This is how i beat HOCD (happy Kevin?)

Hey , I've trying the YBOP right now.. and for the last three days.. and so far I notice a small change.
The wanting of wanting to be with my gf sexually , as I always have..but even MORE so.
Also I still pose the question of anxiety going down thus - irrational thoughts being less and almost disappearing.

hey man,

I've been dealing with hocd for months not knowing what it is, and last week after reading your forum I felt a million times better, almost as if it saved my life. I'm not yet rid of it, but still, alot easier to deal with. so I figure I might be giving something back to help someone else if I share my story.

this is extremely difficult for me, not only because of the disorder but on top of that I've always been extremely paranoid about the government, the Internet, "big brother" and am terrified they will take this and use it against me.

all my life I've disliked gays. never asked why, but in recent months I've come to believe it might have something to do with this *%#? who tried to pick me up in the first grade, thank god my grandma stopped him. point be, I got into nazi groups, brawling, drinking and hell raising at an early age. I grew out of the race hating years ago, and since then I've got alot of friends from all sorts of places.

either way, I still had a knack for getting myself in $#%^ and ended up getting in alot of trouble. lost my job, went to jail. I got out and tried to get my life together and decided I might try doing some work in the gym, I always liked weightlifting. i also at this point started smoking pot for the first time since I was 15 because i found it was calming me down a bit, especially with the booze and blow.

so I'm applying for a job, and over the phone I can tell the manager was gay. I've really never been around gay people before, usually more or less avoided them, but I figure "oh well, no big deal. I'll get over it." and I was fine for a few months.

background I'd just gotten back with my girlfriend who I loved, after I had cheated on her and made the biggest mistake of my life. I didn't know I was capable of crying anymore til I lost her. we get back together and she gets pregnant right after I start this new low paying job. she wants an abortion, I am dead set against it. here's where it happened.

sitting around stoned out of my face, watching family guy or some show that made a gay joke. right there I had my first hocd attack ever. I was terrified. I've never had a gay thought in my life. i used to joke around about it just like everyone else around me. I've never been perticularly comfortable round gay guys, but I thought i was even getting over that. god knows what happened, and as scared as I was it was only mild compared to how bad they ended up. it felt like someone tied a mental knot in my head, like how you feel when you know the name of something but you just can't think of it. after a few of these, and after theyd carry on into the next morning I stopped smoking weed.

they pretty much went away for a bit, I was just really scared of smoking weed and didn't want to be around it. I did start getting what I now know as OCD attacks about other things in life in this time span. they were just like the attacks I have now, where the attacks are happening more frequently than not. the same sort of thing too! "how o I know if she has the kid I'm not gunna be some deadbeat dad? how can I prove it? I think I'll be there for the kid... of course I'll be there or the kid! but what if I get drunk or something and do something bad? or run away?"

so I stay away for a month or 2 and then one day while I was partying with the guys I smoked a joint. not too bad, but my hocd kicked in again. but it was so mild I thought I could safely start smoking again. that lasted a couple weeks. by the time I decided I had to try quitting again, the hocd was BAD. work became a nightmare. I would be sitting at the desk for hours, just thinking about it uncontrollably. where I never really payed attention before, I started noticing how many people there were gay. people I had just talked to weeks ago terrified me. I'd be thinking "oh man, I was just talking to that guy last week, that explains that comment he made... was he hitting on me? holy $#!? was I hitting on him? what the hell am I thinking about this for?" they got worse, then I had a big fight and broke up with my x again after the abortion. right after I went on vacation, which helped. came back and they started getting worse.

but it was the hangover attacks that did it. come into work after a night of booze and drugs and not caring, and that's when these attacks got morbid. I'd never "checked" before but now it's a part of my daily life. i quit that job, it's gotten suicide bad. I've always had depression, even been low enough to try offing myself a few times but I never felt this bad sober. I try to forget about the attacks, and I go drink like I have my whole life... and I helps, til I start getting too drunk and I NEED the blow to level me out and keep me up, just so I don't wanna go home where I'm alone and I might do something to myself. but then when you come down either that night or next morning, the attacks are merciless. they've gotten so much worse, even sober. porn is another temporary one, I throw on some girl on girl, love it. but the attacks only stop for a little while. it's the insomnia that's worst, the inability to sleep comfortably.

