HOCD and trigger

Hello,
I have hocd since last year and its first time that ever happened to me, I am 24 years old male and i get triggered everytime gay like thought appears in my mind. But I have been slowly recovering since few months back after knowing what ocd really is and how much it affects me after everytime I kept believing what ifs as kind of threat. Even though it's almost gone for me I still get triggered like when I talk to myself when I'm alone or I'm thinking randomly when I wake up after some dream even though I have no clear memory if there was one sometimes but saying things or thinking things like ' oh that guy is cute I mean girl ' or ' I want to marry that dude I mean girl ' it just puts me off full awareness and highly sensitive, after trying to escape all the reassurance even with just small things like this really frustrates me and I cant focus on anything else as if my thought process is becoming more gay like and I dont like it at all

I dont understand whys that happening can anyone help me through this like is this due to influence from fear or something? It's making me lose focus on anything else I want to do, I know I dont have any friends that are girls but I really hate to respond to my thoughts like this just because its disturbing.

Hello and welcome!

If you obsess over it, you'll naturally find yourself thinking of it, or thinking as if you were the obsession, or even dreaming about the obsession. Doesn't mean you are what you're obsessing over.

Jetstorm wrote:I know I dont have any friends that are girls but I really hate to respond to my thoughts like this just because its disturbing.

If there's one thing I've noticed about a lot of gay guys, is that a lot of their friends are girls- straight guys, not so much. I've heard it comes out of girls' mouths that a gay boy is a girl's best friend.

I'm bisexual, and born male- I probably have more girl friends, then guy friends, it's kinda split down the middle, which sort of makes sense, when looked at in the light of what I've just written. So, if you don't have many friends that are girls... that's certainly not a cause for worry that you're gay. I'd be more worried, if you said all your friends was girls. I'd be like mmhmm, he's 'one of the girls'. Which I'm capable of being, myself, I'm more comfortable hanging with girls. And I'm Bisexual, so... no surprises there.

Snaga wrote:Hello and welcome!

If you obsess over it, you'll naturally find yourself thinking of it, or thinking as if you were the obsession, or even dreaming about the obsession. Doesn't mean you are what you're obsessing over.

Jetstorm wrote:I know I dont have any friends that are girls but I really hate to respond to my thoughts like this just because its disturbing.

If there's one thing I've noticed about a lot of gay guys, is that a lot of their friends are girls- straight guys, not so much. I've heard it comes out of girls' mouths that a gay boy is a girl's best friend.

I'm bisexual, and born male- I probably have more girl friends, then guy friends, it's kinda split down the middle, which sort of makes sense, when looked at in the light of what I've just written. So, if you don't have many friends that are girls... that's certainly not a cause for worry that you're gay. I'd be more worried, if you said all your friends was girls. I'd be like mmhmm, he's 'one of the girls'. Which I'm capable of being, myself, I'm more comfortable hanging with girls. And I'm Bisexual, so... no surprises there.

Yeah true, it's just that I remember almost all my friends even those who had similar personality like mine had at least girls interested in them and some of my old classmates at least try to have alot of girls attention because they were really being friendly and spend more time as one friend circle.

I know it sounds like comparison the way I put it maybe because how everyone had something in them that makes other interested or maybe easier to approach while me on the other hand at best I would have to hear from those same classmates, teachers/professors and parents with how much I dont talk or hangout I mean it's not that I ignore or think anything negatively but either way it's not really a great past for me because of how I was and most of the times I spent 70% of my days alone whether it's in class or even at home.

I mean I did have friends but I guess you could say having more guy friends that the thought of gay things in my mind just popping out of nowhere out of fear because I dont have any history of having good friendship with girls or I didnt bother to be talkative to them when I had my chances like knowing them more or such but at the end day I always used to escape with complete low self esteem and just pretend like it's all normal and trying to get along but not that deep and stuff like that.

