false. You’re accepting their existence and your uncertainty only. This does nothing to validate/invalidate their truth.
Related posts
Mt2019
- Date posted
- 23w
Question about HOCD
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geodrimilis
- Date posted
- 17w
I need this to end.
I’ve completely lost myself. I can’t focus on my studies, I can’t go to the gym. Dang it I can’t even be around my male friends normally anymore. I got no idea why or how this happened but the only thing I know for sure is that I never questioned my sexuality neither doubted it. I never cared in general. I just liked girls. I keep testing and keep testing and keep testing my arousal but no matter how many times I see but I don’t feel the same way for guys that I do with girls my mind will always try to make me believe that I am gay. It’s like it’s forcing me into an identity I never asked for. But at the end of the day like my psychologist told me. Sexuality doesn’t change. So since I never felt anything for guys in my life it’s ocd. I’ve been up and down for 5 months now and while the last week I was feeling way better. Monday now and I’m back to zero. I just want to go back when everything was normal. I can’t keep living with this.
vaiiolyn
- Date posted
- 17w
feeling helpless
As a lesbian with SO-OCD, I feel so helpless. It's truly exhausting because no one I know understands what I'm going through. The first response is always, "You're just confused" or "You don't have to know yet." But that's not the issue, I do know. I just never see any lesbians with SO-OCD so I feel so invalidated. These thoughts flood my brain constantly, forcing me to analyze my reactions to every man I see. I feel trapped in an endless cycle of "testing" myself, trying to prove that I don't like them. But my brain fights back, telling me I do want to love a man, making it feel real even though don't want it. It's terrifying. At this point, it's hard to even hold onto my identity as a lesbian because I'm so overwhelmed. I don't know if this is what real attraction is supposed to feel like, and that fear eats away at me. The truth is, when I think about being with a man, all I feel is disgust and fear-but my brain twists that into doubt. I hate it. I'm at the point where I'm scared I'm going to have to accept something I don't want because I don't know if this will ever go away. I miss who I was before all this.
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