Maybe HOCD, maybe so far in denial i cant even find myself

Sorry this is very very long, I'm going to try to keep my language as appropriate as possible but i gotta admit some might get a little graphic, i just want this to end so i dont want to leave important details out. So this is a problem that i believe to have originated when i was 18 years old (I'm a 22 year old guy) I should also note that i generally consider myself a pretty sensitive guy. i get very nervous around girls, (like i cant even talk to one) and have always been in my head A LOT. I definitely think i have some sort of social anxiety, as well as self confidence issues, and possibly some form of depression that you will read about in this post. but i have never seen a psychologist. I always try to hype myself up in order to gain the guts and confidence to talk to girls now, but i never can follow though unless im drunk, when which i come back to reality the nerves just set right back in. I was a multi sport athlete in high school, so i have been in plenty of locker rooms and seen what you would expect to see and never had a hint of arousal. I would not consider myself completely homophobic but its a lifestyle i do not wish for or ever have wanted, and am frankly repulsed by gay sex (i have some sick friends who send videos in our group chats for fun.) Like ive never been afraid to admit to anyone if i thought that a guy was good looking, had a nice body, or whatever, but it was never with any intent to act on anything. My family is also very open and accepting of homosexuality, as i have a gay great uncle.
Ever since i can remember ive always been 100% into girls; since my first crush in pre school, my first erection short after, and all throughout high school. Now i obviously had very close guy friends too, but i would never say that i ever had a crush on any of them, that idea never popped into my head because i just knew i liked girls. I had crushes and girlfriends that i would fall completely head over heels for and be devastated when it was over during that time. When i first got to high school i was new to my school so i was getting to know people and had two different girlfriends my freshmen year, and i liked them both very much and had much of the same sadness when the relationships were over. These two relationships were the first two where i started getting more physical with girls and like any freshman guy in high school, i became very aroused very quickly with even a simple hug. Then my sophomore year i met a new girl that i was very into and we talked and hung out for about a month before we started dating. This relationship lasted ("officially") 1 1/2 years and i was smitten for this girl just about the entire time. She was the first girl i ever had sex with, of any kind, and we never had any intimacy issues. Just about every time we would hang out along, we would have some sort of sexual encounter. We didnt have sex all that much, but we still did a good amount, and everything was great.
We eventually broke up because i started to lose interest in her and began to crush on one of my best friends (girl) at the time. (I sound pretty scummy at this next part but please bear with me) I left her heart broken but we did still hook up (not sex, just fingering/handjob) a few times after we broke up and then after that i cut off just about all conversation with her.
After months of unsuccessfully courting the other girl i liked (she actually told me she considered me her gay best friend one time and that really made me upset -- total friendzone) i just gave up on her. (Remember all the while -- still never had a gay thought affect me or even cross my mind quite frankly. And i know i might be rambling but please i really dont want to leave anything out)
It was not long after that i found out my ex had started dating some other guy and i began to get super jealous. I started to talk to her again in some classes and then would look for her in the halls and started to want her back. I would text her all the time and she would lead me to believe that she was interested in a reunion as well. This would continue into the summer and we even made out one night at a party (drunk). I became super invested in trying to win her back but it would all be for not as she eventually told me that she was not going to dump her boyfriend for me and i cut off all communication with her for some time, AND THIS IS WHERE THE REAL ISSUE BEGINS
Couple days later i got high with a few of my friends and i had a pretty weird revelation about my purpose on the earth and my friends grew very concerned about me and thought i was depressed. I looked at them like they were nuts and we all sort of shut it off but to this day i think that revelation has affected me. I feel as though i have had trouble truly connecting with new people ever since, and my confidence began to sink in about every aspect of my life. A few days after this the (what i want to think is) HOCD first reared its head in my life, while i was watching ESPN of all places. A football player who recently came out as gay came on the screen and they show him kissing his boyfriend. When i saw it i had the thought "what if that me, what if im gay?" and this thought rattled me to my core. It resonated with me for maybe a week or two, and then i slowly realized it was stupid and it went away right in time for me to leave for college.
In college i was determined to find a girlfriend FAST. I hated feeling alone and actually cried a few times because i felt so alone. It didnt help that my roommate was a social butterfly and he went out an got with girls and made new friends so easily. I soon fell back to texting my ex, and this time was more determined than ever to get her back. We didnt go to the same schools, but she continued to lead me on and i worked incredibly hard to get her back. Again she did not want to leave her boyfriend and I even started to like another girl that i met a few weeks earlier, so i eventually just let my feelings fade and that was it with her.
