I was involved in an OCD support group, and a fellow group member agreed to share his experience with OCD for my website. This kind of obsessive, fearful questioning of sexual orientation can happen for individuals of any orientation. Like other forms of OCD, I think that the point is not to answer the question, but to allow the fearful thoughts and to sit with the fearful feelings they bring.
My Friend’s Experience with SO-OCD (Sexual Orientation OCD)
My unwanted thoughts started suddenly. It wasn’t a gradual progression of tormenting thoughts pestering me occasionally and then getting worse. It started with 1 thought and it immediately haunted me, and seemed to consume me every waking minute of the day. I had trouble focusing at work, it was the first thing in my head when I woke up in the morning, and at the end of the day I was so exhausted from trying to run from it that I would fall asleep immediately. Only to be consumed from anxiety and fear the following day.
At first I didn’t know what it was, I thought I was going crazy. I did some research online and found that it might be OCD. My first thought was “it can’t be OCD, I don’t wash my hands a lot or have to count to 3’s, etc.” but later I found out that’s not what OCD is. My thoughts got so bad and so frequent I couldn’t handle them anymore, I had a mental breakdown at work and thought, “I have to do something.” Anything was better than letting this thought torture me and being constantly afraid, anxious, and miserable. So I decided to try group therapy.
I wasn’t expecting anything the first time I went. I was just going to sit and listen, and then someone mentioned intrusive thoughts and OCD. I found that I was suffering, specifically from HOCD. HOCD is homosexual OCD, and for me it was recurring unwanted or intrusive thoughts about questioning my sexuality, and constantly reassuring myself that I am straight. I knew in my heart I was straight, but my head was battling that idea. It was such a relief to know that I was not alone, I was not going crazy! It did not take away the thoughts or make them go away, but it made me feel better knowing I was not alone. And if you are reading this neither are you! There are so many people out there that are struggling with very similar issues. You are not going crazy. And it can get better!
In my experience I was always reassuring myself I was straight. I was constantly over analyzing any interaction with the same gender and wondering if that made me gay. I kept reassuring myself “no, you’re straight because of….”. The reassuring and running away/being afraid of the thoughts only made them worse. It was scaring me every day. I was nauseous all the time, constantly on edge, always looking for a way to reassure myself that I was straight so I could make the thoughts go away. I kept doing this for a while and it only made it worse. It made me more afraid of the thought. That’s when I learned about desensitization and exposure therapy.
Exposing myself to the scariest thoughts (in my case, me being gay) for as long as I could withstand was on of the most fearful and anxiety inducing experiences. It would make me heat up and sweat, shake, feel nauseous, cry. It was terrible. But every time I felt that feeling or thought come back I would think “what if am gay”, “maybe I am attracted to the same gender”, etc. I leaned into those thoughts. The more I leaned into them the less scary they seemed. They would still bother me, but I wasn’t panicking and shaking, or crying. Eventually those thoughts would pop in my head and they would last a little while then just go away. But this took a lot of work and it didn’t happen overnight. You really have to commit to leaning into the fear.
Now, I am not 100% free of these thoughts. They still happen, and they do still bother me. But it is MUCH less often and MUCH less severe. I still have bad days, but I have a majority of good days now. There is hope! It can get better and you are not alone!