I just read something super interesting that helped me cope with my HOCD/POCD. In the book “Free you’re self from OCD” they explain how a person with contamination OCD may literally feel a tingling or tension where they believe they have been contaminated. Your body literally reacts to an imaginary entity. This is the same sort of thing we experience when we have a false arousal. It’s just the anxiety causing the sensation. And that made me think about all of the times I thought I had a physical sensation and false attraction, it made so much sense. You’re so afraid of having that sensation, that it happens because we’re thinking so hard about it. Very interesting

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.

hey guys, i’m almost fully healed in my socd journey but what’s stopping me is the false atractions. i get them almost 24/7 at this point and to every thing. they feel real and i hate them they make me feel disgusted. they also make me feel like hot and gross but then i see people saying thats what attractions feel like, but i have felt so much attraction to the opposite gender pre all of this and it felt nice and enjoyable not digustinf. i’m also getting false memory trying to show me ‘signal’ from my childhood to prove i’m gay amd i truly don’t know if they’re real. it’s so degrading and at this point i feel like govining up. pelesse if you have any advice or even if your going through the same thing just let me know. ocd is so terrible

I’ve been dealing with POCD for months and fake arousal is the worse, especially now it’s changed to when I’m scrolling on an app, etc and happen to come across a child, my Pocd makes me have fake arousal as usually I do a compultion such as trying to stop the arousal from happening such as tending my body, etc. however, recently I’ve enjoyed the fake arousal and wanted it to happen because it feels “nice” and in the moment I “want” the fake arousal over the “child” and in the moment I feel “attracted to the child but after this I’m met with guilt and so so many compultions such as showing, washing my bedding etc etc CAN OCD MAKE YOUT BODY ENJOY SOMETHING!!? Please help!!!