Hocd got me convinced

There's a method I have that might work for this. Please send me a PM.

 

This an easy one. HOCD is a made-up thing. So, don't stress it. Porn CANNOT make you gay. Psychology Today quotes: "HOCD remains largely unrecognized in the larger therapeutic community". It's not real. You are straight. Porn is a lie. Live in the real world.

 

Well, pornography can alter your likings and preferences in the bedroom. I wouldn't say it can change your sexuality. I've watched some weird stuff before but the moment I stopped watching porn, my brain just reverted to instantly be hetero again.

 

HOCD is absolutely a real thing man. I've struggled with it myself. I don't anymore, but for about half a year I was crippled with the fear of being gay, despite knowing deep down that I was straight. Every time I'd look at a man I'd have frantic, intrusive thoughts that essentially boiled down to something like this:

Imagine you're sitting in your room trying to read a textbook for school. You're relatively calm, maybe a bit bored, but focused on taking in the information. Head resting on one hand you flip the page with the other and find your eyes drawn to a picture on the side of the page. It contains a man. A single thought intrudes in your mind. Is he hot? You feel your heart drop. Why would you think that? It's a guy. Why do you care if he's hot? Do you think he's hot? Your muscles tense. Shallow breaths barely penetrate your lungs. Look at him. You can't. You're literally afraid to look at him. Terrified. Look at him! You look. Are you aroused right now? Did he arouse you? No...no you're not gay. You like women. You've always liked women. You feel yourself begin to calm, but...why do you think he's good looking? Wait...did your dick just twitch? Your anxiety spikes higher. Why is your dick twitching if you don't think he's hot? Did your dick even twitch? Look at him again. Did your dick twitch? No…no it didn't even fucking twitch. Why are you even having these thoughts? What is wrong with you? Anyway, ignore that knot of anxiety, fear, and shame and start reading again. You can't? Well...fuck...maybe jerking off will help clear your head.

At one point I literally thought I was going insane. It was just constant questioning of my sexuality, and needing to check to see if I was gay by looking at men and testing my arousal. I was so convinced that I was just gay and in denial. Curing my HOCD was a long process, but meditation really helped. One day I was meditating and the thought popped into my head, "why does it matter if you're gay?" It was honestly the first time I actually thought that throughout my entire experience with HOCD. If you would have asked me to my face if I thought there was anything wrong with being gay, I would have said no. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. And that's why HOCD is a real form of OCD. It's completely irrational. I fully believed that homosexuality was perfectly normal, and yet I was plagued with obsessive fears about myself being gay.

When I started thinking through what would be so bad about myself being gay, I began to realize how irrational these fears really were. I knew that if I was gay, my parents would accept me. My friends would accept me. I lived in a relatively progressive city where being gay wouldn't be a huge obstacle. The realization that there was no rational reason for being afraid of being gay was like a physical weight being lifted off my shoulders. I felt it in my core. From that point on, what really helped me fully recover was thinking, "If I'm gay then I'm gay. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no reason to be afraid." I also worked on cutting off the compulsive arousal checking.

It took maybe a month to be fully healed, but that was about 7 years ago and I have no issues with HOCD whatsoever. It was by accepting that irrationality of my fears of being gay, and accepting that if I was gay I was going to be okay, that my HOCD was cured. A huge part of why I was so afraid of being gay, was because of how much I loved women. I was afraid of not being attracted to women and so that fear was part of the driver of the obsessive, intrusive thoughts. Meditation helped me so much because it helped me deal with my anxiety in general, and that anxiety was what fueled the HOCD.

If you still don't believe HOCD is real, I don't know what to tell you. My lived experience of the disorder proves you wrong. You can deny my lived experience all you want, but the reality is, HOCD is absolutely real. The silent screams of emotional pain as I literally thrashed around on my bed, the tears of relief that poured down my face when the thoughts finally stopped storming through my head every time I looked at another man, all prove you wrong. The fact that the therapeutic community doesn't acknowledge the suffering of those with HOCD is a tragedy. And I get why. It sounds so much like a continuation of gay conversion therapy. It's not at all.

 

Your quoting psychology today is no proof of anything. Psychology does not even accept there is such a thing as porn addiction. So, what do they know? HOCD is not made up and it is very distressing to those that have it. Count yourself fortunate that you have not developed this condition yet. And please do not tell guys that HOCD is a fabrication. It is not.

 

No it is artificial and the porn caused it in addition to many ither things
Just dont think like that and fight all these fantasies and you can go to therapies which would help you

 

I think you made my point for me.

When you realized that porn is the problem and gave it up, you started getting better.

Blaming HOCD on porn addiction is the equivalent of:

If you had my job you would drink too.
My husband is always working so, of course, I cheat on him.

