8 years and I am about done. *TW*

fair enough. I honestly was going to put spikey in the title but on a previous forum making people feel as though something would spike them made them feel compelled to check it themselves.

I can very rarely hold onto those moments of clarity but they are nice. I'll give it to you otter. You may not make me feel any better by giving me reassurance but you most certainly are dutiful to this forum.
I know you are doing the right thing but it hurts none the less.

Hey! I most honestly hope what I am about to say doesn't make you feel worse. It's OK to masturbate to different things. I have masturbated to being a man sleeping with a woman. I am bisexual and female. I liked it, that doesn't make me trans. I just liked the idea of a girl on top of me. You're straight and male. You masturbated to the idea of being a woman having sex with a man. You liked the idea of thinking of a sexual act (just pussies and dicks, as you've said). You didn't even like it, dude! You were aroused by it, sure. Men can get fully physically and mentally aroused just by thinking of getting an erection. Or some other dude getting an errection. It's a fact. Even if you did like it, that wouldn't make you trans nor bisexual. You are masturbating to something new, that involves sex! You are thinking you shouldn't like it, so it gets worse! In any way possible that you can put this case in, you don't sound transsexual, nor gay, nor bisexual. Thinking of sex will turn you on, thinking of sex between a man and a woman will most definetely turn a heterosexual man on, no matter what form the fantazy comes in. Sorry if I somehow f***ed you up! All the luck to you!

Otter wrote:Hi again Ashes -

Although it seems like all of this is coming from intense anxiety and depression, I will address some of your direct fears.

Being Homosexual, or even Bisexual, is much more than being defined by one, or a few, sex acts. Just like heterosexual relationships, they are not only based on having sex.

Coming to a realization, and then changing your sex is a very intimate process. That process does not include not wanting to be transexual. I have never heard of anyone who didn't want to change their sex but doing it anyway. It is a complex process. I know, because I have a cousin who became a man after being born a female.
.

Actually many transsexual people I have spoken to said that they did not want to be transsexual. Who would want to be seen as a freak by society and live a life of hardship and discrimination?

In time they learnttodeal with it and reduce their internalised transphobia

FreshGuy wrote:

Otter wrote:Hi again Ashes -

Although it seems like all of this is coming from intense anxiety and depression, I will address some of your direct fears.

Being Homosexual, or even Bisexual, is much more than being defined by one, or a few, sex acts. Just like heterosexual relationships, they are not only based on having sex.

Coming to a realization, and then changing your sex is a very intimate process. That process does not include not wanting to be transexual. I have never heard of anyone who didn't want to change their sex but doing it anyway. It is a complex process. I know, because I have a cousin who became a man after being born a female.
.

Actually many transsexual people I have spoken to said that they did not want to be transsexual. Who would want to be seen as a freak by society and live a life of hardship and discrimination?

In time they learnttodeal with it and reduce their internalised transphobia

The stress of being seen as a freak, is different than the desire to change your sex. My cousin would have liked to have been born a man, and avoided the hardship that he had to go through to change his sex from female to male. In that way what you said makes sense. But this didn't change the fact that he desired to change it sex. He was never frightened to become a man, as was a woman I know who was born a man. And neither of them see themselves as freaks. These are people close to me, and I have known many other people who have changed their sex.

In the context of TOCD, the person who is suffering is afraid they are going to desire a change of sex. They have no desire to change their sex, but their FEAR that somehow something is going to happen, or otherwise change their mind.

It is the same for HOCD, POCD, harm OCD, or any other obsession which is "thought based" and has no real association to factors beyond the obsessive thought.

Irrational thoughts exist. It's like a placeholder for anything you want to put into it.

Otter.

Thank you all for your replies.

Milica, you did not ###$ me up. I appreciate you taking the time to give me such a long reply. It actually made me feel better. I didn't even master bate to it I just got a semi and a few mixtures of arousal and anxiety while watching.

