- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
OCD is often triggered by stress. But your exact theme has more to do with your values, not your circumstances. Plenty of people with OCD can go through breakups and not get that theme. But whatever themes and triggers they do struggle with will likely feel more intense due to general stresses of going through a breakup. You aren’t going to figure out exactly why you have this theme and even if you could it would do absolutely nothing to help you recover. What you need is ERP with an ocd specialist, CBT, and mindfulness training. STOP trying to figure this out. That’s a compulsion. Lean into uncertainty: “maybe this is caused by my breakup. Or maybe it’s caused by something else. I don’t know and I don’t need to know.” STOP comparing your attraction to you ex and all other men. That’s a compulsion. When you feel the urge to do this, remind yourself: “checking this is a compulsion, and compulsive checking when you have ocd only leads to more uncertainty, not less.” STOP reading stories online. This is also a compulsion. Internet research is super common and it’s about seeking reassurance. These stories will not help you. Do people break up and then come out as gay? YUP! Does that mean that’s what’s happening or will happen to you? Of course not. And reading these stories over and over again to “make sure” isn’t going to make you any more sure at all. You can tell this is OCD and not an actual case of coming to understand more about your sexuality because of everything I listed above: obsession, compulsion, repeat. Textbook OCD cycle.
- Date posted
- 5y
Thank you, this helps a lot. But of course my mind just thinks "yeah, but" or "what if" and it's a never ending cycle. Also, I read coming out stories because I thought that was a form of erp but all it does is trigger me. For example, if I can relate to their experiences or "signs" then I start freaking out. And no matter what I try to do whether it's read a book, watch a movie, exercise, work, my mind just keeps telling me "your gay" "come out" "your in denial" "your forcing yourself to like men" it's so exhausting and gives me anxiety. I just want to be normal
- Date posted
- 5y
@a01 It sounds like you’re confused about how to do ERP. ERP is supposed to trigger you! That’s the whole idea. And then you’re supposed to resist compulsions during and after being triggered (ie to not engage in any of the things I already pointed out and instead lean into uncertainty.) You mind will always find a “yeah, but” or “what if.” That’s OCD in action. It’s up to you how you respond. You can: perform compulsions to try to answer those questions or reason with each point endlessly OR lean into uncertainty, accept all possibilities, and move on. Let the anxiety and fear just be and leave on its own when it’s ready.
- Date posted
- 5y
@pureolife PS you are 100% normal.. for someone with OCD. And luckily we’ve developed a lot of great treatments that do work with ocd and we can improve over time with proper treatment. Are you able to see an ocd specialist?
- Date posted
- 5y
You will never be able to convince yourself that it's ocd .......... Trust your behaviours - if you're doing compulsions or if you're ruminating then most likely it's ocd
- Date posted
- 5y
You’re ruminating and engaging in a reassurance and checking compulsion to try and answer it.
- Date posted
- 5y
So what is the difference between someone who is questioning or in denial of their orientation and someone who is experiencing ocd?
- Date posted
- 5y
@a01 That’s not a question anyone can really answer with the kind of clarity OCD would demand. The issue isn’t that you’re having the types of thoughts you’re having, it’s the obsessing and ritualizing you’re doing around the thought. Like checking for reassurance or trying to answer if you do or don’t have OCD.
- Date posted
- 5y
@NOCD Advocate - Carl Cornett I don't know what to do anymore my mind is making me so depressed
- Date posted
- 5y
@a01 There’s treatment that is very effective and works. That usually involves some sort of medication and ERP.
- Date posted
- 5y
The thing is idk if it's really ocd because I've never been diagnosed. And I've been to 3 different therapists who specialize in ocd and whenever I tell them my thoughts and what I'm experiencing they make the indication to explore my past and my sexuality or my relationships etc. Which is not what I need to do. I'm also so scared that it gets to a point where I become crazy or suicidal or not able to live a normal life. My bf of 8 years just broke up with me because I was "too much" and now nobody is going to want to be with me I'm just so depressed
- Date posted
- 5y
It sounds like you’ve gone to therapists who actually have no understanding of pure O themes. They probably work with contamination clients or other people with overt compulsions but not mental compulsions. That’s a common hurdle to run up against in getting treatment (happened to me!) and I’m so sorry. Their advice would be fine for someone without ocd but for someone with pure o themes it’s actually harmful. I’m also sorry to hear about your bf. OCD can take so much from us when it’s not managed properly and we’re not given the correct resources and education. Are you able to work with the therapists available on this app? They are well versed in mental compulsions and pure O. I’ve been exactly where you are and I’m sorry you’re suffering right now. I promise that with proper treatment OcD is actually very manageable for most people and you can/will feel happier and more in control of your life. If you can’t work with therapists in this app, just be sure you’re seeking out someone who’s worked with pure O clients — even better with people with HOCD themes. Ask those questions up front and don’t waste your time with anyone who hasn’t heard of this. Also know that that’s unfortunately very common in modern mental health care. That’s why I had to seek out an OCD specialist at an OCD center who diagnosed me right away as a pretty classic case after others failing to do so. I worked with her for about 7 months and regained so much of my life back. Recovery is very realistic, you just need the right help!