I could name others but, you get the point.

HOCD is being blamed for problems that are in fact caused by porn.

If an alcoholic told me that or a cheating wife told me that, I would no co-sign their bullshit.

I have problems with porn addicts blaming their problems on something other than porn. HOCD is an excuse and not a very good one.

The conversation should go like this:

"If you had my job you would drink too."
"No, you drink because you are an alcoholic."

"My husband is always working so, of course, I cheat oh him."
"No, you cheat on your husband because you are unfaithful to him."

"I started watching porn and now HOCD is my problem."
"No, you are a porn addict and need to stop watching porn."

The fact that HOCD is a term made up by the rightwing to gay-bash is another subject.

The term has found its way into the lives of people who need to wake up and realize the problem is PMO and deal with the real problem.

Remember the NoFap mission statement says that NoFap is "Science Based" and there is no science in HOCD. There is science in the benefits of stoping porn.

-D2L
--

 

The truth is, porn does cause Hocd. There’s no question about that. But personally it’s more about the porn addiction than actually being attracted to guys. You get these incredible straight guys, sometimes who are already predisposed to mental illness and overthinking, who progressively escalate to more and more extreme genres of porn and find it difficult to get aroused to what they consider normal.

This can really scare people and make them question who they are when in reality they’ve always known who they are. For me personally, my entire life I’ve dreamt of girls, never saw a man as even slightly attractive in my entire life, but I watched a lot of extreme pornographic content that involved a girl/guy ratio of 1:10+. You get the idea. Unfortunately years of conditioning my sexual reward circuits 5+ times a day to everything on the screen made it almost impossible for me to get aroused by anything that didn’t have a girl and a bunch of dicks.

Over time that really started to freak me out, but I thought it was normal because I enjoyed seeing girls in that position. Until the intrusive thoughts began. They would would start to spike the question of if I was watching that stuff because I liked seeing a girl dominated or if I wanted to be the one getting dominated. It disgusted the hell out of me, but from that day I would constantly question myself over if my life purpose was to act out porn scenes that degrade me.

I had a lot of inferior feelings about myself and low self esteem and it’s pretty obvious that my porn addiction was warping these negative feelings into some sick and twisted porn scenario. Obviously I knew that if I spent my life acting porn scenes for the sake of feeling degraded I would probably be on a path to suicide. But of course the addiction does not give a fuck about consequences. It just cares about reinforcing its escalation and will rationalise anything it can in order to achieve that.

For the next 2 years I would fail with a girl twice which further heightened my inferiority complex and the negative thoughts of surrendering my life to porn would get stronger and stronger. Regardless of all those negative thoughts, I would never find a guy attractive in my life. But I would freak out if I saw one, and would usually have to look multiple times to make sure I’m not. Back then I didn’t know that was all an anxiety fixation so it freaked me out.

I realised over the last 2 years that this was all a sick and twisted mission by the porn addiction. Porn cannot truely change your sexuality but it can definitely condition you to respond to the most extreme and disgusting things. If you spend years wanking to a picture of a chair, you would respond to a fucking chair. And with people already experiencing anxiety and negative thoughts in general, the most important thing in the world to them, their sexuality and love for girls, can be attacked. And that causes Hocd. Because for them as a person, the worst case scenario for who they are is to not be straight, because that’s who they see themselves as. Imagine how you would feel if your sexuality was being attacked every day by a porn addiction that is extremely powerful.

Society now a days encourages that sexuality is fluid and that porn is good and natural for you. But that shouldn’t mean that people who are addicts should instantly accept that they aren’t straight because they’ve desensitised themselves to their natural desires. You get a lot of gay people who claim that Hocd is an attack against them but it really isn’t. Straight people simply don’t want to be gay and the idea of being gay is usually detrimental to their masculinity that they hold so dearly.

Porn fucks you up, so if you haven’t developed this condition yet, Id stop before it’s too late.

 

When I cured myself of HOCD, I was still heavily watching transgender pornography. I would get into sissy hypno porn later on that you'd think would have exacerbated the symptoms of HOCD, but again, they didn't. I think you're correct that pornography can definitely create the symptoms of HOCD, and that abstinence from porn can help with those symptoms, but that doesn't mean that HOCD doesn't actually exist. That's faulty logic:

Thing A can cause Thing B
Therefore, Thing B can only be caused by thing A

That'd be like saying

A broken leg causes an inability to walk
Therefore, the inability to walk can only be caused by a broken leg

Just because HOCD is a common symptom of pornography, does not mean that it only exists in porn addicts. Even if it did, that doesn't necessarily mean that HOCD itself doesn't exist. I have seen reports of HOCD that extend beyond one's cessation of porn use. You're also discounting the fact that HOCD is merely a subtype of SOCD, or Sexuality OCD. There are gay men who experience SOCD in regard to intrusive thoughts about being straight. There are also bisexual people with SOCD. For example, a bisexual woman who is dating a woman would have intrusive thoughts about ONLY being attracted to men.

