HOCD

Hey there I'd like to share this part of my experience.
I totally identify with your concerns here
I am also heterosexual & yet the same thing has happened 2me, right down to the uncomfortable feelings around males. 4me some of it comes from the incest & sexual abuse you know the trauma from my past...
Along the way things changed as I matured/older.
Iv heard it said many times the the answers lie within side of us.
4me I discovered who I am & no longer live in fear.
I still have the some bisexual thoughts or fantasies & I believe 4me it's perfectly normal cause it's my secret that I know I wont act out on & I discovered if/when I not view porn it's not a issue...
Hope I could bring you some peace of mind PEACE OUT

 

not everyone who has hocd is bi tho i have it too and do not want to bang another guy at all

 

i know exactly how you feel brother!

 

Yo,

Your story and my story overlap for about 95%. I was 'super' heterosexual and maybe a bit oversexed and always attracted to the girls. They always gave me the helpless feeling of pure attraction. I've had some very good relationships and am currently in one and I love this girl very much (sometimes HOCD makes me doubt this as well, but I feel that I love her). However, all my life my P use has been very high (everyday, multiple times a day) and it escalated to the hard genres, mostly because of the forbidden thoughts and people enjoying those thoughts and action, but not really the sex itself. When I had a little depression and lack of interactions with girls going on, my stepdad pushed me over 'the edge' into HOCD by making a joke I was gay, because I turned down some 16 year old at a village party (I was 23 back then). The first 6-7 months were like hell and I had more or less the same fears and feelings as you. I will sum them up and maybe you'll recognise some:

• constantly fear of acting gay
• fantasies over the same sex no matter the age
• seaking reassurance everytime, anytime, everywhere.
• anxious around other man
• depression, and wanted to die.
*Get anxious sometimes around other men, especially when they are really close to me.
*Just let me be bisexual and be done with it.
+ Thinking that everybody would think I was/am gay
+ Thinking that every new guy I meet at work or during sports etc. is gay.
+ The feeling that I am not the real me, because all of a sudden I am completely different and this caught me by surprise somehow.
+ See that women are good looking, but dont feel the desired attraction.
+ Struggle with erectile dysfunction, because even hours before the sex I am focussed on the thought: 'I must get an erection, because otherwise I am gay'.

I still feel HOCD when I meet new people or in social conversations. But now I am forcing myself out of my anxiety by just saying: fuck it, I dont wanna live held back, I wanna live as me. Dont think, but try to respond to stuff without thinking about it, and it works. By not giving a shit, you stop overthinking and you will overcome a lot of the above mentioned anxiety issues. It wont be a straight line of improvement, but it definitely feels as progress. Furthermore, I try to stop watching P and PMO and MO. I had some streaks for a couple of days already and I had no feeling I was missing any of the hard P stuff. I am abroad now and when I do some dirty texting with my girlfriend during these streaks, the attractions comes back big time! This is such a relief.

These things are just signs that recovery is possible! So as I recognize myself very much in your story, I think the above mentioned changes/actions can be of help to you:

- Stop PMO
- Train yourself to let go and dont think about how to respond or act, just act. This is what you have done before your HOCD started and you were 100% straight then. Youre body language probably did not change in an instand.
- Stop MO
- One thing that is a bit of a reassuring part, but what helped for me was getting really drunk. I didnt do it for checking. But before my current relationship, I was going out with some friends and we were fucked up wasted in a bar. I think when you are fucked up wasted, you are in your purest form without any control and without any anxiety. The next day, I realised that in my drunk state, I only have a focus for girls and I can literally stare them to death. This was my first 'good sign' and realised I can overcome this shit. Since than I started to work on it, and found out about this helpfull website (https://moodsmith.com/hocd/). It is not cheap, but I was very despirite and I recognised myself in this video:

If you want to talk more about it, feel welcome to send me a message and maybe we can talk about killing this thing.

Cheers,

 

Fellas,

I’m in the same boat as well, what is your guys’ ways to negate the thoughts?

