HOCD is there any salvation?

Now I know that there are an abundance of HOCD posts on this thread and I can say I've read quite a few of them (definitely more than once). It's just after reading articles and other people's posts, I still feel lost or not satisfied with this challenge. A bit of background, I'm a 19 year old guy who has always loved women. In my childhood, and especially in my puberty years, I can always remember that I loved and admired women. I can list all the girl crushes and girls that I've attempted to go for. I've always been sexually attracted to women and I still find pleasure watching them. This year I was blessed enough to find myself a great girlfriend (9months together) who is currently supporting me through this torture. I was going to check myself with gay stimuli but after reading that its bad, I never tried it.

I can definitely say I've always been one to worry or fixate on things that I cannot obtain answers to. I've had stints of OCD in other areas such as being a priest, relationship OCD and superstitious OCD.
Right now and for the past 4-6 weeks, I have had crazy intense spikes regarding homosexuality and my sexual orientation. I have not been diagnosed by a doctor saying I have OCD, my counsellor at school said all I have is anxiety issues which I guess could be right, so I don't know if I should call it HOCD. But anyways, it all started one night when a stray thought occured to me "what if I was gay?". I remember thinking "omfg knowing me this is going to escalate" and boy has it escalated. I found my way to this website and many articles online about HOCD and CBT/ERP techniques and for a short while I felt like I was actually recovering and being able to deal with the spikes (felt so great). Unfortunately the thoughts, checking and fixating came back and my initial question of "what if I'm gay?" evolved into "what if I want to be gay?".

I don't know why this has caused me so much pain and anguish but I'm desperate for help. I am aware that checking is bad and I try not to do it. I am sort of accepting of the fact there are attractive guys out there and even when I have checked I noticed that even if there was a hint of attraction or curiosity, I never could imagine anything romantic or a relationship with a guy. Naturally, all this distress has affected my libido and I feel anxious when I notice my attraction to women is not as intense as it once was.

Initially, I was so sure I didn't want to be gay, I mean I was so happy with my life, my girlfriend and my sexuality prior to all of this anxiety and now all of a sudden I feel as if I want to be gay?! It doesn't feel right. Furthermore, whenever I get these attacks I usually think back to how I felt about different people at different times in my life and it feels like how I felt was a lie or I here voices in my head saying "Oooo what if this wasn't true and you didn't love her?" or "Are you REALLY sure this is what you want?". Sometimes I wake up already expecting a spike and it saddens me to think that wow this is what my life is amounting to. Sometimes I wake up convinced I've turned gay even though there is no evidence. My biggest fear of all, sometimes I feel convinced I WANT to be gay. I had a crazy spike just writing that. I could've sworn I didn't want to be gay but all of this distress has made me lose sight of what I want or feel.

All of this questioning and checking and fighting for what I thought/think I want has taken its toll on me and honestly if anything, I'm just really ****ing tired of this (pardon my language). I know it's unrealistic to ask for a definite solution and I've learned to accept that. All I want now is some perspective as to what I'm thinking or feeling. I'm not sure what I feel/want anymore, is it normal for HOCDs to feel so lost and not sure? Is this all just mind games or should I really be listening? Is it normal for HOCDs to feel so convinced they've turned gay? Why do I feel like I want to be gay when I have been so adamant that I don't?

Is this really HOCD or am I a cloak in a closet?

I'm sorry for being so desperate and I know there are other people who have posted similar things to this. It's just I don't know what to do anymore, its affected my studies, my friendships and family, my sports and hobbies, and my relationship. I really wanna beat this soon please help!

It's OCD. I am free after three years of unmentionable horror with Pure-O, thanks to Prozac 60mg. Any high dose of an SSRI will often do. It won't remove *all* of the OCD, but mine is so quiet now I can completely ignore it. I'm genuinely happy in my days. I'm forgetting what the pain was like. This is your salvation.

It *will* take the entire 1.5 to 2 months to start working at all, so don't get discouraged. For me, I'm telling you, very much worth the wait.

I hope you are right, I mean is it normal for the OCD to be this convincing? I hate waking up feeling like I'm meant to give in to these feelings. Some days its extremely strong and convincing others not so much. I've read on multiple articles that I'm meant to expose myself and go through all of these feelings, but whenever I try I feel all the more that I'm slowly giving in. Also, since they say that its about accepting the fact I might be gay, whenever I try to accept that fact, I feel compelled to actually want to be gay. I have no clue why and where this is all coming from. But yeah its very distressing.

Well, believe it or not, but as a gay guy myself I had the same exact thoughts regarding women. 'What if I'm straight?' 'What if I'm just lying to myself?' 'Maybe I just somehow made myself gay, but in reality I'm straight?' 'I must be in denial. I think I'm straight, OH MY GOD'.

