u/idfle

I get some really good days and feel completely normal but it feels like my retriggers get worse and worse every time I get retriggered. This recent time, I went to hang with a friend for a bit. As soon as I saw her I was kinda triggered cause the top she was wearing showed cleavage and eventually it for actual arousal and it felt pleasant, I know I shouldn't have but I tried checking or testing to see if I would feel genuine arousal or anxious arousal around her and it felt genuine. I could imagine being with her without being disgusted. I don't know how to explain it but it felt like I wanted it so bad it didn't matter that she was a girl and there was no anxiety. There's been consistent anxiety since then though and this is my wedding week. I'm ethnically Indian so there's literally wedding events going on while I'm dealing with this and I do not enjoy them. I just feel miserable. Simply the fact that I felt so aroused it didn't matter that she was a girl, that I would want her, felt terrible. I can't remember being like this pre hocd. Please help, I really want to enjoy getting married.

Hey, so I have SO-OCD/ HOCD. It started last year in June after I started comparing myself to other girls, scared that my fiance finds them attractive. He gave me no reason to worry, so that's on me. I decided to rip the bandaid and just imagine him being with someone else, triggering a groinal response, which sent me into this year long battle.

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This is my second time with HOCD, the first time was when I was 20/21 ish (I'm now 27) and had started the same way, due to me comparing cause my ex at that time would always look at and admire other girls.

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Anyway, I've been in therapy with a psychologist learning ERP, no clue if I did it right, but I'm at the point where the thoughts may give me anxiety but I'm able to focus on what I actually need to do and they subside. I actually stopped reacting or caring about groinals entirely, still am doing that, it was going great.

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What's pulled me back is a couple instances of what I honestly do not think were groinal responses, recently. I can identify them pretty well now I'd say. What it was, was real arousal, the thoughts were sexual in nature towards the same sex (I saw an influencer on IG), and I felt incredibly turned on, like I wanted to masturbate in a non compulsive manner. No matter how much I try to not care, I can't. I keep checking if I still feel that way cause of that influencer - sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

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I get married in 3-4 weeks I just want to be myself again. Maybe I had this kind of arousal before, I think I did, but it never mattered, I was still confident in my sexuality.

What DO I do? Will I eventually feel like myself and confident again?

I'm so frustrated, when I start doing better I can go days without feeling anxious, no intrusive thoughts, no groinals or if I have any I can deal with it just fine. Just to end up with ACTUAL AROUSAL that's way stronger to the same sex, (specifically one person on instagram who posts pics with cleavage) than the opposite sex.

There's no way in hell I'm not bi then I guess. It's not groinals, doesn't feel the same, it feels like actual arousal.

What do I do? I'm not even sure what I want from this post.

After my (27F) last post, I guess I was so anxious I just didn't have the capacity to care anymore and didn't even bother with analyzing or ruminating or anything so my ocd actually did get a bit better! I felt SO much more normal, it was fantastic. Until today. I have started to fortunately/unfortunately (?) recognize the difference between my groinals and actual arousal and unfortunately got triggered when I was scrolling instagram, due to actual strong arousal to cleavage or something. I kinda forgot about it for a bit but now it's back on my mind again. In the moment it didn't give me anxiety but I hated that I had genuine arousal to that, now I have actual arousal.

Genuinely trying to figure out what to do here. It's not the thoughts that are keeping me in the loop nearly as much as it's the genuine arousal (not even groinals, I can forget those) that is keeping me in the loop (currently trying really hard not to reassurance seek in this post about the actual arousal).

Hell it was stronger than my arousal towards men. I got to the point where I'm kind of like okay maybe I really just am in denial and need to accept it even if I don't want to. Am I still supposed to just ignore the genuine arousal ?? Some days I feel like a fake epiphany that I am bi when I don't want it, other days it's like this.

Genuinely what else do I even do to pull myself out of this? There's no thoughts for me to try to engage in ERP against.

I really have been going through it and I massively relapsed today. I cannot stop crying. I'm a girl. I was masturbating and was turned on and climaxed to an image of the same sex twice. I was fine right after with a moment of clarity that it actually doesn't mean anything for my sexual orientation. But then, I took a nap, woke up sweating and had a dream where I was coming out as bi/lesbian. I cannot stop crying I don't want to be anything other than straight, I miss who I was. My fiance wouldn't even care if I was bi, I've spoken to him already, but I care. There's no way I'll be able to let this go.

I have the urge to just be like "fuck it idc I'm straight and I'm no longer going to care about this" but it feels like I really am just in denial because I didn't feel disgusted after masturbating, I felt relaxed, and the panic came much later. I now feel disgusted whenever I see any sort of sexual cues, I can't stop crying but I also feel numb at the same time, like not anxious, and like it doesn't matter and I can brush it off. I only did it because I guess I was already aroused and the "what if I can masturbate to the same sex" was a thought that scared me, so I did it to just get it done and move on.

I really have been going through it and I massively relapsed today. I cannot stop crying. I'm a girl. I was masturbating and was turned on and climaxed to an image of the same sex twice. I was fine right after with a moment of clarity that it actually doesn't mean anything for my sexual orientation. But then, I took a nap, woke up sweating and had a dream where I was coming out as bi/lesbian. I cannot stop crying I don't want to be anything other than straight, I miss who I was. My fiance wouldn't even care if I was bi, I've spoken to him already, but I care. There's no way I'll be able to let this go.

I have the urge to just be like "fuck it idc I'm straight and I'm no longer going to care about this" but it feels like I really am just in denial because I didn't feel disgusted after masturbating, I felt relaxed, and the panic came much later. I now feel disgusted whenever I see any sort of sexual cues, I can't stop crying but I also feel numb at the same time, like not anxious, and like it doesn't matter and I can brush it off. I only did it because I guess I was already aroused and the "what if I can masturbate to the same sex" was a thought that scared me, so I did it to just get it done and move on.

If you've seen my other posts, I've been struggling with HOCD for close to a year now. I have periods of complete clarity and feeling completely normal, which makes getting triggered later much much worse because it feels more like denial - like I'm noticing something and choosing not to accept it.

It happened to me earlier today when I was going through Instagram and I had arousal and feeling nervous and everything, the whole ten miles, but no anxiety. It was like it felt good.

For anyone that is close to or has recovered is this something you went through? How did you deal with it?

I guess I'm adding to the posts here regarding this but I'm genuinely so scared. I keep checking the news or Reddit for updates, there's so much contradicting information. At the beginning of the outbreak they said the Andes strain isn't efficiently contagious and now they're reconsidering how contagious and easily contractile it is.

I'm really worried.

I'm getting married in a month and a half. My fiance is travelling for work this month to America (we're Canadian) and I am scared. I feel like I cannot trust Americans (I'm sorry if you're American, I don't mean to offend) to stay home and be selfless if they're sick and the fact that the CDC is gutted and America pulled out of WHO just makes it worse.

I'm scared of the same happening when we have our wedding because we have people coming from all over the world.

This has been keeping me up at night, I wasn't nearly as concerned with covid given the low mortality rate but the Andes Hantavirus is just terrifying especially given no cure.

I wish there was a deadline or something where I could feel like I can finally be at ease, like "if this doesn't get any worse by this time it's all good".

I haven't been able to enjoy wedding planning at all. First my HOCD, and now this.