Sorry if its turning out to be a rant, but it's pretty much one of the big reasons I had obsessions for more than a year and it all just started during covid because of lockdown, I was pretty sure I was over my past and even started to look forward slowly hoping things would be different but that didnt last long, it just crippled my mind and i started to believe it almost completely because i couldn't end it anyway or even had a proof that all the thoughts were wrong at all and that's when I did all compulsions which persisted for this long since then but at least it's not that bad as last year..yet I have this lingering feeling that tells me I'm not straight, I dont like girls or heck I ll never get married and have a wife or probably say I'm gay after marriage and etc etc, theres no end to it and I hate the fact I'm troubled by my own thoughts and just thoughts itself which also reminds me of how bullies were oppressive when I was like 6 or 7 years old and even during teen years, like i was an easy victim because of how i listened and not do anything but just take beating or lose things because of them, and then theres that small incident I keep it to myself when I was 11 or 12 I hate to talk about it even now, but anyways when I was returning home there was this old man who came to elevator at same time but didnt want to pick floors he took my hand and made me touch his private part and then he touched mine, I was really naive person so it was hard for me to tell what was going on but i realise it late what had drived me towards porn addiction later because of how much I became curious of it. I did realise it before that happen again because that old man was following me and kept trying to do the same thing even at open street but I shove him away I didnt like how it was going and after a week of same thing happening, when I left my bike for my tuition classes, my friend told me that my bike wasnt there, it was horrible day and later my friends found out that person had stolen it after that never seen him again.

I apologize for the long reply, I'm not feeling as much as distressed as I did initially when I had hocd but even after all that I still end up almost believing thoughts are right and that lingering feeling stayed backing it up as if its saying that its inevitable, it's just so sad that I have fallen this low and theres no real harm done, it's just my negativity and thoughts connecting well so together that I get depressed that easily.

Some of us are loners.

Some of us are also late bloomers when it comes to the opposite sex and dating. I was.

Also.. remember there's your perception of yourself, and it also affects your judgement:

Jetstorm wrote:even those who had similar personality like mine had at least girls interested in them

That's your perception. Not necessarily reality. I used to think no girls were ever interested in me, yet decades after the fact someone made an offhand comment about she had a friend that was very interested in me, when I was a teenager. I merely didn't know it. I had it convinced in my mind girls didn't like me- I was verbally bullied by girls in school, so obviously, girls don't like me.

Except they do. But like you say, guy can't keep his head inside his shell and expect anything to happen.

Jetstorm wrote:then theres that small incident I keep it to myself when I was 11 or 12 I hate to talk about it even now, but anyways when I was returning home there was this old man who came to elevator at same time but didnt want to pick floors he took my hand and made me touch his private part and then he touched mine, I was really naive person so it was hard for me to tell what was going on but i realise it late what had drived me towards porn addiction later because of how much I became curious of it.

You're hardly the first person to find themselves affected by things like that- I've heard other stories of males who feel conflicting feelings because of past sexual abuse- even something as relatively 'mild' as that. I had a pederast that repeatedly fondled me when I was 12 or 13. Did it make me bisexual? I tend to think not, because I can see how I already had tendencies for that, before the molestation. But it certainly woke those tendencies up! Also, I can never know with complete certainty, that my sexuality was NOT affected by that. My sympathies.

Snaga wrote:Some of us are loners.

Some of us are also late bloomers when it comes to the opposite sex and dating. I was.

Also.. remember there's your perception of yourself, and it also affects your judgement:

Yeah your right when it comes to perception, I have been pessimistic almost my entire life because I always thought everyone cares of their own and nobody knows how far people can do whatever they want just like the ones I faced during childhood till teen, no amount of encouragement or inspiration took to change my pessimistic self for those years because I did try to believe but at the end of day it failed, none of those times when I was trying to be vulnerable sometimes, they would just laugh right in front of me and you know verbally or physically abuse almost everyday, not even teachers or my parents at that point would believe me.

And to that level I even wished sometimes I had died in some way possible but it's one life in the end and I dont know sometimes if I ll be aware enough to keep moving forward or will my own fear break me down to some point, but a possibility exists for everything and uncertainty isnt something to mess around with in first place, it just sucks that I cant get over these thoughts even though I'm aware that it's just a thought but it almost makes me feel like they are my own intentions and I cant even tell difference between excited and anxiety, which worries me even more like what's really going on with me and why is something simple has become really hard to get over with.

I really apologize again, at this point it's becoming a rant and yeah the fact I'm even being pessimistic right now says alot of things, but thanks for trying to helping out though, its really hard to talk about things like this because to people around me, its just nonsense I mean I did share a little about it but it cant be helped, they arent wrong in fact but I'm not strong as they are, no one showed me how or tell me what and not, learning good and bad was all experience in the end one I wish that wasnt a must way to be a better person. Not all of us can be same or expect to be one.

It's nonsense when you're not the one struggling with it- a person either has to be OCD themselves, or trained in it, I think, to understand.