- Username
- sim8964
- Date posted
- 5y ago
Oh okay gotcha! People use HOCD for both terms sometimes so I got confused!!! Okay so I had SEVERE sexual orientation OCD, I convinced myself I was gay and thought it would never go away, that i would always be plagued with being a “lesbian”. But I am totally back to normal now!!! It’s completely gone, it’s just your fear of being gay that causes you to be “sure” you “must be gay”. I had the exact same thing and I am not. It doesn’t change your sexual identity, it’s just the stress hormones released by your anxiety that make your normal sex drive not as strong :)
Please believe me, I struggled so long and so hard, ever day with it. But it is gone now. Completely. I still feel anxious, but anxiety apart from the story we give it is SO EASY to extinguish!
Gotcha, I’m glad to hear that! I’ve also been away for 2 weeks for the holidays, so I haven’t seen him at all in person and we’ve only been talking via FaceTime and text. So I’ve had a lot of free time to be ruminating and worrying. Any tips on dealing with the guilt thing around the thoughts?
Just knowing that those thoughts are just neural pathways ocd has carved out, but the more you just dismiss them as fake and just like not worth thinking about at all bc I promise you no matter how bad or real they seem, they aren’t. I spent a YEAR worried about my sexuality and I wasted that time worrying about something that wasn’t going to be changed no matter how much I thought i was lesbian, I wasn’t. Working on dismissing them creates neural pathways the thought patterns that are positive, and positive thought patterns release more dopamine and feel good chemicals so you will begin to feel better day to day :) does that help? Let me know if you are stuck on something specific
Hi Dianaaa, I’m interested to know what kind of ERP or things you did to challenge and ultimately dismiss the HOCD?
Harm ocd? Or sexual orientation ocd?
Sexual orientation OCD
I feel like I won’t be truly happy with him unless I tell him about it- then I know that’s exactly what the anxiety wants me to do, because that gives it attention when it doesn’t need to be given attention.
Tell him! Be honest about it but also include “that’s what my ocd makes me feel.” Let him know you are aware of it. If he is a good guy and right for you; he will not judge you and understand. We all have weird things we think about, even people without ocd!
Had a feeling you might say that- and I agree that if he’s a good guy and the right guy he’d understand. But I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to give the ocd the attention that I know it is craving, and I don’t want to give in to what my brain is telling me to do. It’s almost like “tell them or else ___ will happen”. But if I don’t, and I just keep going, and that horrible thing doesn’t happen- maybe that will help me understand it’s all in my head and it will go away. All I know is that I’ve never met anyone like him and I could see us being so amazing together- I couldn’t imagine him not being around. The OCD is just making it so hard for me to let all this go ??
I don’t think you will be giving ocd attention if you tell him - I think it will be reducing and harmful to the ocd because you aren’t letting it make you do anything, you are purposefully letting him know. People with other things like severe depression or scizophrenia — more severe but still - need to inform their significant others of this fact bc it takes the attention back onto the person despite being honest about your struggles. Don’t tell him Bc if I don’t then_____, tell him bc I think he deserves to know if you all have a shot. But that’s my opinion, hope I’m helping
I actually did not do erp, just waited it out in agony for a year!!! Convinced myself I was lesbian, has groinal responses, literal false attraction that was so real, every single night for a year. I just learned whenever we obsess about something with ocd, it’s completely ego dystonic, which it’s never about something we are or will do, only things we are afraid of doing. This fact does not make the ocd go away but it takes you out of trapping yourself in the fear...
so back in july i made a mistake of going behind my partner’s back and hanging out with an old guy friend (who i had a romantic past with) and while i was hanging out with him i had a great time but man my thoughts were going crazy. i found him attractive, funny, etc. i’ve known him for years and everytime we would talk i felt there was some type of tension. like romantic or something. well i felt it again when we hung out and immediately regretted it because i know i love my boyfriend a lot and i felt like a horrible person for doing something like that. i couldn’t hide it from him any longer than i did (not even 3 days) so i told him and he got really upset. at the time i didn’t know what i want, either my boyfriend or that friend. i decided to stay with my boyfriend and ever since i’ve been getting crazy intrusive thoughts about my old friend (i blocked him so i don’t have contact with him). a few months later (now) i know that i want and love my boyfriend, i don’t want to be with anyone else. but i’ve been getting so many intrusive thoughts about that guy and seeing certain posts just remind me of him even when i don’t want them to. then my brain starts to spiral - ‘what if you actually want to be with him instead and you’re just in denial right now’ or something like ‘you dont love your boyfriend, if you did you wouldnt be having these thoughts’ and i’m just so..drained. i’m so tired of thinking about this guy, i seriously don’t want to think about him. i just want to be happy with my boyfriend. i keep telling myself i know what i want, because i do. i want to be with my bf and i want to be happy with him…i love him so much. but my brain just tries to tell me otherwise. i know i messed up and i’m paying the price for it. maybe i do deserve this. i just wish i could erase everything, my past, etc. and just move on. my boyfriend doesn’t hold what i did against me but he’s well aware of what happened and i know how it made him feel. i would do anything to take it back because he doesn’t deserve that, he never did. and i seriously want to be better for him. but these constant thoughts i get are always getting in the way and almost making me feel hopeless. i haven’t told my bf about these thoughts because i’m worried he would take it the wrong way. i really don’t think i should tell him because i know for a fact it would send us both down a spiral and i don’t want that. but, ocd will always try to get what it wants. anyone else going through something similar? some common humanity would probably ease my mind a bit. (in a non-compulsive way. or maybe this is a compulsion. idk.)
i have recently had really bad confession ocd. i have an amazing happy healthy relationship, and i’m slowly destroying it. now, it’s come as far as me confessing thoughts that i probably shouldn’t be having to him. i feel so much guilt and anxiety if i don’t tell him, but telling him is just ruining our relationship and hurting him. i don’t mean these thoughts, i love him and want only him. i also confess at least 5+ times a day. I struggle with not even knowing if some things im confessing that i’ve done in the past are real or fake. it’s like i don’t know if what i did was real or not. im trying my best to stop confessing, but it’s hard because how am i supposed to know if it’s something he really needs to know or not? i don’t wanna lose him by telling him stupid stuff i should have kept to myself. he’s my dream person. it’s hard to act normal around him when i’m having the urge to confess. that leads me to not hold it in when he asks if i’m okay, because then if i say yes i’m lying so then i have to confess. we are very open about things, but it just has gone too far on my end. if anyone has any tips on how to overcome this please share.
How do you guys cope when your obsessions target people you’re close to? I recently had a sexual thought about a friend of mine and it started snowballing. We’ve been texting more and my brain keeps saying that it’s flirty, and if I were in a situation to kiss her I would. She’s a close friend of mine and I didn’t have sexual thoughts about her until recently. They make me feel disgusting and guilty, and the onset made me feel like my body was on fire. It’s starting to latch on to other friends, and my brain is saying I’m “tempted” by them, and if they came on to me I would give in and like it. I had SO-OCD as a child, and did engage in some play kissing with friends before my SO-OCD happened. (My OCD latches on to that a lot too as proof that I’m gay). I remember the anxiety I had about what I had done with my friend, and this feeling I have now imagining kissing my friends feel similarly. I don’t usually write on here to avoid confessing and reassurance seeking, but I’m at a loss. I have a heavy feeling in my chest and I don’t want to have the thoughts, but part of me thinks I might be liking them and maybe it’s internalized homophobia. I could handle being bi, but the thoughts about my friends and losing control feels so wrong. I’m just confused and want to know how to process when OCD starts attaching to people I’m close to.
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