- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
I think I understand what you are trying to say , and I can definitely relate , I honestly hate the gay thoughts the false attractions and I also know they aren’t me , but when this started I was so scared that felt like I wanted to not see things that were really gay or lgbt positive bc I thought it would encourage it which has never been a part of me and that made me even more sad that I felt like I couldn’t support the people I wanted bc of this thing going on in my head But two thoughts I’ve had to help me is 1. People who are gay can have OCD so I would think of them being happy being attractive to someone who is the same gender and then having the same fears anxiety and sadness of reoccurring thoughts of attraction to the opposite sex . 2. I think people who love people know matter who they are or what they identify as would want me to be the person who makes me most comfortable and to have peace of mind
- Date posted
- 4y
i really feel that!! thank you for sharing that
- Date posted
- 4y
I have SOOCD. I am gay and constantly think I’m straight and constantly “check”
- Date posted
- 4y
Oh my god. Oh my god. I’m gonna cry. This is exactly me, just with TOCD. I’m bi, but I had HOCD for a bit and then it morphed into this... and it makes me feel so guilty because I have grown up surrounded by the community and actively fighting for them and their rights. My best friends are trans and nb, and I love them and I see the struggle they go through to stay true to themselves. You saying you feel bad for not actively affirming them because that somehow makes you not an ally... but also the thought of accepting them makes you feel anxious and untrue... you’re not alone in that. It’s so hard. Either I’m scared at the thought of my obsession, or I’m feeling guilty that I’m even feeling scared of the thought in the first place... it’s hard man. It’s really hard. But like so many people say, we are not our thoughts. Our actions tell us so much more about who we are than anything else. At the end of the day, we are all just trying to live our lives to our closest truth: truth that looks different for everyone, but doesn’t invalidate the experience of the other. We got this friend.
- Date posted
- 4y
Also by them I mean the thoughts, not the actual people oopsies. 😬
- Date posted
- 4y
@aurokoi yoooooo thank you for coming thru with ur insight!! everyone’s comments on this thread have been a gift and i’m particularly comforted by urs because it just goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what the specific content or theme of the obsession is, it’s just the fact that our brains are obsessing and glitching over something that makes us uncomfortable and feel distant from how we most comfortably understand ourselves. You honestly just made me feel so affirmed. like I’m not feeling as guilty by the fact that this particular obsession is about being gay because I’m focusing on the fact that I’m obsessing and trying to fix that. By focusing on the fact of obsessing i’m less prone to get caught up in the actual content of the obsession and feel less guilty acknowledging then dismissing the thoughts. It makes it easier to recognize and let pass. ur right this discernment is soo hard and taxing, but honestly being affirmed by other people suffering from this disorder makes me feel validated in the truth that is uniquely mine. ty!!
- Date posted
- 4y
@ocdin2ascension No problem!! Seriously, what you wrote resonated with me so deeply because I saw myself in that feeling like a fake ally. Honestly, I’m not even sure where I read it, but the ‘content of the obsession doesn’t matter. an obsession is an obsession’ statement made me cry one night... OCD is clever and it goes after things that mean a lot to us. For me, it was being sure of myself and finally feeling like I knew who I was, and me finding a space to love and understand everyone in the community. I think because I felt guilty over the fact I was so worried about being trans or even a lesbian made me think of it even more because who advocates for the community and doesn’t accept themselves? Is it just internalized phobias? And then by trying to get myself to ‘accept’ that that’s who I was and ‘explore’ just made me feel worse because ... I didn’t like it and then I felt guilty for not liking it and on and on. I’m sure you know how the spiral goes. Plus, identity themes are so personal, which make it that much harder to work through, because you know.. it deals with US. But I think we’re on the right track here. Who cares what the content of the thought is? The point is that we’re stuck in a loop of trying to answer a question that doesn’t make us happy to think about. So why think about it? That’s all there is to it. I hope you know you affirmed me too and really did help my brain relax. So THANK YOU!
- Date posted
- 4y
@aurokoi Oop by ‘not think about it’ I mean like... don’t put meaning behind the thought. Do your ERP though haha!!!