Again, especially in that last case, these highlight the fact that it is not merely a thing experienced by straight men addicted to pornography. In all cases it is characterized by anxiety. In that last case, the woman I spoke to very rarely watched pornography. It wasn't something she engaged with and yet she was experiencing the same frantic intrusive thoughts that I had experienced, and also had a history of anxiety.

In addition, your appeal to scientific authority is admirable, but misguided. Obviously science is the best tool we have for understanding the world, but it is merely a tool. The same therapeutic community you appeal to has characterized homosexuality as illness, transgenderism as illness, has advocated for lobotomies, eugenics, etc. I am a neuroscience student. I love science. I also see its flaws.

The fact of the matter is that OCD is considered a disorder because it was a common collection of symptoms that were seen to varying degrees across many people. There are people who have OCD about kicking babies, turning light switches off and on, locking doors, plucking hair, peeling skin, and on and on and on the list goes. Now you're sitting here and telling me that the idea that there is also OCD about one's sexuality is not true? Just because the current therapeutic community doesn't recognize it? Does that seem reasonable? Does that seem like the thoughts of one who is using science as a tool for understanding the world, or one who is allowing the beliefs of others to dictate to them what is and is not real simply because those others claim they are also using science as a tool?

Just because HOCD is a common symptom of porn addiction, does not mean that HOCD itself is not a real thing. That is ridiculous. That's like saying that a symptom of a cold is merely a symptom of a cold and has nothing to do with any other illness. OCD is an anxiety disorder. HOCD is an anxiety disorder that is, commonly, caused by porn addiction because of the sexual nature of pornography. That doesn't mean that HOCD can only be caused by pornography, nor does that mean that HOCD can only be cured by abstinence. In my own experience, my HOCD was cured when I dealt with the anxiety I had that was exacerbated by my porn use. I did not quit porn before I cured by HOCD, and as I said, my use of porn became more, "gay," after I cured my HOCD without my HOCD returning.

You're simplifying porn addiction far too much. You're discounting the affects that addiction has on one's mental health, including, but not limited to, anxiety. You're discounting the affects that porn addiction, dopamine receptor down-regulation, and classical and operant conditioning have on the development of different fetishes. You're discounting how all these things can interact with one another to produce the symptoms of HOCD, as well as how one may undergo different behavioural and cognitive shifts that can cure HOCD, that include, but are not limited to, ceasing the use of porn.

I'm sorry if this sounded harsh, but your conceptions of HOCD are ill-informed at best, and damaging to those who have it at worst.

 

I think the reason why a lot of people dismiss the idea of Hocd is because they believe it is an attack on gay people. I see countless of comments by gay people on nofap reddit threads that basically dismiss the entire illness completely, because they think it’s an attack on their community.

The fact that Hocd works both ways and is not exclusive to straight people proves how real this condition acrually is. Porn is definitely a contributor as the majority of us would probably never experience Hocd if it wasn’t for destructive porn habits, at least for me. I guess that’s good in a way, because it proves how dangerous porn escalation and addiction can really be for someone already predisposed to mental issues.

 

I have Science on my side. Read the NoFap mission statement it is SCIENCE-BASED.

HOCD was made up by right-wing nut-wings who wanted a better kinder gentler way to gay-bash.

HOCD is fake, it is made up, it is not real.

Telling anyone with a porn addiction that their problem can be solved in any way other than by giving up porn is not science.

That's like telling the drunk driver he has a car that has difficulty staying between the lines. No, he's a drunk.

HOCD goes away if you stop watching porn. Or you could find the one therapist on earth that does believe it is real, pay them $150/hr to listen to you drone on about it and after five to ten years the therapist will suggest you try stopping porn.

-D2L
-

 

Porn induced hocd goes away with quitting porn. No one told you that you’re wrong. That’s true. But Hocd exists just as much as harm ocd exists. It’s all ocd. The H after the OCD simply refers to the type of ocd. You can have ocd for pretty much anything. Some people can get Hocd naturally and some people can have it from porn. The porn induced variant is a lot easier to handle as, like you said sir, it occurs from porn, and thus can be healed from porn. That is true.

But saying Hocd isn’t real is pretty stupid, and contradicts all of your science that you speak so highly of. I would advise that you educate yourself a bit further on what OCD actually is and how it can attack people. Because claiming that Hocd doesn’t exist only makes you look like a goose. No ones gay bashing.