Anyway, you know what helped me? Realizing that, gay or straight, I can still live a happy life. It really is no big deal. I once met a guy on one of the anxiety forums who had HOCD. He was petrified of being gay. We chatted for a few months. I guess he just wanted to have a gay friend to be able to understand himself a little better. You know what happened? He started meeting gay guys, hanging around with gay guys, went to a gay club. He was horrified beyond belief and at first his obsessions got even stronger. But then things started to change. He realised that being gay is not just about sexual attraction. He realised that his life wouldn't even change that much if he were gay. He could finally answer this awful question 'What if I'm gay?'. If I'm gay then so be it. I can still be happy, have a successful career and even start family if I meet the right kind of guy. Having accepted the fact that he could be gay and realising it wouldn't really make a huge impact on his life, the obsessions went away. He's married now and his wife is expecting their first child.

FMA4 wrote:I hope you are right, I mean is it normal for the OCD to be this convincing? I hate waking up feeling like I'm meant to give in to these feelings. Some days its extremely strong and convincing others not so much. I've read on multiple articles that I'm meant to expose myself and go through all of these feelings, but whenever I try I feel all the more that I'm slowly giving in. Also, since they say that its about accepting the fact I might be gay, whenever I try to accept that fact, I feel compelled to actually want to be gay. I have no clue why and where this is all coming from. But yeah its very distressing.

Yes it is. It usually is completely and totally all-consumingly 100% convincing, and you're usually 100% sure whatever your fear is is true. It never is, and it's still just OCD. OCD corrupts your logic as well as hides counter-evidence to your fear. Medication saved me, and while some might not take kindly, if you haven't tried a high dose of an SSRI, you need to. But it won't help you at all for 1.5 months. So keep that in mind.

astatine25 wrote:Well, believe it or not, but as a gay guy myself I had the same exact thoughts regarding women. 'What if I'm straight?' 'What if I'm just lying to myself?' 'Maybe I just somehow made myself gay, but in reality I'm straight?' 'I must be in denial. I think I'm straight, OH MY GOD'.

Anyway, you know what helped me? Realizing that, gay or straight, I can still live a happy life. It really is no big deal. I once met a guy on one of the anxiety forums who had HOCD. He was petrified of being gay. We chatted for a few months. I guess he just wanted to have a gay friend to be able to understand himself a little better. You know what happened? He started meeting gay guys, hanging around with gay guys, went to a gay club. He was horrified beyond belief and at first his obsessions got even stronger. But then things started to change. He realised that being gay is not just about sexual attraction. He realised that his life wouldn't even change that much if he were gay. He could finally answer this awful question 'What if I'm gay?'. If I'm gay then so be it. I can still be happy, have a successful career and even start family if I meet the right kind of guy. Having accepted the fact that he could be gay and realising it wouldn't really make a huge impact on his life, the obsessions went away. He's married now and his wife is expecting their first child.

Thank you so much for this advice. Recently, I've had a sort of carefree take on my spikes and your advice has helped tremendously. However in the past few days, I have had really intense "back door" spikes where I no longer feel so against the thoughts. At first I attributed it to the exposure techniques, but now more and more I'm starting to believe that I want to be gay again. And so the vicious cycle starts again. Although, whats different about this time is that I'm starting to doubt that I even have HOCD, that I'm just convincing myself that I have it and that I'm a closet cloak because of my lack of disliking to my thoughts now. So I'm not sure what I am anymore. Furthermore, I've finished seeing my university psychiatrist and she says I don't have OCD. If she's right then does that make me a closet cloak?

The part where you were talking about how you were wanting to be gay hit me right on the nail bud. Today, for some unknown apparent reason, I keep thinking that It feels good to have these obsessive thoughts, and what I want is to be gay which doesn't make sense at all because yesterday I was thinking about how I would kill my self as it was pretty bad. I completely understand what you mean about how you would analyse your encounters. I seem to always be analyzing my encounters with guys thinking If I had done anything gay or if I was attracted to them or not. There will always be the thought in the back of my head like "you know you thought he was hot". The biggest thing i'm struggling right now with is that around 1 or 2 of my friends I had a nice feeling in my stomach. To be frank I don't know what it was, and it never happened again. It was probably not attraction, but the gay thoughts have made me not forget what attraction means anymore, so I always have to check the dictionary meaning to reassure my self. It's strange because I don't see any guys in that sexual or romantic way, and don't have any desires towards them In anyway. OCD seems to be a really powerful illness, so it can deceive you in many ways with it's many faces.