I know that I’m not gay, but there’s always these thoughts telling me that I am. Or that I might be, there will be intrusive thoughts that make me cringe and make me stop whatever I’m doing because that simply isn’t me. It’s not only with gay thoughts, it seems like every week a new form of intrusive thoughts take over and make me argue with myself. For instance, one week it may be gay thoughts, the next it might be self harm thoughts, and the next it’ll be whether I love my girlfriend or not. I try to let the thoughts happen but i fear that if I do then they might be true and I know that they aren’t so I try to fight them.

The first thing that really helped me was talking to my OCD therapist. I had a breakthrough when i told him exactly the thing I thought I couldn't tell anyone about gay ocd. He was like oh yeah you're testing. As soon as he said it I felt relieved and a lot of the resistance went away just with the realization that what i was doing in my head was no evidence of being gay or a terrible person it was the ocd testing to reduce anxiety and gain assurance. That was towards the end of 5 years of ocd therapy with a specialist. Even then i was still fearful of sharing what was happening in my head for fear it would turn out to be evidence of "gayness." Basically, sharing what you don't think is acceptable with people who do accept you no matter what and also who understand ocd help(Ed)s reduce the energy behind compulsions a lot, at least for me it did. Maybe you can see that your process follows a similar pattern. You have a thought(obsession) you believe is distressing or wrong and and you perform a compulsion to reduce the anxiety or gain security. In your case arguing with your thoughts seems to be the compulsion. You could start to allow yourself to experience the thought without arguing. Maybe at first delay arguing for 30 seconds and see if you can extend the time as you realize that the thoughts aren't harmful or linked to reality. I'll go back to my original statement about accepting all your thoughts. When you watch a murder movie the image of a man killing another person goes through your mind. That doesn't make you a killer. Imagine a pink elephant in your minds eye. Are you a pink elephant? No you're not. Think of turd now. Lol does that make you a turd? No it doesn't. So you are not your thoughts. Thinking about stuff doesn't make you that. Of course this primarily applies if you aren't actually doing the things but even then you aren't you're thoughts.

I had a similar experience as a 6 year old child playing with another child. I saw a show about a talk show host with ocd when I was 11 or so and was like I have that exact thing and told my mom and she was like oh, no you don't have that. Anyway, i think it's pretty normal for kids to have those thoughts. I think the difference with ocd is we think it means something and resist.

I’ll sit here and argue with myself saying that I know that I’m not gay, and that I’m not attracted to guys to try and fight any intrusive thought coming in. Whenever I worry about suicide or depression I do the same thing, I’ll say that I live a good life and that self harm is never an option. And it’s the same with my relationship

Your fused with your thoughts. I've begun to accept my thoughts and find myself resisting them but them more I accept all of them and feel the effects of the thoughts in my body the more they disapate. For me there is an underlying false belief at times that my thoughts and the emotions they represent are fixed or real. That makes it more difficult to accept them. It's not true though. All my thoughts are acceptable. There is nothing wrong with having the thoughts or experiencing them. Once accepted new thoughts and emotions can take their place. Your disturbance is coming from the belief that what you are going through is not ok. It is ok. Thoughts and emotions are not external actions in your case. Nor in mine.

Yes exactly. Just because you have a thought doesn't make it true. It also doesn't mean anything about you. It might be hard to see at first and cause anxiety but that's ok. The more you can accept all your thoughts and see they are not you and don't mean anything the more fluid it becomes. Really any thought that comes in is ok.

it's not a big deal to have thoughts like that. I like to think I'm in control of my thoughts but the reality is I'm much more free when the thoughts can just flow. Accepting all the thoughts.

I'm not a therapist so I can only share my experience with it and with getting better. What I was describing in a post before about allowing yourself to experience it without arguing, first for a short time and then increasing the length is a form of ERP. A therapist would be able to give you more structure and it would work better. If you feel like it's impeding you that much internally it would be worth talking to a professional. It's a gradual thing. You wouldn't just go from arguing with yourself all the time to zero overnight. If you can build up the time you accept or experiencing what's going on that's progress.