Ita insane for me because there’s days where it doesn’t bother me and days where it absolutely has me by the balls and I’m convinced that I somehow became gay. I know it’s not who I am because I’ve never been that way before and like you said, when I’m hammered I have no problem sleeping with women, but sober I am always nervous that I’m not satisfactory and my hocd just destroys me. It’s extreme as it gets, from me unconcerned and don’t worry about it, to me frightened that I will never escape this. It becomes so real and it makes me sick, but when it’s gone it confuses me why this happens. I can never concentrate in school and it occupies my day completely

Any relations to this, on a level where it’s incredibly powerful?

 

@hiddengem88 I experience(d) the extreme periods as well, where it just occupies your day at s very high level. I am a person who never talks about stuff, but once it got so bad that I started to talk (text) about it to a girl I was dating back than. The day was really bad, but when I told her in confidence, the moment I was writing it I realised that its just not true and I had to laugh about it and felt stupid for even thinking that stuff. I didnt try any other writing or discussion stuff, but I can imagine that when you write or talk about it you will change your view towards it and it will help you realise that its all not true.

I think you have to pick the ‘easiest to treat/overcome’ powerful HOCD moments and focus on them first. If you have some progress there than maybe these positive experiences will help you tackle other powerful hocd moments

 

Holyyyy Ffff, I have never heard of hocd, not even sure what it means but what y’all are describing has happened twice to me lasting for awhile then it goes away it was extremely confusing and caused a lot of sadness and isolation , but to the T this has happened literally I have had the thought well please let it just be bi so I can atleast enjoy women , even tho deep down I feel and know I’m attracted to females , I also have had a traumatic past and that is where when it was happening I thought it was stemming from , but that’s crazy , this is the first time I have ever heard of this

 

@Masterindoubt thanks for hitting me back man.

I do understand 100% what your saying, I’ve been talking to a brother on here when I’m in my worst days, and as my reboot progresses, they aren’t as bad but god-DAYUM when they were bad I wanted to die. I’m the same as you when you say that you were over-sexual growing up, I was the guy that wanted to flip thru Victoria’s Secret catalogs as a kid and all sorts of things like that. I loved loving girls but never had confidence to try and talk to them, for assorted reasons like being bullied for being a chubby kid and such.

A year ago I was incredibly drugged up and I had a strange thought like, “what if I was gay” or some strange thought and that completely psyched me out and ruined the past year of my life, because my thoughts were if I thought about it when I was drugged out of my mind, that must’ve meant that I wanted it. I’ve never had such a thought before in my life and it appalled me and grossed me out.

I’ve had on and off streaks, a few flings with about 4 girls, but the whole time I was tweaking about my hocd. My main fear was that I was afraid that I was somehow going to want it and that was something that scared me. Like I don’t want it but the fear and paranoia of one day I will wake up and want it, like “yeah I’m gay”.

 

maybe depression by chance ? that seems kinda the case for me cause i have a similar story to you

 

I just want to make a logical point anoint PMO and how it may be a part of this. Don’t know all your experiences but just making this point if it makes no sense to anyone or you just can’t relate that’s fine. Just ignore it.

If you expose yourself to porn you are seeing other men’s Johnson’s in a sexual manner condition- overtime this can influence your thoughts even if you don’t realize it. If you watch or especially PMO (it’s even more intense if on drugs or alcohol) while looking at gay, Bi or Trans or worst of all Hypno Sissy porn- it WILL impact your brain and influence your sexual thoughts. You are associating sexual pleasure/ Orgasm / hormones and dopamine to this stuff - why in the hell would anyone be surprised these thoughts same sex thoughts are in their head after this exact type of sexual behavior. PMO is sex as far as your brain is concerned so it’s going to bring arousal and thoughts, fantasies, etc. these images and experiences don’t just leave our memory and our brain continues to associate arousal to it.

Anyway I am just posting this in general not to specifically address anything anyone has posted here necessarily it’s just a point about the very understandable impact of porn/ PMO.

