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I’ve been struggling recently. I have hOCD (worrying I’m asexual) and rOCD, which can be a tricky mix. I’m on my first relationship, with a wonderful man and I am happy. But I keep tripping myself up in terms of sexual attraction. The thought of my bf arouses me, I fantasise about him etc. However, I’ve read so much on asexual forums that sexual attraction has to be visual. I.e. I have to look at my bf and then feel like I must have sex with him, just by looking at him. This has never been something I experience. It has always taken me some time develop sexual attraction in the past (it’s never just their looks). Like when we’re in a non-sexual environment/context I don’t look at him and think ‘I want sex with you right now’. So now both my OCD and some forums are telling me I don’t experience sexual attraction? It’s all so frustrating!

Hi :) I have always struggled with intrusive sexual thoughts since i was a kid. (probably due to sexual abuse) And in my teen years I spent a considerable amount of time fighting unwanted romantic feelings toward my girl friends. This year though, I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that I might be gay. I just never feel this way toward men. And it feels like all of my efforts to keep those unwanted gay thoughts away growing up didn’t work. I feel like it’s my fault somehow. I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I guess i’m trying to work on accepting these thoughts of mine.

The longer I have had POCD the more sexual the thought become. Also, a new obsession is that I’m concerned about a certain age and it’s like 6 year old even though before all this I’ve been around my friend’s 6 year olds and even seen them almost completely naked and never felt anything (even though my brain is trying to distort that memory). Now even as I type this I have images of 6 year olds in a sexual way pop up and it’s making me feel like I’m actually full on attracted to them. I also have dreams and these images pop in when I first wake up and on. And it feels like I’m starting to like the thoughts which scares the shit out of me and they won’t go away. I’m terrified!...sorry I’ve posted a lot and I’m a bad place. I can not become a pedo!

This is long but I’m hurting and need practical advice on what to do. My OCD is convincing me I’m psychotic. It doesn’t help that I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and had an ill informed therapist tell me for 8 months that my intrusive thoughts were hallucinations and delusions. I just quit lithium a week ago after being on it for 4 months after a psychiatric nurse who I no longer am seeing told me it was safe to do so. I don’t exactly trust her though since she accused me of being a liar, impulsive, having a personality disorder, and told me I had to take antipsychotics or she would walk away, when I had legitimate questions about the bipolar diagnosis (hence no longer being in her care). My anxiety and intrusive thoughts are spiking worse than ever. My main theme is harm so I’m terrified of becoming manic and psychotic and believing my intrusive thoughts are correct, even though my non-OCD self is positive I’m not bipolar. I’m starting to doubt I have OCD and am asking myself what if I am actually delusional and in denial about my situation and am actually a danger to myself and others. I got approved for a PHP in the OCD and anxiety disorder program at Rogers but I don’t start for another 3 weeks. Has anyone been through anything like this (misdiagnosis, wrong medication making you worse, lithium withdrawal, questioning if your OCD is actually psychosis, etc) and has some advice with how to deal with this? I’m feeling so hopeless and dejected after being tossed around the mental health field like this only to find out I have OCD and could have started treatment 8 months ago and not gotten to this point if my doctors were more aware of this condition

I have obsessions about my appearance that I am ugly. I check my face in the mirror and seek reassurance from others. I am constantly comparing myself to my friends and thinking they’re so beautiful and I am disgusting. It’s so hard to not hate myself when I feel like this :(

I’ve done therapy in 4 others places, this being my 5th. It’s truly unfortunate how difficult it is to originally find the right therapy. First several therapists just thought I had an issue with being gay and didn’t tell me about OCD. My first three therapists we’re great people, with big hearts, but couldn’t serve me much beyond normal talk therapy. Then came my first OCD Specialist. It worked okay. I got better-ish. But they were 3X the price of my current treatment here. My therapist here, has helped me gain at least 50% more results, so far (session 6), and for 1/3 of the price of other services. In business, things become better, faster, more convenient, etc. that is exactly what has happened here at NOCD. They are serving a massive market without price gauging their eyes out like the existing other specialists. Here at NOCD, they are serving a wildly underserved portion of the market. I can’t imagine all the disenfranchised people who couldn’t afford the right service, finally being treated for affordable rates. Best thing? It’s an in and out program. All of my other therapists said OCD is chronic, and will need to taken care of over life. They wanted my $$$!!!!!! They fed me Lies lies lies and wanted my money. NOCD wants you healed and on your way, so you can live life and they can help more people. I would invest a lot of money into NOCD. Maybe I should. Let me know!!! Love y’all, be safe. And do your exposure exercises. I’m doing flash cards everyday, with verbiage that says “I might (insert fear)” or “others might think...” doing it everyday voluntarily helps push the scariness away and I feel more like old me. With Love, Brock

I need to try and go on a walk in a bit bc I haven’t in days but I’m terrified to leave my house. I’m terrified I’m a danger to people. POCD going off so badly. Just triggered because I was reminded of things I was shown in hs. I feel like I’m a horrible person for seeing them. But there’s one part of it that really gets to me that I feel I can’t even talk about. I don’t know. It haunts me so much.

