HOCD? I literally lost it.

Hey all,

After reading a lot on this forum about HOCD (I know it's better to leave it), I took the step to make my own topic to tell about my situation because I'm literally losing it.

I'm 25 years old and this is my story: I'm addicted to gambling, now in recovery for 4,5 months with professional help. For around 8 years I gambled. After 2 months in recovery, out of nowhere there came a sound in my head saying 'You are gay'. I was in bed at night, I didn't know what was happening to me. In my whole life I never got sexually attracted to a boy/men, only by girls and women. I liked them. I don't hate gays, but I just don't want to be it and I never got those signals.

It's been 2 months dealing with those voices in my head and thoughts. My libido is totally gone - don't want to have sex with my girlfriend and also seeing pics of beautiful women does nothing to me. Just no sexual interest comes up which I was always used to and I loved it. Now I just don't want and can't think about it. And when I see a beautiful woman and I'm not turning on, the thought tell me it's because I'm gay. So it's feeling like I'm stuck in a circle.

The thoughts are now telling me I want to be gay, maybe because I'm just tired of this situation. But if I imagine accepting being gay, I can't think of really living like a gay. Since my birth until now, I never got sexual attracted by a men. Even when I'm making this message, the thought tells me I was earlier sexual attracted by a men and my relations with girls and sex were all nonsense, that I did it to avoid being gay. Again, I'm starting to losing it. I just don't have any vision that I will come out of this situation and living with this. This + quitting cold turkey with gambling, you can maybe imagine how I'm feeling right now...

Needed to get this of my heart. Thanks for who read and maybe reply.

Hi and welcome to the forum. So sorry you're going through this.

Did you have an OCD fixation on gambling before the new HOCD fixation? It is common for a person to develop a new OCD fixation after leaving one behind, or for a new one to replace an older fixation.

Either way, it sounds clear to me that this is an unwanted intrusive thought you're having.
It's understandable that it's affecting your libido, since now an event that would have aroused you before triggers these stresses, worries and feelings. I get the sense that you already know deep down that these are nothing more than intrusive thoughts. Still, to someone who hasn't experienced intrusive thoughts much before, they are extremely alarming. I used to get very disturbing intrusive thoughts, but when I started to let go of worrying about them / reacting to them, they naturally diminished and now happen maybe once every few days at most as a passing thing.
Intrusive thoughts don't mean anything. Also, checking to see if you have any kind of response over an OCD fear won't tell you anything either.
With OCD, you can expect things that scare you on some level to irrationally pop into your head. Beyond initially thinking on it, ruminating and reassuring yourself over it are only going to make it worse. Checking is only going to make it worse.
Unfortunately, in my experience the only thing you can do on your own about it (ie. outside of talking to others, therapy, etc) is to ride out the terrible anxiety and don't change any of your behaviour because of the thoughts. Very hard to do at first, but it gets easier and the OCD fear will lose it's power over you.

Also, you can expect something else in the future to pop into your head when you least want it to. So expect it and choose ahead of time not to react to it, or else it will become your next OCD fixation.