Fresh guy, I understand what you are saying. Anyone would be upset about having to go through such an ordeal. That is not why I fear this so much. It just conflicts with what I feel deep down and what makes me happy.

And you've hit the nail on the head otter. Also you seem to have quite the diverse group of friends.

I've begun keeping an ocd journal to help document my specific obsessional thoughts for a therapist. Maybe I'll be lucky and they will take a look.

InAshes wrote:And you've hit the nail on the head otter. Also you seem to have quite the diverse group of friends.

I grew up in the suburbs of a large city, and was basically an underdog among my peers - so I related to underdogs as I grew up. Then I moved to the city and hung out with the liberal artists and such, meeting all kinds of people, many of them moving form their conservative upbrining to someplace they were accepted (which is usually a diverse city).

And then in my 30s my cousin announced she was going to change her gender to a man. I was all for it, of course, but there was a bit of irony that made me smile, as I had a crush on her when I was kid (she is older).

It is for this reason (diversity)I have never been affected by HOCD or TOCD. It didn't matter to me what I was.

My generally theory about anxiety/OCD obsessions is, the pattern tends to be:

1. For whatever reason (sometimes situational or sometimes neurological, or both), our brain spins out of control and we create a raw energy of anxiety.

2. Once the anxiety hits a high, the brain needs to find the source of its fear, so it goes looking for something. Naturally, being in that state, we are going to "pick" something that will fulfill our worst nightmares.

Things like Homosexuality or Transgender issues, or Pedophilia are very strong subjects. All of these things are still taboo in our culture (though, thankfully, homosexuality is starting to work its way into the mainstream). Add to this that these subjects have been in the news and part of popular culture lately, and that you have the internet to dig deeper, and people are going to choose these fears. I would also put forth, that it i not surprising that young people have these fears more than older, because sexuality is still very new to them, and not as easily reconciled inside of them when they are trying to figure things out.

For people with OCD the fear reaction works in reverse or what normally occurs. For instance, a little boy will see a dark room and become frightened to go in alone. This is natural. He sees the dark room first, and then he become frightened.

For someone with OCD, the fear is there first, and then object of their fear comes into play by a trigger of some sort. Some people will say, "but I wasn't scared until I watched that show with a pedophile". It only feels that way because the trigger elevated the anxiety to emergency levels.

In many cases anxiety has been building up for a time, and the trigger final makes the anxiety go out of control.

Back to the kid and the dark room. If you turn on a light for the kid, he is no longer frightened because you have solved the issue of his fear. This again, is the normal way things occur.

But with OCD, since the fear leads and the object of the fear comes second, removing the object probably wont cure the issue. This is why we see people go from HOCD to POCD to TOCD and so forth. Because the object is incidental, like a mask. This is why people who try to figure out their "sexuality" are not addressing the root issue.

Ultimately addressing the raw sense of anxiety the way to deal with things. This makes sense because almost all people who suffer OCD admit that their thoughts are irrational. Well, if they are irrational, then the truth (of the cause) lies elsewhere.

Anxiety.

Otter.

Its true that the anxiety comes first.

You know, I really want to ask for some reassurance. but my mind is to frazzled to even know what exact question to ask. and by the morning i will not feel better anyway. I pray that one day soon the fear and the uncertainty lessins itself.

Try and hold on brother. I have had severe OCD of the likes which I thought I would never come out of. But I am out of it. Not perfect but clear enough where I can handle my "little buddy" most of the time.

It will get better. But I will say - for me - it got better when I decided to do something about it - and I could have saved time. but you don't have to do it all at once. get through the night and try to muster up some strength to get on with your day. then make a commitment to come up with a plan. you'll get there.

Otter.

Is it me... or is "freshguy" trying to project himself onto people that suffer with OCD?

Did you notice he completely ignored the other themes of OCD this person has had and went straight to marginalizing the sufferers TOCD?

Honestly this isnt my first lap around the often chaotic and frightening atmosphere that is an online ocd forum. his responses have lost there effect on me.