From that time (winter 2014/15) up until around fall of 2015 i was pretty much distant from the dating and girls scene in general. I had many opportunities to hook up with girls during that time, but i just really was never feeling it, as at this time i began to get super nervous around new girls and would get crazy anxiety any time i thought about trying to sustain a conversation. I kind of just dedicated my summer to having fun with some high school friends that i had been distant from my freshman year. (These friends are now still really close to me and truly the only people i feel close to in my life other than my parents and my brothers)
Then in fall of 2015 i learned that a girl from my high school thought i was really cute and i had always sort of crushed on her from a distance so i gave it a shot. Still incredibly nervous, but i thought this girl was a goddess so i wouldve regretted not giving it a shot. We texted here and there for a few months (we went to different schools) but then over winter break we hung out a few times and we had sex. This is when something that had never happened to me ever before happened; i couldnt stay hard. Now there were some circumstances that I always attributed this to: we had been fooling around a little bit in a different room and everything was going great until my brother and his girlfriend stormed into the room so we had to stop for a few minutes. When they finally left and we tried again, i couldnt get back up. She was disappointed as was I (because i was excited to finally get some of my first action in a LONG time). I was also incredibly nervous because it had been so long. But then a few days later we tried again and I was actually even a little too excitable. It was awesome, i felt great and started to fall for this girl. I kind of knew she would have other ideas because she went to a different school than i did, and was moving to Minnesota for the next school year, but it didnt stop my pursuit. It was at this time that i began to start working out super aggressively in an effort to transform my body so i could feel like i was good enough for her. I had always been kind of a dad bod looking guy and had always envied other guys who had shredded bodies so i started to actually make legit strides towards making it happen for me. In a span of about 3.5 months, i lost 25 lbs of fat and then put on 10lb of muscle, and was loving my new body. (although my family was concerned that i mightve had an eating disorder) But i was still always incredibly nervous around this girl. We talked pretty consistently for that entire time but couldnt always hang out because we were far away. I do remember one night having a party and she was there and we had a great time and i woke up the next morning with her in my arms and i actually felt like i was on cloud 9 i was so happy. We didnt hook up or anything, but i still felt myself falling hard for her. After we both got back to my hometown for the summer, we started to hang out a lot more, But no matter what i still nervous as can be whenever i was with her and feared i would come across to her as weird and that she didnt actually like me.In total, we talked for about 7 months, and the only time we ever hooked up was that first few times we had sex, because whenever i felt her trying to drop hints on me, i would get super nervous and didnt know if was picking up the right hint and feared rejection.
Once we stopped talking I surprisingly was not as devastated as i thought i would be. I think i realized that it never was going to work all along, so it just sort of faded. This was the last girl i have had a real feeling for, and the last girl i have hooked up with. Shortly before the start of school (i had moved back home to go to a school near home and was changing my major) i got an underage drinking ticket and after this i became mildly depressed. I had put all the weight i lost back on, i didnt (and somewhat still dont) know what i wanted to do with my career/life, and my parents believed i had a drinking problem. Slowly but surely i climbed out of this, but i think here is where the (hopefully) HOCD started slowly creeping back.
While i felt like i didnt have any lost attraction for women, i felt like i never had an interest to pursue one because my anxiety about rejection and what i would say to someone had gotten very bad. I still would watch pornography and get aroused by seeing picture of women and imagining past sexual encounters, all was fine on that front. I only ever felt like hanging out with my guy friends though. Also at this time i was extremely determined and into my fitness again, so i started to follow a lot of guys fitness pages in order to see what they were saying and how to look like they did. To this day i still haven't gotten my desired body, and this is something that has also caused me great distress because i feel without a nice body no girl would want me. Now during this time i vaguely recall having gay thoughts but it was easier to shrug them off. I thought about that last relationship i had and would wonder if the girl thought i was gay because i would never make a move. They didnt cause me any more distress than me just saying "thats ###$ up" and they quickly left my mind. I could even think back to the first bout i had with the hocd and think, "wow what were you thinking".
That had basically been my life from about fall 2016 until winter 2018; again still not feeling i lost any attraction towards women. But during that time however i experienced my first panic attack, although it was a health related issue that freaked me out and it was while i was high, so i just stayed away from weed for a while and i was fine. But now im going to get into my current dilemma

