Do you ever look at a picture of a guy and a girl and this thought pops up" would you rather date a girl or guy?" I immediately started trembling and I was so stuck. The girl was really pretty but I don't want a girl and the guy was average looking but I also didn't know him well so I can't possibly date him. Then I suddenly got society thoughts "since the girl is prettier would you date her?" "Are you saying the guy because society forced this on you?" OMG :(( This is so twisted :( I care more about personality than looks and I've only ever liked guys. I have a few beautiful female friends and they have amazing personalities but I don't have feelings for them. My HOCD tells me that I do and I've always liked the same-sex since I was little and that I've always "felt different".

Maybe that was a compulsion, I'm not sure.

@stars Which bits do you think were compulsions?

@Scoggy I'm not sure but the part about dating?

@stars From what I can see, your initial thought was an intrusive thought. You trying to answer that thought instead of dismissing it as unimportant was a compulsion. After you decided that you didn't want a girl and didn't want to date the guy, a non-OCD brain would then drop the topic: the answer would be "I wouldn't want to date either of these people". But because of your high anxiety and feelings of the topic's importance and urgency, you pushed back on the thoughts by trying to say that if you had to pick, you'd go with the guy because you're straight, which is a compulsion (both reiterating to yourself that you're straight, and going along with the obsessive urges to answer which one you'd date, are compulsions). At this point you felt very stressed. Then you had the further intrusive thoughts "would you date her since she's prettier?", and "if you wouldn't, is that because of heteronormativity?". After those you continued to analyse, ruminate and argue with your thoughts, which are compulsions. You repeated your own reasoning and understanding around your preference for males, in resistance to OCD's suggestions, which is a compulsion. Ideally, you could cut off this OCD loop at any point in it. You do have power here, you'll have power the next time too. You could choose not to try to answer the initial intrusive question, seeing as it's obsession-related. Instead of answering it, you could refocus on what you were doing at the time, and wait for the anxiety to pass away again. After deciding you wouldn't choose to date either of them, you could resolve to not spend your time deciding which you'd choose if you really had to choose, and do something else instead. You can choose not to remind yourself that you're straight, too. That would probably have prevented the new 2 intrusive thoughts. But after those 2 further thoughts, you can choose to not go over your reasoning for why you like men and your arguments against the idea that you like women. Those compulsions of arguing with it in particular only strengthen OCD. You could choose not to do analysis of the problem and not try to figure it out. There are always opportunities to choose with OCD. I deliberately refer to myself as doing OCD rather than having OCD, as it's a set of maladaptive behaviours which I choose to do or not to do in each moment. There are always other options. So long as you can identify mental compulsions like analysis, rumination, problem solving, answering intrusive questions arguing with intrusive suggestions, pushing away intrusive feelings etc, then you can choose not to do them. It really is like breaking a bad habit like smoking. The urges and cravings are still going to be there for a while, but not forever. Spending all your time dwelling on thinking about cigarettes any time the thought of one pops into your head is a surefire way to get sucked back into addiction. Instead of arguing with, analysing or trying to solve the thoughts and ideas to get it to go away, treat them like you don't really care. Even when you feel like you do and your adrenaline is up to 11, do the actions of a person who doesn't care: not dwelling, not ruminating, not answering. Get some distance from this theme by surfing the wave of uncertainty. You don't need to do all this analysis. You only have to make whatever choices makes you happy AS AND WHEN they arise. Your brain is a suggestion-making machine, you have the power to dismiss suggestions which do nothing but take up your time, make you miserable and confuse you.