Hi Everyone. I am a 27 years old married straight man. Month and a half ago I had an intrusive thought that I am gay. I started having intrusive thoughts. I started reading the book “Overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts”. It was very good for a while I started practicing. I started exposing myself. It got very confusing , it would say you have to accept , let the thoughts come. I would do it, but then again it will say Ignore them and dont do any entanglement. Right now I am in the worst state of my mind, I can not think clearly, Like I dont know how to think , or cant keep calm in my mind, my mind is always asking questions etc. Cant even focus always scared of that there might be a thought. I started ignoring thoughts and suppressing them. It started physical pain in my head. I dont know how can I feel better, I am literally in a very poor state and cannot take it anymore.

@pure093 Well that's also what I'm going through too I feel like this is ruining my life like I wish I could talk to a therapist without spending money

@pure093 True but I just wanna get back to normal like has that stuff helped you at all ? And how do I know that this is normal and that I know I'm not gay like if I get this much anxiety thinking about it I have to be straight right

@pure093 Fuckk man I want it to be over with already I do just wanna end my life right now i rather be dead then gay like I'm bit ragging on gay people but I dont wanna be gay at all

@pure093 Well would it be possible to get back to normal? I dont wanna live with this shit any longer

What if you make a habit of reassurance or rechecking ? How do you get rid of it. For example, me I am always into women’s legs, now whenever I am near a dude my mind will say check if you get arroused by this dude’s legs. If i ignore these, it is starting now physical pain in my head.

@croebaen They're very common compulsions. All I can tell ya is that not obeying the urges to do them is the thing which will fix your OCD in the long term, even if it raises your stress levels in the short term. Not responding with compulsions teaches your brain that the urge isn't important or necessary so it'll lessen it and eventually stop giving you the urge. Be careful that you're not just replacing the checking with other mental compulsions (like rumination, reassurance, memory checking etc). Because doing other mental compulsions instead is just as damaging as doing the checking.

@Scoggy Like I am okay with being gay. I am okay with being bisexual either. It is just I want to get rid of reassurance and stuff. I am okay with anything. Just this reassurance and worries in my head.

@Scoggy Memory checking is also my problem. I almost got rid of it.

@SteelersFan1998 Can you suggest me some? Whenever I put the therapist here, it just asks me my state and say there is none in Idaho. So yeah.