Lately there have been a number of posts relating to OCD, H-OCD, and questioning. I post this not to be controversial or to foment confusion, but instead to get a bit more perspective on all of your experiences. From hanging around on here, a fair number of readers - whether gay, bi or straight -appear to have struggled with OCD at points in their lives. Some OCD sufferers noted that their illness made their confusion/questioning a bit more complex, as they were used to thinking obsessionally about thoughts that were scary or unwanted. e.g. - "I get myself so worked up about everything else, how do I know this is real?" "My thought pattern here reminds me so much of when I get myself worked up over nothing!" I guess what I am getting at is - (i) as sexuality is such a big component of human life and (ii) realizing you are or might be sexually attracted to the same sex is a big, scary realization for most - I imagine coming to grips with one's sexual orientation can seem a lot like OCD. Many questioners are going to obsess over the thoughts because of their magnitude. Many questioners are going to engage in "'what if" feelings, etc. If anyone can share more insight on their experiences or thoughts on all of this (if it makes even a little sense), I would be greatful. I think I BOTH suffer from OCD and am legitimately questioning my orientation. It's just tough at times to segregate my legitimate questioning from my obsessions, as I've spent decades scaring myself about lots of things big and small. My thinking about sexuality is very much of the "what if" variety, but I don't buy that the questioning is any less real. I just think the thought patterns are similar. On a related note, did any of you, during your questioning/confused phase, think you were OCD or otherwise suffering from some sort of congnitive disorder? I think denying thoughts, etc., can lend itself to this line of thinking, and any insight any of you can share on this front would be great. I agree with several earlier poster's thoughts that there really is no such thing as H-OCD. There is general OCD, which can in some people result in obsessions on the fear of being gay. The idea that someone without OCD would have OCD solely w/r/t sexuality doesn't make a whole lot of sense - from my non-psychologist perspective. Again, I don't write this to be controversial. I've been thinking about these issues, and I thought I'd open them up to the group. I don't have a mental health background, so apologies if any of the terminology, etc., is outdated or not the appropriate euphemism of the day.
I'm not sure how much this will help, but based on my personal experience and from what I've gathered talking to a few LBGT OCD sufferers across the web who did not suffer from OCD related obsessions about their orientation, there are a few differences. Before I list them, I do want to caution you that it's a relatively small sample size, so I'm not sure how much I can generalize accurately from it. The first difference I've noticed is this: For an LGBT OCD sufferer, OCD often is used as denial, at least before the real questioning beginning. When they weren't ready to confront it, they would write off the thoughts, images, and questions as just being a manifestation of OCD. For someone like me, however, who is questioning because of OCD, that idea that it's OCD serves at best as temporary comfort. Even after I was diagnosed, I still doubted the diagnosis and couldn't stop telling myself that it was just denial. Even after accepting that I do have OCD based on all the other themes, it took me a long time to accept that my recent issues were also OCD. In other words, if you are in denial, you won't have much problem believing it's OCD. If you are questioning because of OCD, you'll think you are using the OCD as denial. Ironic, really. Second, as much as OCD can screw with your head, on some instinctual level you still know who you really are. Throughout it all, I still knew deep down what I was attracted to. When it first started, I knew something wasn't right. The fear I felt when seeing men was nothing like my feelings of attraction towards women. Even with the images flowing through my head, the constant pangs of anxiety, the weird psychosomatic sensations in my groin, lips, and hands, I was on some level aware that I was attracted to women and not men. Even when I came out to my family as gay, I still knew instinctively that I was attracted to women. My issue was why was I attracted to women and why was I not attracted to men? I had simply concluded at that point that I must be in denial, and figured that coming out would finally clear the blockage and let it out. I suppose it could still happen one day, but that day still hasn't come yet, if it ever will.
To add a bit more insight into the situation I have read a few stories of people who had ocd and experienced issues related to coming out because of their ocd. In the case of some of these people it is as ImNuts says and they quickly labelled the attractions as ocd attractions and forgot about it... at least for awhile. I can say that I've never been able to do this with ease and I often suffer from poor insight towards what I am attracted to. A common ocd theme that prevents someone from coming out is the fear of being sodomized by men. Basically the ocd sufferer believes accepting they are gay will result in them being sodomized by men in power despite their desires to not want to be sodomized. Eventually this will develop into them thinking they can't be gay because they experience such anxiety from the thought of being sodomized and they become obsessed over this fear. Religious obsessions can also interfere with the coming out process by telling the sufferer they are going to hell if they accept this component of them and causing them to pray and perform other compulsions to try and rid themselves of the unwanted thoughts about going to hell. In this case here the religious obsessions will cause the person to become unable to accept their true orientation until their religious obsessions are dealt with or put to the side. I believe another important aspect is that false fears can strike anyone of any sexual orientation. A good friend of mine has a friend with false fears of being sexual when he is in fact a homo-romantic asexual. In this case he gauges arousal levels and his desire to have sex in order to try and determine whether or not he is truly sexual. Another classic example was a man who recently came out and his ocd targetted his orientation telling him that he was in fact straight. He began to watch lesbian and straight porn and felt that he had made the wrong decision. His ocd almost began to force him back into the closet and he began to fear that he'd be forced to live a life style not conforming to his own. I have a friend who is asexual and knows that she has no desire for sex at all. Its possible that she too could develop a fear that she is sexual... all of a sudden she will need to embrace the necessity of having a more carnal relationship then she has ever had an interest in. I remarked to a friend of mine that sometimes it feels that I am searching so hard for an answer that I feel like I've become in denial of being straight. I experience weird psycho-somatic sensations and I feel a need to check out men but in the end I feel like performing such compulsions provides me no answers in the end. Just as a gay male in denial tries to be attracted to women... I try to be attracted to men. The results of my attempts range from no attraction when trying to feeling like I need to look when not trying. This is further complicated by the fact that attraction is a fairly ambiguous term... sexual attraction is more concrete but is still open to debate to some degree. I guess the big difference between an ocd sufferer with genuine sexual confusion and an ocd sufferer with a sexual orientation theme is the following: 1. The ocd sufferer with genuine sexual confusion is afraid of not being accepted or having terrible things happen to them because of their orientation. 2. The ocd sufferer with a sexual orientation theme is afraid that they will lose who they happily were before. 3. In some cases there are overlaps between both groups. Typically though the ocd sufferer with a sexual orientation theme experiences no genuine interest in pursuing the activities they question. The person who is in denial but clouded by ocd thoughts will experience some interest in the activity.
