- Username
- getwellsoon
- Date posted
- 4y ago
i'm a cis lady, and when i have thoughts like this, i use pictures of myself that i enjoy (or just pictures that i feel are a true, objective documentation of what i look like) and put them through a masculine filter to see if i enjoy that as well. sometimes i do like how it looks, sometimes i don't, but remember that you can always explore your gender without any labels attached!!!!! self-exploration is free.
thank you this is so very sweet. i’m actually very comfortable cisgender lady. it’s just mainly the thoughts towards my boyfriend that are bugging me. they are truly scaring me and i wish they would go away but i love this comment. no one has ever said something like this to me before. my family is against any type of freedom of exploration of gender and sexuality. it was really lovely to read this 🤍
If you’re not sure how healthy those exercise were, maybe talk with a therapist who does ERP, or at least maybe read more about it? It sounds like you already know who you are, even if the OCD is attacking that. As for thoughts about your boyfriend, some self check on our own understanding, tolerance, and acceptance of gender and sexuality is good and healthy to keep us all moving forward. However, it again seems like your OCD is going beyond healthy self checking and attacking your love. What a jerk! Here’s where knowing more about ERP or working with an expert could be really helpful. Good luck!
thank you so much for this. i unfortunately can’t talk with a therapist at this moment but i will look more into erp. i’ve been trying to learn to be a good ally all the way around. is just scary how much these thoughts are attacking me
@getwellsoon Scary, absolutely! But it totally makes sense for your OCD to attack your loves in life. I’ve got your back! You fight, and if I can throw any dirty punches at the OCD jerk for you, I totally will.
this made me smile. the same goes for you. I’m always ready to swing a few punches as well. thank you for this
any advice on what you would do
all i’m saying is this definitely all seems like intrusive thoughts
idk how to explain this but i’ll try the best i can lol: ok so one night i was in bed and scrolling through this app and focusing on not doing compulsions for my HOCD (hearing other ppls stories can trigger me sometimes so i use them as exposures). anyway i read a post about someone who had HOCD & TransOCD. i thought “poor guy, that must be really hard”. then of course i thought “am i trans?” but i didn’t even worry about it because it’s one of those things that just isn’t something i need to worry about you know? it almost seems silly to worry about haha. anyway, the thought didn’t give me anxiety—almost at all (because for me it’s just a no brainer). then i started to get all worried about getting TransOCD, even if i really wasn’t fearful about becoming trans. so basically, i know i’m not trans, i’m not questioning who i am, and the thought of being trans doesn’t really make me nervous or afraid (because i just know it’s not true)—i’m just worried that this will turn into another OCD type...and THAT is what i’m obsessing on. how do i help that???
i just did about 40mins of erp scrolling through tiktok watching bisexual videos and boy am i triggered. i noticed myself doing sneaky compulsions tho. for example: the tiktok was like “if you liked these characters when you were young then you’re definitely bisexual” and they’d show the characters for example prince eric and ariel and i remember when i was young how obsessed i was with prince eric like i wanted to full blown marry him and i’d always pretend i was ariel. so then my sneaky compulsion was “you see you’re straight you only liked eric” but this one tiktok almost made me cry and i freaked out because i was overthinking why i almost cried: it was this guy talking about how he was straight his whole life until 2016 where he wasn’t sure and now he’s bi and when i tell you my heart fell to my stomach i wanted to cry but i didn’t i just say with the anxiety the thing is i know you’re not suppose to stop until the anxiety goes down but my anxiety didn’t go down at all it’s rose a lot. like every tiktok i saw it just got higher and higher. am i doing something wrong?
TW: GENDER OCD Okay, I posted a lil while ago about SO-OCD, but I have recently been suffering Gender OCD too. And unlike SO-OCD, this one is blowing a hole through my heart. I have never once questioned my gender. I’ve helped my trans and NB friends come out, and never once thought about my gender. But ever since my SO-OCD started and then died down, the thoughts about my gender cropped up. They range from two thoughts: I’m nonbinary, or I’m a gay trans dude in denial. And the latter one freaks me out so much, because I love reading queer media (I’m bi, and so many of my fave book series focus on gay couples), and my brain uses that as an excuse that I like it because I actually AM a gay guy. The thought is paralyzingly, and I can’t even begin to think of a way to overcome it like SO-OCD because the thought of me ‘accepting’ it as true scares the hell out of me. I can’t enjoy my favourite books anymore, or my favourite TV shows/movies. Anything with a gay couple makes my brain think I want to literally be one of them, when before I could just enjoy it for what it was, a story with queer characters. My connection to my gender is something I’ve always held dear to me, and the thought of being pulled from it is heartbreaking, and also makes me feel extremely guilty because I support trans rights so much, so why am I so scared of being trans/NB? How do I even begin to get over this when the idea of accepting the thought terrifies me? How do I begin to convince the anxiety that just because I enjoyed reading/watching something doesn’t mean I actually want it to happen in real life?
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