- Date posted
- 5y
@a01 Maybe start with an ocd workbook or other readings while you seek out a qualified therapist. And just let yourself grieve for awhile. You lost someone important and that feeling of loss will take time to heal.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
i'm positive i was attracted to women before this got a thought when i was high thought really really deeply into and changed my life now im 24/7 scared im gay ive always been attracted to girls but early in my sexual life where im at ive always got with girls and seemed a little disapointed after would love help and to hear past experiences
- Date posted
- 20w
I feel like I'm lying to myself, like I just don't accept that I'm gay, I don't want to be gay, I don't want to feel any kind of attraction anymore, I want to go to a psychologist to find out if I really have hocd or if it's just an excuse, because it feels like I really am gay, but nothing was authentic, it all started with thoughts that made me panic extremely hard and I felt like crying and I had delusions, I don't understand why this is happening to me, I didn't like any boys before the thoughts appeared, but exactly one day after they appeared, all the boys were attractive, of all ages, I want to recover :( I'm only 17 years old, for about 2 months I've been having thoughts, I don't know what to do, I can't go to a psychologist, I need help :(
- Date posted
- 17w
MY STORY i’ve grown up in a mostly supportive family and area and we are not homophobic. i grew up knowing what gay people were and i don’t care i grew up not to care. im from nj. my parents are friends with a lesbian couple and we see them once in while. i grew up watching people like joey graceffa whose gay. i also had some school friends that were gay like this kid kevin and this girl elizabeth. i also babysit a little gay boy who likes to dress up as a girl and i always tell him to embrace it and defend him. i wouldn’t care if a friend was gay or anything like i wouldn’t care if my sister was it would just make me rethink things about myself i think. from a young age i liked male attention and had labeled boys as crushes from my mom says. i dont think i liked girls when i was younger and my mom said it was only guys. but idk maybe there was. However i do remeber hairy men when i was younger would gross me out like with black hair and pale. my mom said every since i was a little girl i would tell her i liked boys. as i got older and in middle school i always wanted guys to want me and think i was funny and pretty and i would get awkward around them and nervous around them. but i remeber i didn’t have specific things i found hot or attractive and if someone said something was hot i would just agree and start telling myself it was hot even when i didn’t care i just wanted to be cool. then hocd hit at 13-15 during covid where i was so confused. the first time i had hocd i would like not avoid the thoughts i would do a lot of testing to figure it out for hours and hours in diffrent ways and would feel the same arousal and attraction im feeling now. but i remeber wanting to end up straight and try and rule out gay stuff. but it wasn’t avoidance i didnt have anything against gay people. when the thoughts were still there i still would only act on stuff with boys. when i first had it i remeber crying to my mom for like a month and i was like whatever she’s not helping im gonna figure this out by myself. that’s when i started testing myself for two years. over time it was just there. ofc it was distressing but i don’t remember much. slowly when i went to high school it faded because i loved going to parties and flirting with guys and talking about them and thinking what boy am i gonna kiss tonight it’s gonna be a crazy night. when covid ended and we went back to real like i started going to parties and kissing boys. i started dating one boy and we would talk all the time just not really hangout so we broke up because i wanted more male attention and was kinda bored of the relation shop. i started hu with this one boy and like didn’t really know if i was into it cause i kinda wanted to hoe around and we were kinda like locked in and i didn’t know if i wanted that. so he got the hint i wasn’t into it and stopped talking to me moved on to another girl and got popular in the span of like two weeks. after this i was obsessed with him and got all nervous to see him and i always just wanted to be like can we go back to the way we were. we then started to “hate” eachother and i was so sad all the time he didn’t want me anymore and moved on. we hooked up in and off for two years. then i started hooking up with this one kid cause i always thought he was really funny and chill. we hooked up for a little and then i started to get the ick. i then got with like two other boys at parties. so then we stopped talking and i started talking to the “hate eachother kid” again. we then started dating and he’s my current boyfriend of a little over a year. all these instances made me feel good and i loved the attention and drama. but i struggled with committing with people. i don’t know if this all for validation because i loved when men wanted me it gave me an ego boost and still does even if i didn’t really want them or couldn’t get it to last with a boy. i’m scared it was all for attention and confidence there attention gave me. i liked feeling like a baddie. i liked when the hot funny guys liked me now at 18 it’s back and for six months all i been doing is talking to my mom my sister and my dad about it constantly researching and checking and for those six months i