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
evasprog
- Date posted
- 12w
New sort of intrusive thought
Hello, so I’ve been struggling really badly with so-ocd where I am worried that I’m not actually straight when that’s what I’ve always thought and wanted to be. I’ve been with my boyfriend for about 2.5 years now, he’s my first boyfriend and I really love him so much and want to spend the rest of my life with him. I remember one time, before I had struggles with so-ocd, I had a thought along the lines of ‘what if I’m missing out on other men by staying with him’ and it didn’t really cause any anxiety but I felt quite guilty for thinking that. But I moved on. However, right now I’m in the depths of so-ocd it started back in March I believe, and today I had a thought along the lines of ‘what if I never get the opportunity to try being with a woman because I’m in a relationship with a man’ and that has really set me off today. I’ve had a meltdown over it, my chest feels heavy and it felt so real like I actually wanted it and I had a feeling of wanting to be gay even though that’s not what I want in life. Why is this happening to me and I feel so horrible for thinking this like it felt like it was me and not the ocd and that I’m just lying to myself and my boyfriend. I’ve tried scrolling on here to see if anyone has had a similar thought or experience and I am aware that this is reassurance seeking but I just need someone to tell me that I’m okay
JustAHobbitGirl
- Date posted
- 5w
What is happening to me??
Okay so today after I woke up I had an absolutely unexpected thought about a girl, but I DIDN’T MIND IT. So all I felt that it was unexpected but I didn’t feel shame or guilt or something. I started pacing back and forth my room and it was like my brain accepted that I’m bisexual and I started getting anxious about what my family and friends will think about it then I had the thought “If I’m afraid of coming out, that means I’m actually bisexual” and I started asking ChatGPT about what is happening to me and it wrote the usual answer “That’s typical with OCD, it doesn’t mean anything” but it didn’t calm me down a bit and it was just so confusing because for about twenty minutes it was like having this certainity about being bisexual but it didn’t help I was stressing just like before. I know this means I’m not comfortable with the thought and it’s not ego-syntonic, but I wasn’t necessarily anxious about the thought just anxious in general. Then I started fantasizing about men, and it gave me anxiety too but it felt more right. I tried out how it would make me feel if I fantasized about women but all those fantasies lasted barely 3-4 seconds after that my brain just shifted to other thoughts. I can’t listen to one of my favourite songs because it’s sung by an attractive woman and I’m getting these thoughts about me liking her. I don’t understand what’s going on with me, because whenever I read a story here by someone who's struggling with SO-OCD they always write “I don’t want to be gay, I want to go back when everything was normal” but for me every time I get a similar thought it’s immediatly overshadowed by “Of course you’re bisexual, look at all these evidences, you want to be bisexual, you’re just in denial, look at these people, they are real OCD-sufferers, you don’t, you’re welcoming the thoughts, you want them, you’re not comfortable with your heterosexual identity, you always wanted women” etc. etc. It’s so confusing because all along my journey with OCD I had the certainity in myself that I like men but now I feel like I lost this and it feels like a real sexuality crisis now.
JustAHobbitGirl
- Date posted
- 4w
I don’t know what to do
It feels like I don’t who I am anymore. It feels like the heterosexual label just doesn’t fit me anymore. It feels like I am genuinely attracted to women. It feels like I don’t want to be straight anymore. I read about a girl who struggled with SO-OCD until she found out she was actually bisexual, the sexuality she was afraid of her being. There are so many signs pointing out that I’m actually bisexual. I feel like I actually am bisexual I just can’t accept it. I feel like I actually want to be bisexual. All my attraction towards boys feel like a lie now. But that doesn’t make sense because if I was bisexual I WOULD BE ATTRACTED TO MEN TOO. OMG DOES THIS MEAN I’M A LESBIAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF BEING BISEXUAL AND ALL ALONG I WAS AFRAID OF BEING WITH MEN?? PLS SOMEONE HELP ME I GENUINELY DON’T KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE
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