Advice appreciated! I’ve been struggling with what likely is ocd for the past year, with a sexual orientation theme. It recently got kinda bad again so I’m thinking of telling my therapist. Since before ocd hit me, I’ve known I’m bi and I feel like if I were to tell my therapist about HOCD then I should also tell them I’m bi, but idk if I feel comfortable telling them yet. So I don’t know what to do! Should I suck it up and keep managing it myself, should I come out to them or should I not tell them about my sexual orientation and just ask about the OCD?

Hey guys. Trigger warning Soooo I had sexual orientation ocd where I was worried I was truly a lesbian. Now that obsession has stopped bothering me and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m bisexual! Totally okay with that except now my ocd is telling me that the only reason why I think I’m bi is because this obsession has convinced me I’m bi! Woohoo what fucking hell! Yeah, and now I’m suffering from pocd. And since my sexual orientation ocd kinda sorta had some truth to it, I’m terrified all my other obsessions do too! I don’t want reassurance. I just want to know if anyone has any similar experiences to this and how you dealt with it. The anxiety is making me lose sleep and is burying me in my depression.

I have a question for anyone that’s been going through HOCD or any mental illness. If any when they were about to tell their loved ones that they were dealing with ocd did it kind of feel like they were actually like coming out of the closet or something? Because like you know you aren’t gay you know you just want to tell people about your ocd, but for some reason it feels like you might be coming out as gay when that is not the case.

I feel so many discussions of SO-OCD revolve around (mostly) straight identifying people fearing they are gay, or the reverse. But has anyone who identifies as bisexual or queer experienced SO-OCD? I am a woman married to a man, and while my sexual orientation has been reasonably fluid since I was in my teens, I have consistently felt a preference for men, and never felt the need to put a label on my identity (including straight) - and I’ve never hidden the fact that I’ve had flings with women. About three years ago I had the “brain broke” moment where I suddenly out of nowhere thought: “I am bisexual, I have been masquerading as straight since I’m married to a man, and I have to come out to everyone I know.” It was all I could think about. The fact that I felt shame accompanying it made me fear that I might be using the term bisexual to cover up the fact that I was actually gay. It particularly messes with my head because OCD is characterised as “unwanted” thoughts, but actually I am occasionally attracted to people of other genders, so these thoughts are not always unwanted. Which makes me wonder whether I am just in denial, and I don’t have OCD at all? And thus the cycle continues… Would just love to hear from anyone else if they relate to this!