I’m having a meltdown! Help! I have been reducing my reassurance lately. I went from 250 to now like 20 times. Huge jump in last month. But I feel absolutely awful still because it’s ERP and it gets worse before you get better. I’m so on edge so the slightest things trigger me. I’ve been having a horrible meltdown for an hour screaming at top of my lungs. I just want ERP TO Work!!! I’m putting in so much effort. I believe I’m getting closer but these meltdowns are horrible. Hopefully it’s a good sign that erp is working because the ocd is mad. Anyone else experience this in ERP? It’s such a huge change and I want my life back so bad! During this meltdown, my ocd has told me that I’m never going to get better and I’m scared.

How do you manage spikes? I’m a female who suffers from HOCD. I was reading the book “Brainlock” and I got to the section of Reattribute. Doing another task to counter giving into my compulsions. I decided to take the extra step and do ERP on my own by looking at images of lesbian couples. I’m finally getting treatment after 6 years of dealing with it off and on. More “masculine” lesbians trigger me the most. I was able to stand looking at the images for awhile but I could feel my anxiety at basically 100% but I kept going. Then I felt like I actually liked the images. I didn’t have a groin response but there was a jump in my chest, a emotional response. Like, I was genuinely attracted. Like the attraction was there and my mind was confused and disconnected from my body. I had never felt this way before. For two days now I’ve dealt with a feeling of anxiety sitting in my chest. I don’t want to eat or sleep, this is the lowest I’ve ever gone. My body feels like it wants that. I haven’t been to sleep and when I do, the thought is waiting when I get up. I feel like I may actually want this and when I try to accept it, my mind won’t let me. So then I’m sucked back into fighting and I feel like I set myself up when I should have avoided it. I see my new therapist Monday, but if you’ve experience this or know any encouraging messages that can help me get through it till I see them, it would be great.

I guess I'm gay. This is it. Im attracted to both men and women, but I get a stronger sexual reaction to women. I dont want to be gay. I'm with a boy who I love, but now I'm scared that I love my best friend instead of him. Before hocd I had no feelings for her at all. I dont want to have feelings for her. Before HOCD I didn't think I was gay, but because of comments that I saw yesterday it feels completely true now. I'd like to identify as straight, but that feels wrong because if I was healthy Id most likely want to be gay, right? I hope that isnt true. I'm not allowed to identify as straight because that's just proof that I'm in denial. I'm deep in denial. I want to die. I need help. But I can't afford help. I don't get a sexual response from looking at either gender now, which is very distressing because checking no longer works. I don't want my boyfriend to leave my life. I dont want to stop being intimate with him. I love talking to him, holding his hand, and hugging him, and kissing him and having sex with him. I'm scared I'm only with him for reassurance now. I dont want to get help if that means leaving him, but now I'm scared that's because I want to be straight, not because I love him. The most fucked thing about this is when I first developed hocd it was when I was going through puberty. I'd be terrified that I'd accidentally look at a girls boobs or butts, not even because I had the inclination to. It started from there and for some reason I got the shit end of the stick and it developed into being true. Have I convinced myself that I'm gay and I'm really not? I've been dealing with this so long I honestly have no idea. This bothers me so much because it's all about sex. What the fuck does sex have to do with loving someone? Love is not sex. I fucking hate societies view on sex and sexuality. I'm scared that if I dont react to these supposed feeling for my friend then they'll haunt me for ever. I dont want to lose my boyfriend.