One random day i had drank a ton of coffee and was feeling wired as could be. I went to the gym and was running on the treadmill and there was a magazine stand where i first glanced over and saw a magazine with a woman on it. I acknowledged it, then glanced over and saw one with a shirtless man. The "what if im gay" thoughts flooded my mind and i became super anxious and stopped working out and went home. The thoughts persisted for a few hours before i finally was able to shrug them off and i felt very relieved. But then that same night while i was just up on my phone in bed, i started to feel very warm so i got up and went to the bathroom and my face and legs were pitch red and i started to have another mild panic attack. I went downstairs and paced around my basement for houses until i finally was able to calm down and fall asleep. For the next few days i felt a tightness in my chest that did not feel right, and this again culminated in another very intense panic attack when i got high again and i feared i was having a heart attack. I called my brother who came and calmed me down, and he then took me to urgent care the next day where they told me that my heart was fine and that if anxiety is something that i struggle with i should consider seeing someone about it. I never saw anyone, and just hoped it would go away somehow. I would constantly be aware of my heartbeat and anytime i felt it spike i would freak out and listen to calming music to try to relax me. I still believed i had a heart problem and a few times thought i was going to die in my sleep from a heart attack. A few weeks later, the (I pray what is) HOCD got the worst it has ever been and it where i am at today