I really am not comfortable going into detail all the messed up thoughts that start to go through the mind, but seeing other posts, it's pretty much universal, isn't it. it feels like your being deceived by something in your head. I've never been the best Christian on the planet, but on that note; I was pretty sure I had evoked the deceiver, lucifer, personally and himself. I'm still not sure Satan himself is possessing my brain. I've been going to church, praying and hoping for gods help. trying to be patient and letting it go away on its own. it's such a mess, I end up realizing the one thing I want more than anything is just to be able to lay in bed with my girl again and feel normal like I did just a few months ago. makes me take back every complaint I've ever had about life.

but, I saw this forum. the attacks haven't stopped, some days are better than others. unemployed with nothing to do and freezing winter outside, ive just been looking for something to occupy myself with. I at least realize now what it is. I started talking to a Christian therapist, hopefully she can help me out. the funniest thing is I can read all this back if I want, realize I have a mental problem, but I still can't put a stop to it. watching t.v. is hard, you try to watch something funny but there's so many gay characters everywhere it stops being enjoyable right away. I've got no advice. church kinda helps, but I think for faith to cure you, you really have to let it and believe. so I'm praying again tonight as hard as I can that I wake up tomorrow completely healed, and maybe I'll have a Christmas miracle. either way, hope this helps someone like the first post helped me and hope nobody suffering this ever has to deal ith it any more. merry christmas

I hope you have a Christmas miracle too, crucified. If not, I'm still glad you posted. It's helpful to read your story. And I wish you much patience and strength to tackle this.

@crucified did the christian therepy work

Hi Kevin,

I want to start by saying thank you so much for putting together this thread. I have read through th majority of the replies in addition to your original post and have come to the conclusion that I have hocd. Now for my story.

Pretty much my whole life, I have been envious of people, especially popular, good looking guys for getting more than I have gotten. This could be the root of my ocd and may have developed into hodc. I have always been attracted to girls, both sexually and emotionally. All of my sexual encounters have been with women and not once have I fantasized about homosexual relations. For the past 6 months or so I have begun to question my sexuality and things that people have said to me in the past I.e. inadvertently calling me gay have become vivid in my mind and I think about these occasions almost daily. More recently, like the past month, random words have been said that trigger something in my mind to something involving men and immediately I wonder if I'm gay. I've had a girlfriend for almost 3 years now and she never fails to turn me on, even to this day.

However, sometimes when I see a guy, I think he's attractive, but I would never consider having intercourse with him, but just the idea of me thinking he's attractive makes me think I'm gay and I constantly think about it. I always feel as if people think I'm gay, even though women have been my number one attraction since day one. I will admit I think I may have a porn/masturbation addiction, which may be affecting things.

I'd like to close this by saying that I am a Christian and these gay thoughts are taking a toll on me and my life as a whole;religiously, educationally and socially. Any suggestions that you or anyone else has for me would be much appreciated. I won't give up.

-Dave

This thread might be helpful, Dave- obsessive-compulsive/topic103176.html

There are many stories in this forum from people with HOCD [although reading them may be triggering. So please be careful.]

Thank you. Everytime I feel the anxiety coming on, I just tell myself all it is is anxiety, not something that I actually want. Hopefully acknowledging the anxiety will allow the anxiety to wear off entirely over time and will become natural.

Yeah, therapy's been helping. It's up and down though. I found out a lot though.

What my therapist has told me is that we have 4 parts to ourselves.
1) the healthy self ( the real you)
2) the manager ( logical decisive planner that gets you what you want)
3) the firefighter ( the part that tries to save you from crisis)
4) the outcasts ( every unwanted thought, fear, image)

With ocd, the unwanted attacks are the reject thoughts manifesting themselves into obsessions. Now with me, as I assume a lot of ocd sufferers, have a very aggressive manager. Instead welcoming these thoughts with "love and understanding" (sounded off to me too), I have the manager part going crazy, yelling at these thoughts and urges and whatever else in an angry violent way, attempting to keep them out. This works in conjunction with the firefighter, who with me tries to find quick responses to end the conflict, which for ocd people means compulsions and addictive behaviour. Anything to give me peace. What I need to do is strengthen my healthy self. Stop fighting with every thought and "invite it in", along with any other sick thoughts you might have.

