lesbian with hocd or am i faking it?

Hi. I went back and forth with creating an account on here, but when I saw some posts that kind of reflected how I’m feeling, and when my symptoms got horrible, I just had to vent somewhere, and this seemed like the right place.

So here’s a bit of my story. I’ve been struggling with OCD ever since I was a little kid, really, except back then I didn’t know that that’s what it is. It got kind of subdued back when I got really depressed, but now that that has passed a bit, it’s honestly back and worse than ever. I’ve already gone through a fair deal of ROCD and some other stuff. I wanted to think I was managing it and getting better...

As for being a lesbian, I’ve liked girls ever since I can remember. When I was a young teenager, I admitted to myself that I was gay, that I loved girls, I loved everything about them. Men really didn’t interest me in that way, not romantically, not at all. It’s been a few years since then, and my love for women just grew more and more. I was very proud and happy about being a lesbian. I’ve had a fair deal of crushes on girls and I’ve dated a few, too. It was great. I have a girlfriend who I’ve been with for almost a year now, and she’s the one I love the most in this world. Except...

About a week back, I started panicking over the fact that I wasn’t as attracted to girls as before. It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, maybe, but to me it was. I’ve been confused about my sexuality before, and it used to bring me down too, but I always came out of it being so sure I liked girls. This time? It’s been a week, and things are just getting worse. I keep having breakdowns and panic attacks. Any attraction towards girls in me has been replaced by repulsion-like and disgust-like feelings, and I can’t even talk to my girlfriend properly and be around her because I just feel awful. Suddenly it seems like everything about girls disgusts me or makes me so anxious. At first I was still somewhat okay, I could still look at a girl and be attracted, but now it’s almost impossible. To me, it’s not even about liking men, I think I would still be somewhat fine with it (though I don’t see myself in a relationship with a guy, ever) - but only if I know I like women too. I can’t call my girlfriend without feeling sick, I can’t think of the term "lesbian" and be comfortable with it, it feels like I’m lying or faking something. This is the worst I have felt in a longer while, and it’s killing me.

It’s starting to wear me down, too. I keep having thoughts like „Well you must really be just straight” and whenever I try to, accept it or so, so it goes away, I just can’t. I can’t accept it... Or maybe my mind is just telling me I can’t accept it, and I am really turning straight.

Is this HOCD? Or am I really just turning straight? Please help, I’ve never felt so hopeless.

Well....

When you say being with a guy might be okay (but not romantically in a relationship) has it been that way a while, or has this come up after you began panicking?

As far as the panic goes I don't know- I think people, esp younger folks, expect levels of desire/arousal to keep at a high level then freak out when they drop, as if suddenly that means you're not as secure in your sexual orientation.

I'm going with this being anxiety, but there's a few ways we could look at this, IMO.

Maybe you've just freaked out over nothing... and gotten straight OCD...

Or if you're discovering you're a little bisexual, your OCD is playing hell with it. I'm a bi male and for a long time my OCD would play with it. I'm not sure I'd call it HOCD but OCD can worm its way into anything right? Agonise over what I am because 'both' and 'neither' aren't things I think OCD cares for.

Snaga wrote:Well....

When you say being with a guy might be okay (but not romantically in a relationship) has it been that way a while, or has this come up after you began panicking?

As far as the panic goes I don't know- I think people, esp younger folks, expect levels of desire/arousal to keep at a high level then freak out when they drop, as if suddenly that means you're not as secure in your sexual orientation.

I'm going with this being anxiety, but there's a few ways we could look at this, IMO.

Maybe you've just freaked out over nothing... and gotten straight OCD...

Or if you're discovering you're a little bisexual, your OCD is playing hell with it. I'm a bi male and for a long time my OCD would play with it. I'm not sure I'd call it HOCD but OCD can worm its way into anything right? Agonise over what I am because 'both' and 'neither' aren't things I think OCD cares for.

It has come up after I began panicking. Before that, I had zero thoughts about being with men. So now I don't know if it's genuine feelings that I would be okay with it, or if it's something else.

Today I even "accepted" being straight, so to say, and I thought it was fine with me and maybe I really was straight, but there's just something so... off about it.

I just really do not know at this point. I'm also wondering, why do I suddenly feel anxiety/disgust around women... I haven't heard of people feeling like that around the people they feel attraction to in HOCD, I've only heard of anxiety around the opposite sex to the one they are attracted to. It makes me think that maybe I started getting disgusted because I really am NOT attracted to women and never have been. I just... I really don't know.

Whoops, editing this, but I just wanted to say:

Right now, it's a little bit better, I think... I feel attraction towards girls, but the thought of relationships still makes me feel sick and anxious... I hope that, like my physical/sexual attraction, it will come back soon... Especially since my brain keeps making up all these scenarios with men in my head and it's wearing me down so much and I just keep getting more and more sick.

Also, yesterday, I was totally free from these thoughts for like half an hour or an hour, and it was beautiful. It was such an amazing feeling, to love girls freely like that again... I'm just scared it will never be like that again.

I can't actually imagine dating men? It makes me feel weird inside. But my brain is so insistent on imagining all these men and I'm just so tired.

Some observations....

