I need desperate help I’m confused because when I said I’m not straight it felt true and there wasn’t any anxiety and it felt as if it weren’t ocd. Then I compared it to saying I’m straight and that gave a 5 second relief then a little bit of anxiety. So then I said fuck it and kept saying I’m not straight and it gives me anxiety but it still feels so true and real and as if it’s not ocd and it’s truly happening.

Cheers for the advice much appreciated

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.

@pure093 I try to answer questions when I can here but trying to keep it in the app.

@pureolife I can try to answer questions if you have them though. And if you post or here others may answer too.

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.

@pureolife Do you feel when you accept a thought it’s like accepting that it’s true or real

@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

@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.

@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.