There's a sick person in every single one of us. One of my main triggers was hearing things about "repressed sexuality", but I'm starting to understand that this doesn't mean what a lot of people think it does. The real issue is were you happy before these thoughts and ocd onset? It's a loaded question, rephrase by saying "did you hate being with the opposite sex? Did you wish you were with the same sex at the time?" You have no more repressed gay person in you as you do a repressed serial killer, paedophile, fan of the opposite sport team, kitten, mailman, whatever. Whatever your mind can imagine exists in your head. I might like walking around urinating in corners, licking my hands like paws and having someone take care of me by putting food in my dish. Not meant as derogatory, but the concept is maybe you could find appeal in anything. But it's just not you. I'm afraid one day Brokeback mountain could happen, and what if some dude comes along with a feminine personality, and I might find them attractive, and blah blah blah. Cool. I'm afraid of that. I don't want it. Even if it did happen, might confuse the hell out of me, but at the end of the day, I'd really rather be with a girl with a feminine personality who I would find way more attractive, let's face it - I'd much rather the person I have in the rest of my life had... well lady parts.

Point be that these are all fears we can't disprove. They're also irrational. We let them get out of control, and this is where God can come in. If you have any belief, put faith in him and his plan. What's worse? Playing by the rules of your fears or playing by the rules of what you feel is a higher calling. If you don't believe in God, have faith in yourself. I always come back to the letter at the top, "have you had gay fantasies all your life? Have you dreamed about going on dates with the same sex?"

This leads to another issue. One of the common hocd compulsions is mental reassurance. After reading this, I have the problem of what I call the black mirror. I read something like that about the dates and fantasies, and eventually I'll find that I start imagining dates and fantasies. Every reassurance can be used against you. I read the other day about people with something worse then what we have: paedophile ocd. I also read about false memories. Can you guess what happened next? It shifted to those things. This is where it gets scary, it gets worse. I had imagined this memory that I did some terrible things to people as a young kid. I got so scared that I did it, I wrote my suicide note and had it all planned out. The only thing that was real was the guilt I felt over something I never did, and it was almost enough for me to do something completely off he handle. Point is, every thought and urge happens DESPITE who you are, now because of who you are. The fact that you fear it so much is really evidense of how much you don't or wouldn't do it.

But you also get your wins with it too. The other day I had my first 2 hours in a long time without ocd. I remembered how I felt a few years back, had a happy memory. It gave me will to fight. That's what it boils down to. We with ocd have serious issues with impulse control. I hit some guy over and over again with a glass months ago for flipping me off. I have a real problem saying no to drugs and booze. In a way, I'm starting to believe ocd manifests itself when we've started losing our healthy self. When we start jerking off 16 times a day, doing an oz of blow in a night, we're acting on stupid little urges with a why not attitude. Ocd almost shows us where our limit is, when we reach the point of asking ourselives why we don't do things like this person or that person, we end up in a mental war with who we really are and what we can imagine ourselves doing. It's like a paradox that forms in our mind, and the only way to answer it is with our free will not to act on our fears, to understand that everyone has curiosity and urges and bad thoughts but the main thing is that we don't have to act on them. Again, not condemning anyone's life choices.

Lastly, when dealing with the thoughts, be calm and don't give them face value. Avoid getting mad about it, avoid getting high or drunk about it, avoid chasing excessive sex, just deal with it calmly in your head. Accept them all as just mental noise and thoughts. Just a thought. One thing I've heard is agreeing with them to an extent. Sort of along the exposure therapy long. Today I looked up the catholic psychologist opinion on same sex attraction. Guess what? I fit the description of someone with tendencies for same sex attraction. Distant relationship with dad, never too much into group sports, a really close relationship with my mom, some sexual abuse. Well wow. I must be gay. I guess I do have a big gay crush on this guy or that guy, must have been gay my whole life. I was surprised how abruptly all the ocd noise stopped. I was also surprised how much I wanted to go find some girls and nail them, it's been awhile since I got laid. Turns out I'm pretty bad at being gay, I really wanted to call this girl and try see her tonight. Got pretty excited to see my ex girlfriend walk in the door, really felt like getting her clothes off for some reason...

My ocd did come back, but point is if you can find calm ways to reduce the conflict it causes in your head, the real you starts to show it's face again. Ocd lives off of scaring you and getting reactions. You can compare it to the devil. If you are getting mad and upset, it's doing it's job perfectly. A negative reaction is what it wants, but if you give it nothing to feed on it won't have what it needs to survive.

