Question (and venting) about ERP I’m going to want to do ERP, but I’m really scared. I don’t know how I will be able to deal with the exposure, especially for hocd. I’m Catholic, and when I’m not experiencing a bad episode, I stand firm in my values and don’t doubt them. I don’t want to watch pornography. I don’t want to do anything unchaste. I truly believe that it’s a sin, and watching any kind of porn would be awful to me. I also used to have a mild addiction to masturbation, so I really am just scared. I’m scared that an exposure I will have to do will involve watching same-sex porn. It’s not even the fact that it’s same-sex. It’s the fact that it’s porn. I’m scared that I’ll fall back into masturbation. I did this summer, and it was awful. I don’t have these values and beliefs because I’m blindly following what I’m told. I have truly felt the effects of watching pornography and consistently masturbating. It made me feel awful before I was even Catholic. It made me feel dirty and wrong. Not just because someone told me it is. But because it feels wrong. It’s not natural. I started doing it at a very young age to try to understand what my abuser had done to me. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to have to put aside my values to heal. I don’t want to have to go to confession and say “I watched porn to treat my OCD.” I don’t want to have to go into treatment constantly trying to defend my faith. I’m scared that I’ll get a therapist who tells me my religion is hurting me. Catholic people can suck. But I didn’t grow up with them. I chose to be Catholic. I chose to be religious. I chose this for God. I don’t want to have to turn my face from Him. My OCD is telling me that everyone who reads this will think I’m in denial and I’m ignorant and I’m stupid. Please don’t. That’s all I can say. Please don’t assume what all of my beliefs are. I don’t hold all the same beliefs as some people who are Catholic claim to. I truly believe in Love. I just want to be healed. TL;DR: Will I have to watch same-sex porn if it goes against my religion, values, and beliefs? Is that a requirement in order to heal from hocd?

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.

I don't usually post on here because it could end up becoming a compulsion or could be seen as reassurance seeking but I think I just need a place to vent and to also get some encouragement and peer support. I am really struggling with my intrusive thoughts and feelings today. All of it feels extremely real and convincing. Right now, I feel thoroughly convinced that I have already identified as either a lesbian or bisexual. I have been diagnosed with OCD by both a psychiatrist and a psychologist years ago and I still feel convinced that it isn't OCD. I keep feeling as if I am just using OCD as a cover-up / as an excuse to deny my “actual” sexual orientation / to hide the “fact that I'm actually lesbian / bisexual”. I have been practicing ERP whenever my schedule allows but it's tough... ERP typically works for me but on days like today, it doesn't seem to be working and that makes me doubt if I have OCD or not. At the same time, I am also convinced that ERP isn't working and I am secretly in denial / struggle with comphet / have internalised homophobia (which makes it worse because my family is homophobic and most of my intrusive thoughts have been targeting that / using that as evidence). Feeling really scared and hopeless... 😞