It was about two months ago, I was out at a party with some friends and there were a ton of beautiful women that i knew of but didnt know if they knew of me and my anxiety being there was high as ever. Once one of my guy friends went upstairs to hookup with some girl, i just left because i didnt want to sit there alone and was too nervous to try to start a conversation. The next day felt like any other day that i had been experiencing as of late until i started watching american idol. A gay guy came on the show and almost immediately i thought "what if the reason i cannot get girls is because i am gay?" This thought sent anxiety down my body like i had never experienced before. I didnt have a panic attack like the past ones, but i just felt absolutely awful. It wasnt even any mental images popping into my head, it was just the mere thought of being gay. It absolutely freaked me out and quite frankly has stuck with me until right now. The thoughts of "you look at guys physiques all the time on instagram, youre gay. You cant talk to women, youre gay, You only hang out with guys, youre gay. YOURE GAY, YOURE GAY, YOURE GAY!" This constant nagging has absolutely manifested in my mind and has caused me an unreal amount of distress. It has since manifested into unwanted thoughts and graphic images in my brain, and its beginning to get unbearable. I can barely walk out in public and look at a man because my brain will tell me "you think hes attractive, you want him" I also feel like im losing attraction to women which is making me even more distressed. I constantly am looking on instragram for pictures of attractive women and while i used to feel everything, i feel very little. I held this in for until a little less than a month ago before i broke down to my friends and my mom separately. While i never told them exactly what was causing it, i told them all that i think im severely depressed. Bawled on the phone to my friends, bawled on the phone to my mom. I went home (i moved out in the fall) that weekend and just tried to relax with my family. One night i started to have some suicidal thoughts that terrified me in their own right, and those have not come back since, as i know i love life and wouldnt do that to the people i love. Me and my parents discussed seeing a counselor at the school i go to and i agreed but just havent had the time to go yet with schoolwork and exams being the burden they are. I have also started to falter in school and in my social life -- more so than i was already struggling -- as well. Ive stopped going to classes, working out, and cant even look at my friends anymore without getting anxiety. It subsides a little when im just hanging out with them, but when someone brings up being with a girl or something, it spikes because the "you dont like girls, youre gay" thoughts creep up.
When i am drunk i feel like i have a little more control over my thoughts. I feel much more interest in women, and while the thoughts still are there, i can ignore them. But i know i cant be drunk all the time. It wasnt until this past weekend that i finally came forward with my thoughts to my brothers at a bachelor party for my brother. We were all obviously a little tipsy, but once my brother started getting deep with us, i knew this was the right time to let it go and another breakdown ensue. I sobbed like i have never sobbed before. I told them that Ive never thought i was gay, and that these thoughts are just so blindsiding that i dont know what they mean or what to do. They cried with me and assured me that they loved me no matter what (which was nice to hear, but didnt relieve any of the anxiety.) The next day i had an extremely bad spike when i had a very distressing mental image just randomly pop into my mind as i was actually daydreaming about having sex with a women. This rocked me so badly and i was pacing around my parents house all day not talking and just wanting it to stop. That night i shared all my thoughts with my dad. While i didnt breakdown like i did with my brothers my anxiety was spiked pretty high and i could feel my body shaking and i was speaking extremely fast and was having shortness of breath. My dad encouraged me to try to embrace the thoughts, not give into the fear, and if i am gay, then so what. I explained to him that i never thought i was gay ever before and still consider myself attracted to women and he told me that i should really consider doing some self searching to see what i really want. All the while so many intrusive thoughts were going in and out of my mind i thought i was going to go crazy. I somehow managed to calm down a little when i got home because i was hungover, tired, and just didnt want to deal with it anymore. This past monday was then a very distressful one again, trying to avoid male contact at all cost, constant internet searching on hocd and how to make it stop, which i have been doing since this most recent bout started, and a ton of pacing around my house, nervously shaking, and no matter how hard i tried to embrace what my dad was saying, the "so what if youre gay," i would just freak myself out even more. Then last night i had a dream and i had two love interest who were both girls, and woke up having had a wet dream where i was getting a handjob from penelope cruz (it was pretty awesome) I woke up in an incredibly good mood today after that, but my mood slowly worsened and now im just back to where ive been all along; feeling alone, lost, not wanting to be gay but thinking im gay, my mind trying to tell me im attracted to men when i know deep down that im not and have never been, but then i look at girls and i feel nothing.
As of right now, i really dont know what i think of myself. I dont and have never wanted to be gay. I know i have always been straight since i can remember. While i do have these crazy mental images, i never have ever became aroused by one, never had tried masturbating to one due to fear, but have never gotten an erection directly because of the thought. Have somewhat sworn of masturbating as a whole lately, but last time i tried a week ago i became around to pictures of women quite easily. I am constantly on instagram looking at girls to see if im attracted or aroused, constantly avoiding eye contact with males as much as possible with the fear of becoming aroused. Questioning every part of my past to try to find proof that i either am or am not gay, And constantly surfing the web trying looking at forums like these and stories of people with hocd to see how my story relates. I just want it all to stop, im beginning to go crazy. I dont know who reads these types of forums, or if anyone will respond. But sharing my story like this has actually calmed me a great deal, and thank you to anyone who take the time and delivers any sort of input. God bless

Any reply would be very much appreciated. I’m starting to believe myself but every time I sit down and say consciously that I am gay, it just doesn’t feel normal or right. The anxiety stays right where it’s at or spikes. Sometimes I have very brief moments of clarity where my eye will just be drawn to women like it usually was. But that instantly brings on the doubt again. I distinctly remember one time last year I was listening to a wedding song and I just thought to myself “Man I can’t wait for this to be playing as my wife walks down the isle” the thought actually gave me chills. That’s always been my dream. And it’s all just a blur and a panic now.

