Doesn’t feel like HOCD anymore, help :(

Hi there

So I am a 19 year old straight male, It all started about 8 months ago and ever since then my life has been stressful complicated and I haven’t been able to relax since, in may I stressed nearly everyday that I was gay and found out about hocd, now I think about it however I feel that it has just been a cover up for the actual fact that I am gay.
Ever since I was little I remember being into girls, I remember all my girl crushes up to the age of 18 and remember being so happy and excited whenever I was talking to them, now what I suppose is hocd, it feeds on and makes me think about the past where I could have shown signs of being gay. Being quite a shy child I didn’t really present myself out there and never really spoke to girls until the age of about 16, my brain feeds on this as a sign of me being gay and therefore over the past few weeks, have just been looking at my past and becoming scared and anxious
Furthermore to the anxiety, I also feel no emotions anymore like I used to, I used to feel so happy and excited, now I can’t feel any of those, I also used to play so much video games and watch football, but now this has made me not want to do anything and just sit in my bed looking a forums to make sure I’m not gay.

Recently however I feel like I haven’t been as stressed and haven’t shown every sign of hocd which people talk about, which has made me super anxious, I now just feel like soon enough I will have to give in and come out to everyone to stop the worrying, even though it’s not what I truly want, I also have a girlfriend who is so chill and reassuring, however I feel like when this started, it made me think I don’t love her anymore, and so it’s made me not want to see her whenever we do anything intimate I feel like I used to, however about 10 minutes after we finish, the thoughts get worse.

Please tell me this is hocd, because this is destroying my life, I want to feel emotions again, I want to get happy whenever I see a beautiful girl walk by, I want to just feel relaxed when I am at home and I want to be able to do my hobby’s without the thoughts getting in the way.

I'm a 30 year old man and have suffered HOCD for 11 years. HOCD afflicted me when I turned 19 and it ht me out of the blue. I've always liked women but I've never had a girlfriend. I attribute this to my anxiety and fear of rejection. This lack of romantic interaction served as the catalyst for my HOCD.
The biggest issue I've had is looking at guys and spiking if I found them attractive.

I think your story, based on what I've read, is similar to mine. Your lack of success with girls probably fueled your HOCD. The biggest fear we have is that we've lived in denial. We look at past crushes and treat them as "cover-ups for our true desires." This of course is irrational and if we were gay, we would've known YEARS ago and probably wouldn't be on this site.

I suggest you seek a mental health professional that specializes in OCD. This forum is good for support, but is no substitute for professional help.

This IS OCD. It has all the classic symptoms. Inability to handle uncertainty, craving certainty. Looking for signs and interpreting them as either reinforcing what you do or don't want to believe about yourself or what you perceive may be happening to you. EVERYONE who has OCD, whatever their worries focus on, has these symptoms.

To get better you need to decide that you can TRUST YOURSELF to decide for yourself how you will live your life and who you want to be. You need to learn to tolerate uncertainty and recognize this stuff for what it is, harmful thoughts that won't go away until you choose not to entertain them anymore.

I know it is hard because I have struggled with OCD as well, but the only thing that ever helped me was when I finally just found it in myself to let go and believe that I was okay. Once I did that, and my brain settled down, I was able to see how "silly" my thoughts I was afraid of were. But they never seemed silly in the moment. Ask yourself, "What do I know is true, deep down under all the anxious thoughts?" Believe that voice, not the anxious one looking for reassurance.

A great book that helped me a lot was BrainLock by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. He tell you how to learn to cope with those intrusive thoughts and shift your focus so your brain can calm down. You might take a look.

cochesekid wrote:To get better you need to decide that you can TRUST YOURSELF to decide for yourself how you will live your life and who you want to be

Agreed. And something I try to get across as well, in my own experience with harm-themed OCD. I decide I'm not going to do what my thoughts are telling me I want to do.

cochesekid wrote:What do I know is true, deep down under all the anxious thoughts?"

I'm Bi- that's something I feel, deep down- whether I want to be, or not. No amount of 'deciding' is going to change that. But when it's OCD... you darn well have to decide for yourself what you are. Because it's the OCD.... otherwise, deep down, you'd crave it... you might hate it, but you'd really want it, on some visceral level.

Do you really believe sex is a craving and a need because I don't. Equating it with breathing and eating and needing water is subjective at best. IMO it's really not the same as a food craving

I don't know a lot of folks ruin existing relationships, risk STDs, pregnancy, etc- for the urge to merge. When you got it bad, you got it bad.

So I'm a bi-male, I'll be blunt- if you really want to get freaky with the same sex, you know it- I've wanted cock so bad at times I thought I was gonna have a come-apart. Ain't no wondering about it.

Did you really? Because that sounds like an awfully primitive notion of your perception of wants. Parts are parts I thought they say these days.

The "you know it" is called intuition btw. It can't be faked, but anxiety and other gut feelings can be.

Sexual desire is not a particularly sophisticated construct.... I would think the urge to merge is pretty darn primitive.

Sexual desire and the urge to have sex especially the urge to procreate are two very different things.

How is it not sophisticated? It can't really be defined or measured as it's too abstract for our current limited understanding of the brain.

The idea that sex alone being purely primitive is a very Freudian ideology. (Wherein all behaviors are rooted in sex + animalistic ancestory behaviors passed on, these notions aren't widely accepted today) But you're free to believe however you wish.

Thank you all for your reply’s,

In the past week I have been a bit better, my girlfriend has stayed round my house the past week and it kind of a mental block saying if I have a girlfriend, it must mean I’m not gay, the only time that I get these thoughts now is when I am not with her,

Snaga wrote:
I'm Bi- that's something I feel, deep down- whether I want to be, or not. No amount of 'deciding' is going to change that. But when it's OCD... you darn well have to decide for yourself what you are. Because it's the OCD.... otherwise, deep down, you'd crave it... you might hate it, but you'd really want it, on some visceral level.

As you say deep down you would crave it, well I know deep down somewhere inside me I crave a women’s body etc. I know that I would never touch another man as a natural response and that if I were to do anything with a man, it would be to prove to myself if I was gay or not, which would be the worst thing to do
It’s just now my brain seems messed up, this week has got to be one of the best weeks I have spent with my girlfriend and it has messed up my head a bit as when these thoughts pop up randomly, it seems to be whenever I’m not with her, it feels like I’m almost forcing myself to say she is beautiful but deep down I know she is beautiful, my attraction just seems to have faded with girls. I want to be able to feel like I felt before all this happened, I want to be able to look at any man and not think about my sexuality and just look at them normally, I want that warm feeling that I used to get when talking to girls, and I just want my life to go back to being stress free and relaxing.