A good book you might wanna check out for self help is "brain lock" by Jeff Schwartz. Didn't cure me, tis takes lots of time as I've come to Learn. But it's something to start your recovery process anyways, so for the price it's worth a try. And if you've already figured out you have ocd, listen to what people say and stop reading the internet. You already know what you have, now start trying to fix it. Here's a really good article.

http://www.ocdla.com/blog/sexual-orient ... tment-1198

Hi guys so I made this account because I believe that I suffer from HOCD. On a another previous forum I posted how I felt during certain periods of time and I thought why not give you a link to that forum on here to get your opinion on the matter. In the end of this post I will also write about how I feel now.
I´m 18 by the way and for five years between the age of 12-17 I suffered from severe "Hygiene" OCD.
(you´ll read about that later). I am also terrified of heights and airplanes (I think I passed out one time on a plane because we got hit by mild turbulence (compared to videos seen on youtube)).
I also sweat immensely on airplanes and always feel physically and mentally exhausted after a flight.
I´m also very claustrophobic and rarely use the elevator and when I do I´m really anxious.

Link the the tread on the other forum:http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2250514. I am the treadstarter, AKA "anonymous poster #1".
The thread is four pages but it includes a lot of comments from other people giving me great advice and such. Some people posting on the thread will also be anonymous but they will have the name "anonymous poster #2", "anonymous poster #3" etc... Just remember that I am "anonymous poster #1"

Now I am just going to explain how I feel right now:

For the past three days I´ve felt quite miserable. It´s been about 6 weeks since I last saw another human being other that my brother and father excluding two occasions when I went out to eat with my brother and then later came back immiiately.
After reading about HOCD, I felt that I must have it because my "symptoms" were quite close to the ones posted on here and other forums, and that did give me comfort, but sometimes I still say to myself. Maybe I don´t have HOCD, maybe I am gay. As I wrote on the previous forum being gay is my GREATEST FEAR. I´m personally a bit homophobic (I blame them a bit for my misery--- like if homosexuality did not exist then there would be nothing to worry about). I do however find lesbians okay. Like if I watch two girls kiss or having "sex" I´m actually aroused and I do like it.
I want to be in the mix, do you understand what I mean? I like to see them and the sounds they make. Since there is also no guy involved it makes it a lot easier to masturbate to.
(I also often masturbate to girl-girl sex to convince myself that I am not gay).
I do however enjoy watching guy-girl sex (it depends on my mood), and sometimes watching a guy having sex with a girl is more arousing, seeing him give it to her. I do however use my hand to try to block the view of his dick, and imagine it´s me instead. This sometimes is hard as I get images in my head. Images which disturb me. Examples are images of dicks in my head, someone sucking a dick. I also do not like tender touches, like when someone of the same gender rubs gently on you.
(My brother knows this and always does it which infuriates me). Therefore my worst image (and this is really hard to write and it is very disgusting is someone gently sucking/licking the front part of a circumcised dick). This image literally kills me and I have to shake my head in frustration. When I then ejaculate after watching the girl-girl porn/ girl-guy porn I question whether it was the girl or the guy which made me ejaculate in girl-guy porn and if instead was the images in the girl-girl porn which made me ejaculate. So I always wonder whether I am gay or not, even though deep down in my heart I know that I am straight.
Sometimes lets say I feel like masturbating and suddenly a disgusting image pops up in my head and then my dick moves, I say to myself that means that I must be gay, otherwise my dick wouldn´t have moved, and I neglect all the other evidence which suggests that I like girls.

The images that I get the are hard to deal with, but what is even harder and what kills me is the thoughts that I might be gay, it´s these thoughts which sometimes make me seriously consider commiting suicide. Yesterday I wanted to bang my head against the wall and started crying in bed wanting the fear and images to go away. I actually plotted a suicide-plan, and started to work on it but then I remembered that only weak people take their own lives and I am NOT WEAK. I would also damage my family a lot. What really prevented me from doing it however is me fearing god ( I am a muslim, not a strict one by far, but I will ALWAYS believe in god and that muhammed is the last prophet, and commiting suicide is a GREAT SIN in islam), but also that I do want to LIVE. I want to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor, marry a beautiful girl whom I love and have beautiful children. I also want to travel and go partying with girls and stuff (I´m still 18) until I settle down and get married.
Needless to say I was crying for one hour straight begging god to take my life (because I knew I wouldn´t be able to do it), by me not waking up after going to sleep.