This is gonna be another long one sorry but i need to vent again. The past 2 days have been pretty good i’ve had some intrusive thoughts but i didn’t focus on them and i just allowed them to pass but tonight it’s not that easy. I’m fully convinced at this point that i’m literally bottom of the barrel and just a terrible weird person and now i’m thinking back to previous thoughts wondering if they were even intrusive thoughts or if some things i think it do are even correlated with ocd and it’s just who i am as a person. i just wish i wasn’t me. like a day or two ago i had an intrusive thought or at least that’s what i’m categorizing it as because i’m not sure. basically i was in the shower and i thought to myself that this would usually be a time i would have an intrusive thought and i feel like i made myself think of one. i didn’t agree with it enjoy the thought but i made myself think of it because i guess i thought that would be something that could have popped up into my brain any other time and i was kinda surprised that my mind didn’t automatically think of it if that even makes any sense. So i don’t know if it’s an intrusive thought because i thought of it on my own but the thought was also similar to intrusive thoughts i’ve had in the past, i’m really trying to make this make sense sorry. And i feel like it was hard to move past because the thoughts involved my sister and her bf snd ughh i just feel so gross and terrible for thinking that even though i didn’t have a groinal response or anything it’s just the worst when my thoughts involve other people. Another thing also is i was watching a tik tok and this girl was doing a storytime about how she was driving and found a dead body that was covered with a blanket on a bridge and watching the video i felt fine until she mentioned the position of the body saying it was laying on its side with its legs curled up and then it seemed like i had a groinal response and it was really unsettling because that was something i literally didn’t expect to trigger me in any way so now i’m thinking i’m some creep that is attracted to dead bodies and it doesn’t help my situation that i used to watch a lot of crime shows where there were killers who were into stuff like that so it could be possible that that’s who i am even though that actually gross, but what if i’m in denial about who i really am and all these thoughts and things are really just how i feel and i keep on labeling it as ocd. I kept on going back to the video to rewatch that part to see if i’d hace the same response and sometimes i did and sometimes i didn’t but who knows if that’s because i was actively trying to avoid a response it if i just didn’t feel any type of way and it was dumb to do that honestly because i know that’s it’s a checking compulsion and it didn’t even help me in the end to figure anything out. i feel like i’ve been questioning myself a lot lately because it’s hard having these thoughts and responses a lot and just brushing them off because these are real things bad people feel so i could actually just be a bad person that has yet to evolve or come to terms with who i am. i really just want to be a normal girl and live a normal life but it’s so hard when the thoughts are running through my mind telling me that this is who i really am. i really want to get a therapist and just vent and talk about every single thing going on in my head so i can get just an ounce of clarity because i can’t keep on telling myself they’re just thoughts because my mind is a part of who i am and if these thoughts are do frequent would that just mean it’s who i am.

Do you guys get flashbacks to your childhood and think about how that might have contributed to your OCD? Sometimes I get false memories of me, enjoying staring at some girl. I hate these flashbacks and mental images. I've never looked at a woman in any way other than aesthetically, but with my flashbacks, I feel so uncomfortable and scared. For example, I was rewatching a few ASMR videos to help calm some stress down and suddenly I got a thought of me in the past watching these videos and how I enjoyed watching the lady. I vividly remember that I only watched ASMR for the soothing sounds, not the person doing it. Can OCD and false memory OCD have some type of correlation? (I'm a female btw)

I saw a lot of stuff today dealing with HOCD and I’m someone who once identified as a lesbian. But I’ve been questioning it as of late like what if I’m bi. Those things don’t necessarily cause me that much distress. In ways it does but not the same as the obsessions of “what if I’m straight”. I don’t know if it helps at all but being gay or being bi whatever I am I can tell you it does not look the same distress as what you guys face. I have been on the end of the spectrum where I’m like “what if I’m straight?” Before and THAT caused me extreme distress. So yeah I can tell you actually being a sexuality and your ocd making you confused and distressed is not the same.

me and my bf got into a small disagreement cause he kept leaving me on read and it made me anxious and he said he doesn’t do it purpose but now i feel bad for even bringing it up and my mind is making me blow this out of proportion and is like “this must mean u don’t wanna be with him. this must mean ur relationship is bad” ughfhdhhhh

I am a Protestant Christian, and I fear that I might be in the wrong religion and might go to hell. Is it possible for me to overcome this obsession in a way that still allows me to believe in absolute truth, I.e. that there is only one right religion? Because I would rather continue being OCD than give up the exclusivity of Christ’s claims.

I wish I knew how the future would be. I’m scared of my harm ocd and intrusive thoughts and more. I’ve been fighting this for 6 months and everyday is a fight. I hate feeling alone cause my family doesn’t understand and I hate knowing I make them worried about me. Day to day is hard at times. The last 2 days I’ve been stuck in a hole and seems I can’t get out of this. I’m scared about sailing again and if my thoughts will follow me.

The recent thread on HOCD and people then coming to terms with their sexuality is so triggering/confusing ? it kinda counters everything you learn about how arousal and groinals don’t necessarily mean anything

I need some help. I finished therapy not too long ago, exhausted every ERP exercise me and my therapist could think of and I still feel like shit. I feel like a fucking freak. My therapist said that usually after therapy OCD just won't be there for a long time and it's still here. Infact it feels like I'm slowly regressing. Is this normal? I need to talk to people who have finished OCD therapy. I had therapy for 6 months with some of the most gruesome exercises. I don't have money for more therapy, I don't want to get on meds and I just want to be OK. I've been accused of being my worst fear on this app like 4 times so be really careful with what you comment, please.

I’m afraid to ask this, but is it common for OCD to present as a fear of wanting to do something bad? I’ve had thoughts like “maybe I do want to”, “just do it”, “that sounds like a good idea” and so on. These thoughts are unwanted, but it makes me really confused and scared because I used to dismiss thoughts by saying I know I don’t want to do that. Has anyone experienced this? I’m afraid to treat this as OCD because they feel more real..

For anyone who struggles with “just right” obsessions and a lot of compulsions are mental ruminations, how do you practice exposures? So far I’ve mostly talked to myself for exposures but it hasn’t felt strong enough, so I’m also considering recording myself and listening back to it (as much as I don’t want to listen to my own voice!) what do you guys do?