It’s really about taking responsibility for your mind and what goes into it. Don’t obsess about it. If you have never seen any porn with any male genitalia in it exposed in a sexual manner no matter how soft or hard core and never had any O with that experience or never had any kind of sexual anything with a man / male in your life and never watched gay, bi. Trans, etc. porn but you are now suddenly romantically attracted to men then maybe there is something going on but if you have had any of these other PMO experiences then you WILL have these things in your head usually in relative proportion to the amount of and kinds of these experiences you have had. It does not make you gay it’s just part of your sexual experience...

Anyway, I’ve made these points before onthe forum. My point is that porn exposes you to men as much as women in a sexual association unless you only watch women solo or lez porn, etc. never any men at all. If you watch gay, Bi or trans porn it amplifies it that much more in your head and so on.

Thanks for letting me ramble on a little.

Again you can just ignore this if it makes no sense or has no relation to your experience- I’m relating some of my own experience and I am trying to just bring some logic and maybe insight into what may be influencing your thoughts.

Good luck!

 

Its a very good thing that you've taken action, well done! I still have to find the guts to do this. I will go and see a psychologist, but if you have any tips already from the doctor, please let me know. I think there are a lot of people whose story show great overlap with ours. HOCD is a thing and we must be able to tackle it.

I was doing great, but the last couple of days the HOCD is coming back to me. It is fucking up my person now, as it makes me doubt every characteristic of me like: 'Is it normal that I talk about certain stuff to my girlfriend, or is it gay'. 'I am easily annoyed by a guy I work with, this must be a feminine act, I must be gay'. These thoughts drive me crazy and make me really question my own personality and make me scared to be my true self. The one I've always been. Any tips for this?

 

@Masterindoubt

This is an essay, and I’m writing it as I’m thinking so let me know if it’s too muddled to understand. This is what I’ve discovered about my HOCD nightmare and it may apply to you as well.

I’m with you 100% on your fears and self doubt. I’ve been experiencing the same fears to where I feel like I’m completely lost in this. I have had awful days to where I’m certain that I’ve completely changed and I have to be gay because that’s what my mind keeps over processing. I don’t know why this is happening to me and why, I’ve never had these types of thoughts growing up. It doesn’t make sense to me and seriously distresses the fuck out of me to the point where I either want to sleep all day and never initiate contact with a single person, or just take myself completely out of the equation. It’s gotten that bad before.

I’ve reached out to brothers on this site because I can’t talk about it to friends or family. It’s not that I don’t trust them, but rather the fact that this totally isn’t me and I don’t want to say anything about it because I want it to disappear. I’m afraid that they will go with the “it’s okay to be gay” approach and view this struggle as me coming out of the closet, which that is totally the wrong conclusion. I don’t want to deal with that and don’t want people to see me as gay because I don’t want to. I don’t think it’s me at all, and I’m fighting this so hard because it violates who I am and makes me view myself as something I’m not.

I have had low self esteem and an inferiority complex my whole life and this seems to be the vicious final form, because porn was my solace growing up. I couldn’t get the girls I wanted, but I had busty models on my screen that would please me. I set myself to that standard and kept myself there and never made an attempt, even when real life girls made approaches, I always got scared and ran because I was a pornaholic and afraid I would be unable to please them. I’d rather be a loner than be embarrassed in bed. Here’s where my HOCD digs in and gains its strength. I have had a perfect history for it, I have failed with women in bed, afraid of commitment, had my heart broken, no confidence growing up and feeling beneath every guy I met and unworthy of any girl. It’s a perfect recipe for a debilitating case of HOCD because it has all the components. “I’ve had all these experiences that must mean that I’ve been gay”. I still have days where I fight this and it still gives me anxiety through the roof. I’m about 35 days into a reboot, my lack of noticeable benefits are also a foothold in this fear.

