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Controling the madness (possible help for people who feel they have HOCD)

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by worldtraveler, Apr 16, 2013.

  1. I'm tired of writing these posts all the time asking the same questions over and over again and not getting anywhere. I'm tired of constantly checking for arousal to people I see. I'm sick of feeling depressed at home, paranoid around my friends, and exhausted from asking myself what I am. I want to take this as it goes but my head just won't let me, it has to know. It has to know what I am so find myself almost every minute of everyday questioning and trying to dig deeper to find out. I'm sick of waking up everyday saying I'm gay, bi, or straight. I don't think there has been a day that has gone by in the last 4 months that I have't thought about this less then 10 hours a day.

    Any of you ever feel like this?

    Hi, I'm a male in his early 20's and have been sexually confused for nearly 4 months now and have been getting fed up with this and slowly treding the path of madness for some time now. I could go over my life story but I think most of you know already where that would go. For those of you that don't I'll give you the short version...always thought I was straight, always liked women, and never have had a crush on a man. However about 4 months ago I began questioning my sexuality (due to low self esteem) and from there it has been nothing but hell. I have been constantly assulted by gay thoughts that were never there before and made even the most basic things unconfortable and some times impossible to perform. My libido and attraction to women virtually vanished within days and somehow the attraction to men started. Sound familiar? Well after all this time I may have come to a possible solution to at least calming myself and feeling better enough to at least live my life again.

    Now before I continue I have to be very clear about some things. I have never had sex nor dated any women (yet the desire has been there since before hs). I am in no way a therapist or psychologist so I cannot tell you if you are like me. I have no idea who you are and cannot tell you your sexual orientation, all this is for a comparison and possible help for controling your thoughts. I do not represent EC. Please do not bash what I am suggestion I am only trying to help. If you are for sure gay or bi this is probably of no use to you. This cannot change you. I reccomend if you can seek out and afford therapy then do it. Gay is ok, you are fine the way you are and should not feel pressured by society to conform. I cannot confirm yet if I am gay, bi, or straight although I am leaning towards bi with a preference to women atm. This may work for you, it may not.

    If your reading this now then you probably have been questioning to. You have probably enjoyed the opposite sex most or more throughout your life. You have probably masturbated to straight porn or opposite sex porn alot. You have probably had gay moments in your past, everyone does and no one is 100% straight (i don't care who you are), I know I have. Most likely looked deep and still can't prove if your straight or gay but have gay on the mind now (I was preping to get ready to come out to friends and family about 3 weeks ago). You have probably lost alot of interest in the opposite sex and desire it back. You probably have mini panick attacks anytime you are now called gay by someone else. You do not enjoy gay thoughts, although some you may. Many of you have probably searched up what HOCD is and thought that is what you have (I know I did long before I came here). You probably have read up numerous stories about people coming out in later in life (I've read 100s of stories) and have compared yourselves to them. These gay thoughts have probably scared you or still are. So were mutual now right? ok moving on.

    Basically why I'm doing this is to help give you back your lives, at least for the most part. As I said I have been barraged by gay thoughts for several months now and they have been driving me crazy. I have read up HOCD stuff before but to be honest I never considered myself to have OCD. I know I have a nack for checking doors and turning off lights but thats about it. I'm afraid to go to therapy so I will probabaly never know. What I do know is that I'm constatnly obsessing over this enough to at least acknowledge the possibility of this being HOCD.

    These gay thoughts have plagued me since this started and they basically have ruined my life. I couldn't be around friends I have known for years and ones I hang with almost on a weekly basis. I can't even go over to my best friend's house atm (I've know him over 10 years) because of how I constatnly think I'm getting aroused or somehow have delveloped feelings for him in the last few months. I was constatnly trying to hide them and get rid of them poping into my head. After awhile I got sick of it and read about a form of therapy that basically you embrace your fear. So I decided to start looking at images of men (this goes back about 3 months ago) and was terrified to do it. I think I got aroused althought I don't remember. Then I went to gay porn for my 1st legit time (other times have been accidental) and I forced myself to watch it and was definently aroused. It shocked me that I got aroused by it and I felt so depressed after watching it. Anxiety was the trigger, but we will get to that later. From there I forced myself to masturbate to it. Now when I say forced I mean it as in I forced myself to finish doing it. Watching it definently turned me on and it is physically possible for anyone to get aroused to same sex porn. However again I felt that depression or that negativity afterwards (sometimes the 1st step for those coming out). Basically that devestated me so much that I have given up internet porn for at least the last month. However I decided I couldn't stop there and was constantly testing myself to get aroused to gay images and seeing if I could still get aroused to straight images. I didn't think it was going anywhere and was basically giving myself flase hope. However as I have gotten more use to it (at least a full month's worth of images) I slowly started to notice that the gay images, even though I could definently feel something down there, weren't giving me full erections. The nude pictures of women really weren't either but I was noticing that they were getting me closer then the guys and when I fantasised about women again I was able to get full on erections.

    So why would a gay guy get aroused thinking about women especially since I focused on their lower regions? Now I use to love breasts but am having troubles even imagining touching them now, so its not like I'm back to normal.