Worrying if you like the 'wrong' sex, or, to be more specific, worrying that you don't like the 'right' sex, is gonna mess with your libido, feelings of desire, whatever. I suspect 'cause people get to over analyzing. You worry about it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

And when it went away for a little while, you felt so much better.... which shows what's really inside, sweetie.

You mention getting so tired of it... expect yourself to get a little numb to the intrusive thoughts. THEN... your anxiety will latch onto that, and you'll panic over not panicking. The thoughts of men aren't scaring me anymore! Why aren't I scared? OMG I'm really straight....!

I don't think so. seems like that happens a LOT with the sexual OCD themes. I mean my health scares that I get, eventually I get habituated to the current scare and it stops being so scary. It's like hitting your hand until it goes numb. You get panic numb, I think.

So expect that to happen, that way it won't take you by surprise. And it doesn't mean you're really straight. Just means it got wore out and then latched onto a new twist to reignite the fright.

Now that's not Gospel, but that's my own personal opinion on it, because it happens a lot in this forum. As most of the sexual orientation OCD is centered around the fear of being gay, and us non-straight people are a minority of the population, my take on that is, ain't no freakin' way you're all gay!

So it seems logical that if they can't all be gay, and this is OCD playing mind rhymes-with-duck games, then I'm guessing you're a lesbian, sweetie- you've been one, that's the skin you've felt at home in up till that bad day when the thought crossed your mind 'what if'......

Thank you for all your replies, I really appreciate it.

At this point... I don’t even know. Everything gives me anxiety at this point; I thought I felt better... But I had a dream about a girl, and I don’t even know if I liked it. It’s like I don’t even know if I still want to be gay. I feel like my mind has twisted, like I really don’t like girls anymore and they don’t make me happy. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine me with a man... This is such a hopeless feeling. I feel like my mind has gone absolutely wild. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. At this point, it even tells me I’m a straight person that got homosexual OCD - because hey, women and being a lesbian make me this anxious, so that must be true... None of this makes any sense.

i'm a lesbian. i have OCD but i've not dealt with HOCD so i don't know how applicable this is, but i'll give it my best shot.

i go through periods of time where i feel as if i must be "faking it" because i feel either apathy or outright repulsion at the thought of being intimate with a woman. i worried that it meant i "got it wrong". feeling as if you have to be attracted to men is something that lesbians have to deal with a lot, sadly. initially i thought i was bisexual because i felt apathy towards men, so surely that meant i liked them, right? it wasn't outright repulsion, it might be okay if i dated a man, so that meant i couldn't be a lesbian. turns out, i wasn't bi. but at the same time, it's okay to be "wrong" about it. no-one is a fixed person, things change all the time. if in ten years i realise "hang on, i like men", that doesn't mean i liked men all along and "faked" being a lesbian, similarly i didn't "fake" being bisexual as a teenager. i think we feel like we have to be so sure about being a lesbian because other people are forever doubting it, but it's okay not to be sure.

it turns out i'm likely somewhere on the asexuality spectrum as well as being a lesbian. the thought of being sexually intimate with anyone is something that occasionally gives me feelings of apathy or outright repulsion. the "occasionally" is the important part. with men, that feeling of apathy/repulsion is constant. with women, it isn't constant. being able to untangle that and realise that it's okay to feel this way has helped me immensely.

the main thing is, there is no wrong here. sexuality is fluid - not in the sense that it has to change or that it can't stay the same, but in the sense that reviewing your sexuality and wondering if you "got it right" is completely normal. when it's to the extent that HOCD is, however, at that point it's obviously impacting your day-to-day and ability to function, so it requires some work and careful navigation.

i think the main thing is that the OCD relies on ruminations and subsequent compulsion-following to "prove" or "disprove" the rumination, that's what it's like for me at least. the way to break the cycle, that i've found at least, is to deal with the compulsion aspect of it. the ruminations will happen, there's no real way around that. however there is a way to deal with the compulsions by diverting the path away from "proving" or "disproving". it also involves diverting away from black & white thinking. this involves validating thoughts like "it's okay not to be 100% certain if i'm a lesbian or not" and "it's okay not to know if i want to be in a relationship or not". it's still going to be hard, and the ruminations rely on a feeling of doubt, because as soon as you start doubting, you feel the need to figure out why you feel doubt at all. the point is, it's okay to doubt things. it's okay not to be certain about things.

i don't know if any of this is helpful, but i thought i'd reply anyway.

raptureblues, what you said kind of... reminded me of times. Times when I wasn't sure of my sexuality either. And I used to play around with labels and all that, but ultimately, I always came back to being gay... I don't know if that means anything though. Sighs. Right now I'm even thinking that all these years I trained my brain to be gay because I wanted it so badly (though, I don't think that's... really possible).

I'm going to my therapist today. Hopefully she can give some nice insight too... I'm seriously feeling horrible.

Black and white- all or non. Yeah being bisexual that's been my OCD sexual struggle. And the struggle I had for a long time reviewing and questioning. Until I accepted I'm not- can't- or even want to- be one or the other.

Thanks for all the posts, I seriously appreciate it a lot.

Can (H)OCD make me believe I actually don't want girls? I've been feeling major anxiety around them for a couple of days now, and when my brain says "You were never attracted to girls and you aren't attracted to them now." it feels like I accept it just like that. I don't know what that means.

Could I have possibly forced myself to be gay for all these years...