If we go back to to the masturbating topic I do masturbate regularly, about three times a day and I´ve been doing this for the past 5-6 years and therefore stopping is REALLY HARD. After three days basically my dick is like "bonerish" all the time and I feel that I need to release the load.
Since I´m bonerish all the time anything can make my dick move and if I by occasion was reading an article where there was a picture of a dude, I say that this must be that I am gay, and I go on watching girl-girl porn to convince myself that I am not, of course I get the images in my head and I question whether it was the images or the girls whom made me ejaculate and so this devastating and vicious cycle starts all over again.
I hope I will overcome it and laugh at it today as I do with the Hygiene "OCD" (read previous thread) which lasted for five years but atm I feel like $#%^ all the ######6 time and it doesn´t stop!!
I overcame the Hygience OCD after 5 MISERABlE years with absolutely no help, I was actually verbally abused and sometimes also physically by my parents who did not understand me.
I forgive them, because I know they wanted the best for me.

The other day I was reading on HOCD and one of the dudes on the forum was gay and he had a pic of two dudes making out (this is so disgusting and difficult to write) and ever since the pic is there in my head filling me with disgust. It´s just so wrong. I almost want to throw up. This was the first time I had ever seen a gay picture. Why does this picture not go away when everything else from that day is basically forgotten??? My mind then tries to put me in the picture. I shiver and shake my head when I think about it.

My parents separated when I was 12/13, and my father left me and my brother just when I hit puberty and before that they hadn´t been talking for 3 years even though we were living in the same house.
I am very much like my father in behaviour, sadly my father and mother were exactly the opposite and that´s why when she raised me she always tried to make me not like my father but the problem is that we were and still are so alike. I always wanted to go to parties and hang out with girls after school (so did my father -- still in his late 50´s he talks to women on internet and flirts with them-- not that I am proud of it or so but you get the picture) but my mother made such a big deal out of it. She said school and only school is important. One time I went out at the age of 17 for 6 hours between 9 pm and 3 am and went to my very close friends house where he had a party (I didn´t drink smoke or anthing but it was loads of fun). The problem is that she called about 12 times (the first time after only 25 minutes --- like COME ON!!!)
One time I went to a friends house to study at the age of 18 between the 6 pm and 10 pm --- She called me 6 times asking what was I doing, with whom I were, when are you coming home and so on ---- give me a ######6 break I am only studying biology!!!). They gave me a cigarette but I said no because I KNOW it´s bad for MY HEALTH. She says she trusts me. Then why is she so controlling?
Do you think that my anxiousness in any way stems from this. Not necessarily my HOCD but just the OCD in general.
I´m also good in school and I am going to study medicine/dentistry soon, so it´s not like I´ve disappointed her in any way.
Now luckily she realised two months ago that she should let my father raise me because he understands me more, but throughout theses years I´ve become dependent on my mother and I feel strange, and whenever I have a problem I call her and don´t talk to my father.
I feel like my mom would give me better advice.
This last paragraph was a bit "off topic" but I just want to show you who I am.

I really want to be free from this illness. It´s breaking me apart and I really need to be focusing on studying but it´s so hard when you always have these thoughts in your head.
Help me guys

I am really looking forward to getting a response from you

Welcome to the forum, razaq! This thread has lots of good information for you.
obsessive-compulsive/topic105465.html#p1033268

I'm sorry, but I don't think continually asking for reassurance is going to help. You're only going to cause more spikes. My suggestions are-

1] Do not test your sexuality in ANY way. No looking at pictures or deliberately thinking about sexual subjects of any sort.
2] If you can, stop masturbating for 90 days. Take it as a challenge. It gives your brain a chance to reset from the torment your current thoughts are causing. It won't "cure" anything, but might give you something to focus on outside the fear.
3] Consider finding a therapist. They can support you through this in a positive way. Life doesn't have to be a solo mission. There's no shame in asking for help. But asking internet people to confirm or deny or give opinions is likely to make this worse. That's really unfair, I know.