But I try very hard to keep this in my head when these internal struggles happen:

A history of porn and masturbating as long as mine requires a reboot that is extensive and where I’m at right now, means that I’ve still got a long way to go. No dopamine easing things means that my brain wants a chemical reaction to stimulate it, so it flicks the next biggest switch. What makes our brain and body feel alive and energized besides sex and pleasure? Fear. After a scary interaction or jump scare, our body burns with adrenaline and we have trouble slowing our breathing. My brain wants to feel alive during a reboot because a life of no dopamine is a new experience for it and it’s not a fan. Yet. It’s all about conditioning and rewiring to get to the point that we don’t need to be jacked up all the time. To add, the fact that I feel that I must be gay because I get afraid of my heart breaking again or failure at sex is a false impression. I knew what I wanted as a kid, but didn’t feel worthy to get it. So I consoled myself through porn. I never built the necessary skills of confidence and comfort in myself because I was too busy wanking off. The fears that being gay is who I have to be because I get so anxious around girls because I feel that I won’t measure up to who they think I am. People who are gay like being gay and want to be gay, when they’re in the closet, they want to be able to be open about it but don’t want the flack and negativity from bigoted people. There’s where I see that isn't me. I find no happiness in these episodes and I feel like vomiting. Sexuality can’t just default to something else because of a rough history due to developmental issues. I don’t find pleasure in my HOCD thoughts, those emotions are imposters in my mind and drive my anxiety level up. Then it brings me to the chemical reaction, I’m not orgasming anymore but my brain still wants to feel a reaction, because reactions is what it’s conditioned to feel.

A reboot is precisely what guys like us need because although many others don’t suffer HOCD, it just means that we hold our sexuality as very important to us. I loved loving these women. I enjoyed the porn immensely because these women were my “dream girls”. Although it caused a lot of damage, I loved it and wished for a woman like that in my life. My sexuality is important to me because that’s what my whole past was. And that it’s threatened by these fears is what my idea of hell is, because I’ve never had real fear growing up. A reboot is going to remove the necessity of a constant, mind-wiping chemical release that I’ve been conditioning my brain to experience for years. Taking that need away will leave my to focus on better things, like building confidence and focus on life-building aspects instead of chasing the next dopamine dump.

To achieve this is going to be monstrous. To achieve a normal-functioning brain, means to take down the number of times my brain spikes with the chemicals. Not reacting or responding to these fears and thoughts is the first step. Any attempt to just be neutral to these destructive thoughts counts. Even though you want to scream “I’m not gay!!” to each time it pops up in your head, your feeding the need-for-chemical spike that the brain is addicted to. Keep in mind that your rebooting and turning a life of porn and masturbating around.

Drugs and alcohol are a bad crutch. I don’t use any drug anymore and I used to smoke weed daily and use substances like molly, adderall and acid once. This stuff just increases that spike incredibly and when I was in my HOCD fears, it amplified them greatly and made me incredibly afraid. Alcohol is a tough one for me, I like getting drunk because I turn into the guy I want to be. I don’t dwell on my fears, they seem ridiculous to me at the time and I have no fear approaching a gorgeous woman, one that I’d feel was completely out of my league sober. I’m depending too much on it to get out of my destructive mindset and do what I really want to do, but alcoholism is awful. I don’t want to use any substance to get me to where I want to be.

I try to do this as much as possible and although I still have horrible days. I’m still trying to get through this and I am nowhere near healed. But I’ve realized these things and they do help a lot. Give yourself as much time as you need.

 

I can totaly relate to this. I think feeling inferior to other guys messes things up a lot when your brain starts linking it to being gay, because I feel something around men, but it's not pure attraction and never have been sexual. Most of the guys I've felt "weird" around is unattractive guys more than twice my age and this made me think it had more to do with my relationship with my father than my sexuality. It's like I put men on a pedestal (and women too, but in a different way). Any guy who's not me is someone I look up to and consider better than me. The feeling I get is like getting starstruck by a celebrity. It's like I want acceptance and respect from guys (I've gotten it from women when having sex with them), but the men in my life (my father, friends) has often "left" me or become distant.
I knew I was "ugly" and girls didn't like me, so I kind of gave up girls and replaced it with porn. All my dreams and fantasies where about girls/women, but I never made an attempt with real girls. I am pretty anxious today because I relapsed two days ago because I got so horny by the girls at my university. And as always, after I relapse HOCD comes back tenfold. Now I'm anxious around every guy I see and don't find many girls attractive. Two days ago I was so sure I was not gay that I was more afraid of cheating on my GF, and didn't even consider being gay an alternativ.