- Date posted
- 4y
@aurokoi i just broke down crying in therapy for the first time and I came back to read your powerful words again and they’re hitting so much harder with these tears. i’m so glad i posted this original post and that you and the others here happened to see it. OCD *thrives* off of guilt, and mutually identifying the thought spiral and deligitamizing it allows us to sidestep that guilt-causing rabbit hole and weaken OCD’s tools of oppression. yo the fact that you said it came on especially after you felt a newfound self confidence too...it’s like the devil poking saying, “but what about this?? why don’t you like that?? it must be because ur afraid of it right?? phobia! ur a ____phobe!!” F-THAT. the whole thought process. We are who we are because we love ourselves as we are, period. But of course, as you mentioned, ERP is the main way of proving that lol. Arguing against it won’t get us out, but knowing and being affirmed in some sense of our truth is soo critical for effective ERP as well. thank you so much for pulling up with your story and wisdom i’m screen shotting this thread lol.
- Date posted
- 4y
@ocdin2ascension Ahhh I’m so glad my comments helped!! I really hope you can rise about this soon. If you don’t mind me asking, are you getting therapy for OCD specifically?
- Date posted
- 4y
@aurokoi thanks for your well wishes i extend them to u as well 💓 and yes i’ve been in ocd treatment for about two months now and have been seeing gradual but certain progress
- Date posted
- 4y
@ocdin2ascension Aw I’m so glad you’re getting the support you need!! I wish you the best 💞 maybe it’s time I visit a specialist too.
- Date posted
- 4y
@aurokoi i highly suggest it! if it’s available for u via insurance or whatever works for u. i really hope u can because OCD has felt like it’s the matrix in my mind that has only gotten worse the longer i didn’t know how to handle it. and my therapist has been helping to pull me out of it in ways i couldn’t see for myself. but they’re other resources out there like books and great articles i guess it just depends on what you need but either way.....you will prevail :)
Related posts
- Date posted
- 24w
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.
- Date posted
- 22w
As a lesbian with SO-OCD, I feel so helpless. It's truly exhausting because no one I know understands what I'm going through. The first response is always, "You're just confused" or "You don't have to know yet." But that's not the issue, I do know. I just never see any lesbians with SO-OCD so I feel so invalidated. These thoughts flood my brain constantly, forcing me to analyze my reactions to every man I see. I feel trapped in an endless cycle of "testing" myself, trying to prove that I don't like them. But my brain fights back, telling me I do want to love a man, making it feel real even though don't want it. It's terrifying. At this point, it's hard to even hold onto my identity as a lesbian because I'm so overwhelmed. I don't know if this is what real attraction is supposed to feel like, and that fear eats away at me. The truth is, when I think about being with a man, all I feel is disgust and fear-but my brain twists that into doubt. I hate it. I'm at the point where I'm scared I'm going to have to accept something I don't want because I don't know if this will ever go away. I miss who I was before all this.
- Date posted
- 11w
I wouldn’t really say I have SO-OCD, but it manifests in some areas of my TOCD. Like if I see a woman for example my thoughts will go “what if I like her but as a man?” like my thoughts say I’m a straight man instead of a straight woman. And it’s really bothering me. If I see an attractive woman my brain will re-wire and imagine myself as a man looking at an attraction woman and it gets super uncomfortable that I have to like shake my head and say “no no no no no” multiple times to get the thought out. I know that counts as a compulsion but it’s hard to not do it because it’s so triggering. Now I don’t mind if I like women, however I’m really scared that I’m actually a straight man who likes women (or at least a bisexual man, considering I like men) and I hate it because I don’t want to be a man. Like I’ll think of my desired relationship as a woman dating a man but my OCD will switch it up to me being the man dating the woman, which is the opposite of what I want. I don’t want to be a man at all and I don’t want to date a woman, both of those are the opposite of my desires, but I’m still so scared. I’ll accept myself if I actually like women and am a bisexual woman, however I heard that being bisexual can mean being trans which scares me (for the record it was said in reddit by a sub which is mainly focused on a pseudoscientific phenomenon, that is still believed by the members to be true, so it’s definitely not a trustworthy statement, but my OCD will use anything to work against me) Does anyone here relate a little? 🥲
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