    The arousal to gay images was flailing and the control has been coming back into my favor but it is at more of a stand still. The gay thoughts were still there and getting me all the time. About 3 days ago I finally snapped and just couldn't take it anymore. They want to pop in my head and get me aroused when I don't want them to, fine! Then I will force them out at my will. I fought back with all the will power I had. I forced gay images into my head and nothing was off limits. I forced everything to appear, every gay image I remembered seeing, every guy I saw I imagined without a shirt and doing something gay with, I imagined myself having gay sex, I thought about celebs and doing freaky stuff with them. I didn't let up I wouldn't give my mind any respite. If these thoughts could cause arousal or sexual attraction when I didn't want them to then they sure as hell should be able to do both when I wanted them to. For 2 full days I have kept this up and am mentally drained and exhausted, and its paying off. For 2 full days I have done this, I have thought of everything possible I could think of with a guy, and I have barely gotten aroused. I work 7 hours a day, and I know for the majority of that 7 hours I was doing this. I have not gotten an erection yet in those 2 days to these gay thoughts, not 1 with all those hours put into trying to get one.

    Now wait that doesn't prove anything, you didn't mention getting aroused to women. You're right I didn't mention that, but guess what, during those 2 days I have fantasised about women and have gotten full on arousal and I find it is no longer difficult to focus on them. I decided to take this one step further. So gay images and gay fantasies were't getting me aroused anymore (or at least not what they were use to) what about porn? Tonight after a 1month break I tried porn again. I started with lesbian porn and just watched the 1st video that came to view, and was almost instantly erected. I took a break walked around and waited till it disappaited. Then came the moment of truth I tried gay porn again. Nothing! I definently could feel and see a small twitch but it was in no way what it was before. Now had I forced myself to masturbate garunteed I could have finished to it, but the fact alone that I wasn't erected was victory enough for me. I was even bored and a little more grossed out this time I felt.

    Now looking back it, remember what I said about anxiety triggering some of the so called arousals? Well that is entirly true. Anytime I would go into the gay porn or images and constatnly thinking to myself "don't get aroused" I would virtually get aroused everytime. I don't want to go too much into detail about this so please search it up at your leisure, but I will give some of my examples. The biggest example I can give is from the tv show Louie. If you search up the title character you will notice he is not an attractive male (my opinion) and is actually kind of repulsive (again my opinion). In episode 3 he goes to the dr. and he had to take his clothes off for an physical exam. I can remember almost before this happened thinking to myself "oh no hes taking his shirt off don't get an erection, don't get an erection" and I swear I can remember myself getting aroused even before it happened. That was probably my only legit boner, outside gay porn, that I have ever gotten from a man. Yet now when I watch it now nothing. Another example is there is this 16 year old kid who sometimes works with me. He has worked with me for at least 2 or 3 years now and I find him rather weird (possibly even ugly) looking. I have no sexual, physical, or mental attraction to him and he annoys the crap out of me. I hadn't seen him since last summer, so not since before this all occured, and just saw him for the 1st time since then about 3 weeks ago and I remember getting nervous when I heard him calling out before seeing him that I was going to get aroused. I'm pretty sure I did when I saw him. I mean what the hell hes the same annoying kid who didn't change so why the heck would I get aroused to him now? In reality I wasn't it was that anxiety or fear of getting aroused that activated it again. I have more examples if people need them.

    So there is my story. For the 1st time in 4 months I am going to go to bed not obsessing (or at least try not to). I know though that I am not completely back to normal and to think so would be foolish. I still get the occasional gay image while fantasising about girls but they can be a turn off now. I'm still not back to normal around all of my friends but I'm forcing myself to go out with them as much as possible because quite frankly I'm tired of being to nervous to do anything and staying inside and playing video games all the friggin time. I still don't have the arousal thing under complete control and am going to keep fighting my mind with gay thoughts of my own. I have no desire to search up porn still as I feel it may confuse me more. I also still don't have my libeto back with women yet but even today I'm noticing that I'm noticing women more again and men less. I also still do not what sexual orientation I am but bi seems to stick as gay men do not get turned on by what I think about with girls but straight guys feel nothing when they see other men. I also have developed other fears outside being gay like that I won't like sex with women with no way to prove I will...but to be honest I have never been one to search for a relationship and would just like to focus on life right now as it is.

    Before I leave I would just like to say that this felt good for me to write as I haven't been myself for a long time but it definently feels good to vent. If you need to take some pointers and think you have HOCD then remember that you shouldn't let it rule your life, try not to give it more power then it already has, accept the thoughts that are there, don't look more into then you already had and by that do not read online stories about coming out later in life or comparrison stories, don't check for arousal (although I do constatnly), take it easy on the masturbating, and remember its not the end of the world. I'm going to take at least a 2 week break from this site and reading posts on other sites and continue doing what I'm doing and I will up date you all in a bit. Best of luck figuring yourselves out!
     
  2. Chip

    Board Member Admin Team Advisor Full Member

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    Hi.

    Couple quick thoughts: If you have a habit of constantly (and I mean, constantly as in obsessively, not once or twice) checking doors and light switches, then those are the sorts of symptoms that are consistent with OCD. And if you have OCD, you might have, as part of the OCD, an obsession about your sexuality.

    But please don't confuse people by talking about HOCD, because there's no such thing as HOCD as a standalone condition; it would be the same as referring to obsession with locking the door as "Lock OCD." The condition is OCD, and the problem I have with people constantly talking about HOCD is they're using it as a crutch to avoid dealing with a genuine issue (either a bigger OCD issue, anxiety, denial about their sexuality, or something else.)

    I do think it would be a really good idea to find a way to get yourself into therapy. If you're so anxious that you can't even bring yourself to start therapy... think about that. It's a pretty serious sign there's an issue. If it's too big an issue to go to see a therapist at his or her office, then perhaps you could do a Skype session (there are many therapists who do them now.) The important thing is... for what you're describing, you need (and deserve) to have some professional help so that you can move through this issue and get on with your life.