Soph
- Date posted
- 5y
lms2000lms2000
- Date posted
- 5y
ultimately i think the point of this is that sexuality exists on a spectrum. you can find people of the same sex attractive and occasionally have sexual feelings towards them but choose to be with someone of the opposite sex and be very attracted to them. even people who have never had same sex attraction their entire lives and have been happily married to people of the opposite sex can become attracted to someone of the same sex later in life. ocd is trying to make us safe and trying to get rid of all the unwanted feelings so that we’ll never have to deal with them again, but there is no such thing as “safe.” we just have to exist and accept whatever comes our way, and sometimes that may be some attraction to the same sex but it doesn’t have to change everything about who we are. but of course that’s way easier said than done and i still struggle a ton ?
Gainz32Gainz32
- Date posted
- 5y
I mentioned this to someone else, but there is a clear difference between physical admiration and sexual/romantic attraction. I am a guy and never had a problem with HOCD, until my late 20’s when my anxiety flared up. So just thinking about that rationally helped me. Then it clicked to me that I could think someone is attractive/good looking without there being a sexual/romantic component to it. Just like I can think a dog is a good looking dog without there being some deeper meaning.
js94js94
- Date posted
- 5y
How long did you suffer with it for ?
hateocd123hateocd123
- Date posted
- 5y
It's not that easy once you start getting groinal responses and it makes you think it IS sexual attraction.
Gainz32Gainz32
- Date posted
- 5y
@hateocd123 Yes but you have be able to sit with the groins response and realize that it is not a true arousal and only happening because you are checking on it and hyper focused there, but until you sit with the uncomfortable sensation you will never know and will live in your head. I had it for about 6 months, then I decided to say fuck it and confront it because life was miserable. I’d rather be gay and happy than be stuck in my head an miserable. It’s really just an awareness thing that once it gets into your head it gets stuck there. Like prior to those thoughts I never had any concern about being gay. I was always into women and always masturbated thinking about women and doing sexual things with women, then all of a sudden these thoughts appear and enter my awareness, but what’s changed? Nothing just that I became aware of some troubling thoughts that I didn’t agree with. So I sat with the anxiety and challenged it. I challenged myself to pick out attractive dudes and sit with the thoughts, then over time my brain calmed down and realized that admiring someone physically is not the same as wanting to have sexual or romantic relationships. I remember when I was younger i used to read body building magazines and admire the physiques and I’d go to the gym and workout to try and get a similar physique. 6 pack abs, nice pecs, etc... I NEVER ONCE THOUGHT IT WAS GAY, I would admire the physiques not in a sexual way but because I used it as motivation so that I would become more attractive to WOMEN. So that is proof that you can look at someone and like something about them, their hair, their smile, their body, etc without it meaning you are gay/bi.
js94js94
- Date posted
- 5y
@Gainz32 How old r u boss
EstridEstrid
- Date posted
- 5y
Unset theme or content of the thoughts, all of us with OCD has to learn to accept uncertainty. We lean into "maybe maybe not", the more you accept uncertainty the more you will see that the thoughts are just thoughts, nothing more than that.
Related posts
Anonymous
- Date posted
- 25w
Will groinals go away with acceptance
I keep getting these groinal responses when I think about kids or see one and it's really distressing, I only just learned that OCD can make you feel that and it's not actually attraction but it's so hard to remember that and I've seen people talking about accepting uncertainty but I'm so scared to think "maybe it's attraction maybe it's not" instead of "no it's not attraction that's disgusting" and idk what to do
wewillgetthr...
- Date posted
- 21w
Some things that are making me feel alone
Here are some things that make me feel alone and isolated in my journey with sexual orientation OCD: 1. This feels like a complete identity crisis. I think that is what makes it so hard. It seems to go against everything I believe myself to be and who I always have identified as. 2. My compulsions, thoughts, triggers, and everything else that comes along with this disease feels and seems like I’m the only one that struggles with those things. My thoughts and images in my head often seems so real that it can only be me in denial. 3. Because this sub type of OCD is so sexual in nature, it has made my sex life with my husband, a really hard situation. Because I always get afraid and sex that I will think of these thoughts, I subconsciously then think of those thoughts, and if I have any type of feeling associated with those thoughts, it feels like proof that those thoughts are real and that makes it even harder. 4. Because a lot of the pleasure that comes with sex is on hot for me while I’m figuring out in this journey with OCD, my mind has convinced me that it is because I will only feel those things if I were with someone at the same sex (I am a straight female. I have a fear of being homosexual.). Well, all those things have made it really hard for me to function daily, I am doing a lot better at finding ways to combat those. I wanted to offer some of the things that I find that help me move past these thoughts and while it’s not always a perfect fix, it’s really helped. 1. I tried to remind myself daily that while love is a feeling it’s also choice. I have to remind myself to get up every single day and choose my husband not because I always feel like choosing him because that is who I choose. That is who I want. That is who I want to grow a relationship with to have a child with Thus why I always don’t feel that love, I always choose it. And while this can be really hard because just society as a whole has made us have these unrealistic ideas about what love is and made us think that love is just this huge with butterflies and sparks, it’s not always that. 2. I try to remind myself that these are just thoughts. And thoughts are not who I am. I don’t have to become the thoughts. I’m not a bad person for thinking of thoughts, and I don’t have to believe the thoughts. 3. When I get, like I often do, groinal responses to the things that I am thinking or seeing in my mind I just remind myself that those are responses to the anxiety I have. I’m not thinking those because I want to think those, but it’s in a response too The fear that I will think those and that I will get that response and then in turn I get the response. 4. I tried to remind myself that this isn’t a fear of coming out like if I was gay, this is a fear associated with a thought that I would be because that’s not who I am. If I really was gay, I would like the thought I would like the pleasure and I would be afraid of coming out. But in this situation, I don’t want any of the thoughts not because I’m afraid of coming out of this because it’s not who I am. If that makes sense.
edimichael
- Date posted
- 17w
acceptance
it feels like i accepted being gay and thats part of who i am but i still feel that tension and fake attraction whenever i see a man and i feel like i could be able to have a sexual intercourse with a man even though i dont want it is it still hocd or just denial? like i am feeling okey but there is still that doubt that how can i know that im not gay if i dont get disgusted by gay things or gay personality traits and at the same time i want to feel normal again like before
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