-IWF67

 

Not once did I say that porn addicts shouldn't stop watching porn. I've seen several people argue that people dealing with sissy, gay, and transgender fetishes should learn to masturbate with lesbian only porn, so perhaps you're assuming that I would agree with those people. I argued against them as well. Porn addicts absolutely need to stop watching porn, and preferably stop all sexual contact for a certain amount of time.

That doesn't change anything else that I said about HOCD. You're using the fact that there are people who use HOCD to gay-bash and generalizing that to the entire idea of HOCD. That's like saying there are people who use biological sex differences to be misogynistic therefore the entire idea of biological sex differences is misogynistic.

Like @iwontfail67 and I have told you, OCD manifests itself in many, many forms. The idea that it could never manifest itself as HOCD is completely ridiculous. I think your defense of homosexuality is admirable, your attempt to think scientifically is admirable, but you've taken it to the point of being blinded.

 

Let’s just not argue with guy anymore because he’s obviously very ill-informed about the science that he loves so much.

In regards to peoole with Hocd/sissy/trans issues, they should not masturbate to lesbian porn as a way to rewire as that is still porn and would still mean the user is conditioning themselves to a screen. HOWEVER, I believe that people with extreme escalation can benefit from naturally masturbating every month or so to natural and realistic scenarios. Maybe a date with a girl at the cinema or something natural and pleasurable like that.

Most people with these extreme issues have usually linked their sexual reward circuits to extreme, disgusting porn and extremely aggressive death grip style of MO. You can go 100s of days PMO free but if you don’t end up replacing the addiction with something new it can be very easy to fall back into the cycle. By naturally and gently masturbating once every now and then you are reconditioning you’re sexual reward circuits to expect a natural, gentle and pleasurable experience when it comes to releasing sexual energy, instead of expecting the extreme, unrealistic crap and the aggressive death grip. Obviously having sex is the best way to do this but for people who can’t find a partner, I believe this would work perfectly. Of course, overdoing it is counterproductive so it must be an extremely strict process.

 

I completely agree, I have an essay on dopaminergic rewiring that I posted on this site with another account if you're interested in reading it.

I've actually begun experimenting with, "conscious masturbation," myself. It's based on the book, "the Multi-Orgasmic Man," by Mantak Chia. It essentially turns masturbation into a meditation practice and has visualizations about manipulating, "sexual energy," within the body. Definitely an advanced technique and it has produced more urges in the past week or two, but I'm coming to believe that it is an important step. At least in my recovery. Definitely not something that should be undertaken by people early on in their recovery though. A lot of chances of excuses, relapse, and worsening of the addiction. I also have a girlfriend so that may be prerequisite as well.

 

I’d love to read it if you could link it to me.

I think the idea of nofap is great for people who want to quit porn, and up until now I have been doing streaks of complete abstinence. But I just keep failing after 70+ days because I constantly allow myself to replay all those extreme scenarios in my head as a way to make sure I’m NOT responding to them. And that ultimate stabbed me in the back. The thing I’ve come to realise is that people who force themselves to think about all the extreme stuff whether it’s Hocd stuff, trans or sissy stuff during their reboot are basically forcing themselves to anxiously think about extreme porn. And you can’t think about the sole factor of the issue while you’re trying to get rid of the issue. I would always ultimately relapse and it would disgust me the moment the relapse begun. It felt like I was not in control, but I was consciously hating it.

That’s why I really think people who suffer from this need to replace it with a natural way of release. Because otherwise, their brain will just go back to the last thing it did when it orgasmed.

 

Here's the link:

https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/the-ultimate-guide-for-dealing-with-libido-loss.268911/

And absolutely. Abstinence itself is not the answer, although it is a prerequisite. You can't truly get this stuff handled while you're still using. However, the root cause is the anxiety, trauma, depression, loneliness, whatever, that originally motivated the addictive behaviour in the first place. In the case of anxiety disorders such as HOCD, it is obvious that anxiety is a huge factor. Dealing with the anxiety may not completely cure the addiction or the HOCD, but it will definitely decrease the severity.

 

That was a very interesting read and I agree with all of it. Just to make sure, is gentle and natural masturbation enough of a substitute for real sex. Because if I can wire myself to feel sensitive to extremely gentle touch then surely real sex should be a walk in the park, since pied is largely due to physical and mental desensitisation in both the brain and then penis nerves.

 

I'm honestly not going to say that it's one or the other. I think it really depends on individual factors. I'd recommend that you stay away from masturbation until you've had experience with women just to be sure. That's easier said than done, especially given quarantine, but I would say that you'll gain more benefit by staying on hard mode and doing your best to start meeting new people. Give me a PM though and we can discuss this more.