was in a haze of just despair. i was also in erp but it was so bad i couldn’t sit with the distress so i didn’t make much progress and my pyscuatrust told me to stop for a while until we get my brain right with meds. after three weeks no erp and more meds of seretonin and rexulti i finally don’t feel distress or anxious but the feelings of attraction are still there. i thought there supposed to vanish. i’m from nj and from a supportive family and ig supportive environment and friends. i’m 18. and in high school okay so growing up my mo said i only liked guys and would talk about guy crushes and had two celebrity guy crushes. this was all the way up into middle school. then when middle school came around i started liking this guy cause he was funny and popular. then we started dating and everytime he would do something affectionate i would start crying and get so tense and freak out so i broke up with him because he made me so nervous . a year later i still liked him and i got back together with him and the same thing happened so i broke up with him. i think during middle school i liked guys. my mom said i did. i also would get really nervous when any of them would come around to hangout and i wouldn’t talk. but i would also just follow what my friends and sister said. if they said a guy was hot i would just agree. i dont know if i actually found them attractive. i still kinda do this to this day. then covid hit for two years. during those two years i was in my house house and got hocd. so i had hocd sexual intrusive thoughts only and had the groinal really bad. but i would still try and have crushes on guys and think i did. but my hocd also attached itself to one of my pretty friends who was a girl. it made me have a lot of sexual thoughts that i would masturbate to about her. it was about her waist and stuff and it made me loose myself. before hocd me and her were bestfriends and really close and im not sure if i had feelings for her. i mean i was always jealous cause all the guys always wanted her and thought she was pretty. then we got out of covid and i was now in high school. the hocd slowly faded my freshman year. in the begining of freshman year there was this tall brunette guy who i started talking too for months and started dating and i would get all nervous when he came around. i really liked him and enjoyed talking to him. then we broke up cause we never hung out. after that for the next two years i developed what i thought two be two genuine crushes. i would make out with cute guys at parties for the experience and to add cute guys to my kids list. basically hocd was gone but i did this one thing sometimes i did is i would always try to prove i was straight to my mom. like if we were watching tv i would say a guy was hot. i didn’t want her to think i was gay even though she wouldn’t care at all but i would do this because she was the only one i would talk to about my sexual intrusive thoughts and feelings. i was hooking up with my guy best friend but then started to looses interest but he was still obsessed. one day he caught on i wasn’t into it started hanging out with older people and going to there parties and started hooking up with this older girl. i got super jealous and heartbroken cause he didn’t care about me. i don’t know if this heartbreak and crying was because he got popular, he wasn’t giving me attention, we weren’t friends anymore or because i actually liked him. i always had a thing for him after this. i started going to the older people parties and i always wanted to see him there and make him jealous. one and half years later we started talking again and we started dating. once we started dating we started having sex. almost every time or most of the time i finish when he eats me out, we have actual sex or if we’re just humping. we say i love you and stuff. ths first six months we would do everything together like just little shopping trips or whatever. we were always hanging out. then it started to dial down and i started getting annoyed with him sometimes which my mom and sister said was normal. but i still said love you and we would hangout and have sex but idk. i would have thoughts like we aren’t going to last because he’s not smart enough, and sometimes my mom would say this too. but she would also say how much he loved me and how he was such a sweet guy and how he would do anything for me. but idk i just wouldn’t feel it. like i still showed pda and did like him. would a lesbian who didn’t know it yet likely date a guy for a year and a half at 18, have sex like once a week, have orgasmed during penetration, creamed, squirted finished by his hands and mouth then hocd hit again. this time much worse. it was even stronger it felt like with the feelings. the first three months i was in this haze and was crying everyday that i might be gay and how i really really really didn’t want to be. i still have hocd and im in therapy and on medication. i cant tell if my attraction to men is real. my mom says it is and she knows me and im not gay and ive shown genuine excitement about guys. my sister says the same thing. but it feel like ive convinced myself ive been doing it to fit in. the thoughts got bad and ive told my mom my sister my dad and ive told three friends. my mom and sister ive told the details too or the intrusive thoughts and false attraction. i’ve always found women attractive and i find it easier to find them attractive like physically but never felt this way can i conclude im not lesbian? or like is it likely my attraction to men hasn’t been genuine
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