I tried water fasting (only water and some salt. It's not dangerous or hard at all, by the way) for 5 days recently (mostly because I find it interesting and have read a lot about it) and this changed my HOCD a lot. I am not a religious or spiritual guy, I'm all about science, but I think evolution has found a way to cope with things we are struggeling with. Day 2 on water fasting I got really anxious and HOCD was at max, but when my body switched over to keto-fuel and I had nothing to digest it was like all my anxiety was suddenly gone. The neurotransmitters fired as they are supposed to do. I started getting joy and excitment from small things, just like many guys on NoFap report after 90+ days. I started appreciating my GF much more and found a lot of girls attractive (not only their bodies) and I started to NOT feel inferior to other guys and I could make eye-contact without panicking. It was also like this weird "emotional-pull" from just looking at random guys (like "I have never seen this guy before, he's 20 years older than me and ugly, but for some reason my brain reacts like I really like him") suddenly dissapaired. It's still the same guy, but he's not scary or "good-looking" anymore.

While struggeling with HOCD I have had a lot of dreams where I also have HOCD (I keep checking all the guys in the dream, comparing them to girls etc), but on water fast these dreams switched to dreams about my relationship to my father and my male friends. I dreamt about how sad it makes me feel that none of my "friends" needs me and often seems to not care about me. About old friends that suddenly stopped contacting me, about me not being manly enough. There was nothing about HOCD!
I started to dig into this and found that fasting has been used for a long time to "cope" with things you struggle with (some used it after abuse, other regrets, like therapy). I used to think this "feeling-weird-around-guys"-thing had to do with my friends, father and my lack of manliness, but when the word "gay" popped into my mind this feeling became a lot more "emotional" and weird. A couple of years ago I would have laughed if someone told me I was gay, but I knew I had an issue with "men". Water fasting made me think the former conclusion was the correct one.

I have also noticed that HOCD is a lot stronger when I don't feel good about my self (which has been most of the time the last years). When I don't feel good I tend to over-eat on junk food, not exercise, stay inside my appartment. I have also had trouble with sleeping most of my life and I have learned from Matthew Walker how this affects anxiety and makes you avoid being social. There is a really good podcast with Matthew Walker and Rhonda Patrick which I urge you to look up. It connected a lot of dots in my life. I also recommend her talk with Satchin Panda about fasting, where they talk about inflamation.

I have had some few episodes where people have called me "gay" for no reason, after this I started checking if I found guys attractive. If I found one guy good looking I thought for sure that made me gay. If I liked to wear a light blue shirt that was also proof that I was "gay". I also found girls pretty, and I wanted to sleep with them, so I was confused. Years went by and this "you know you're gay, right?"-feeling popped up once in a while. I had low self-esteem so in some way I thought all guys looked better than me, but not "attractive" in like I wanted them in any way. It made me panic and I was confused, but it didn't take a lot of time before it went over. But when I panicked everything was weird and I would see every guy as "attractive", yet wanting nothing to do with them. I had relationship and slept with women, so if I just avoided guys everything was "perfect". This just made my issues with men even worse over time.

Depression and anxiety runs in my family and I think a lot of this is caused by inflamation in the gut. This makes sense why I have periods of not beeing anxious at all (when I'm in shape and "respect" my self). So when I fasted I fixed this inflamation and my anxiety and over thinking was all gone. I usually spend several hours a day obsessing about HOCD, but I didn't even spend a minute those days after "resetting" my gut.

 

It's just Porn Induced HOCD. Try NoPMO for a while and see the difference.