It’s almost as though I feel my confidence is so low and my social anxiety is so high that it caused me to shut out women. And then couple that with the fact that I used to be so into fitness and would look at fitness pages every day that my brain rewired itself but that is not something that I want at all. I can also say that I recently stuck up the courage to watch gay porn to see what I would feel. Didn’t masturbate to it just watched it. I winced the entire time, and I did not feel a thing. Then turned on lesbian porn and it wasn’t even anything I was usually into, and I got aroused almost immediately. That brought me crazy relief for some time, but then of course the doubt returned.

Also just found out that my family has a long history of mental health disorders on both my mom and dads side. I’m trying to keep it together but these thoughts are taking over. It’s living hell. I don’t enjoy things that I used to enjoy anymore: hanging out with friends, working out, watching sports. Even made out with a girl that 4 years ago I would have given my left leg to do, as I used to have a huge crush on her. But this time i felt nothing. It scared me. I discussed my issue with my mother recently and she told me nothing I did during my childhood ever gave her cause to believe I am not straight. She also said that from a very young age I did display signs of OCD however. A few instances:

-Whenever I would play or watch video games as a child, I would consistently bounce in place. I remember never having any control over it, it would just happen. I also did and still do constantly shake my leg when I’m sitting, and have trouble just standing still for long periods of time. I remember I used to have a horrible tick whenever my family would go to mass, I constantly felt the need to stretch my neck. Like I absolutely had to do it, no questions asked.

-iphone debacle of 2012. My sophomore year in high school I was obsessed with my phone. Not by always being on it; I’m talking the physical phone itself. It literally had to look perfect at all times. One day I scratched the back of that phone and I damn near lost it. I bought 3 tubs of scratch remover to try to ge the out, and eventually I even bought replacement parts to fix it myself. But I didn’t just buy one; I bought 5. It needed to look perfect and each time I got a new one it just didn’t look good enough. This was something that bugged me for probably 2-3 months. When I get new stuff in general, I am usually super protective over it,

-Shoes. I used to OBSESS over shoes. I love white shoes, so naturally they get dirty fast. And when they do, it’s the end of the world. I have scrubbed and washed shoes a countless amount of times and to try to restore them back to “like new” status.

-My weight. I know I touched on this earlier, but for the past 4 years I have been obsessed with my weight and fitness. Up until this hocd, I would go to the gym 2 times a day, and monitored my calories religiously. Every time I looked in the mirror I was never satisfied and just needed to lose more and more weight. I would browse fitness pages to try to find “secrets” from celebrities, and was consistantly envious of guys with nice bodies because I figured that that was the only way to get a girl. The big thing I take out of this is that I was never aroused my looking at guys body. It was always just a “damn I wish I looked like that” since this hocd started and I ditched the gym, I’ve put on 10 lbs so that is also hurting my confidence a lot

These are just a few instances I can remember off the top of my head, but to me they seem pretty OCD to me. I don’t know. I’m just looking for any proof that this monster is OCD and that I’m not really gay.

Does anyone have any input at all? I know it’s long but I can’t get in to see a therapist until July and I’m awfully depressed. I just want to be confident and able to talk to and like girls again. I used to be so crazy about them and I miss it so much. This anxiety and depression is absolutely horrendous and no matter how hard I try to stop checking (reading forums, checking for arousal by looking at females — which has been very hard lately) I just can’t. If I don’t I feel like I’m accepting being gay. This needs to stop. I cannot live as a gay person, it just is not me. But my complete loss of attraction and sex drive towards females is terrifying. I used to be crazy about em now it’s gone